ABA Journal - Legal Rebels

A (Don’t Be) Dewey Dozen: Use This Checklist to Make Sure Your Firm Isn’t Dewey

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:30:57 -0500

In 1984 and again in 1987, I worked hard to get Gary Hart elected president. Suffice to say I wasn’t happy about the way that experience ended, and for a long time thereafter whenever someone saw the Hart reference on my resumé they would give me a sideways glance and an awkward chuckle. I suspect that for the next decade, anyone who has “Dewey & LeBoeuf” on his or her resumé will likewise get a sideways glance and an awkward chuckle. My further guess is that at least 10 Am Law 250 firms will fail between now and the end…

The Zuckerberg Challenge

Fri, 11 May 2012 17:08:45 -0500

I enjoyed the recent ABA Journal story about the report that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, negotiated the acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion with Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom without using lawyers (at least initially). The story—and especially the reader comments—illustrated the gulf between the Silicon Valley and conventional lawyer mindsets—both in terms of how they approach the role of lawyers and, perhaps more importantly, how they deal with anomalies. For some commentators (call them the “anti-Zs”), Zuckerberg’s action in going directly to Systrom shows he is a fool, and anyone who invests in Facebook must likewise…

Help Us Find Our 2012 Legal Rebels

Tue, 08 May 2012 10:45:21 -0500

Lawyers as risk-takers and innovators? We know they’re out there. In fact, we've profiled 70 since launching the Legal Rebels project in 2009. In our 4th year, we're scouting for a new crop of Rebels, and we invite your nominations to help us identify those actively remaking the profession. Using this form, tell us about a legal professional who has a clear vision of the future of the profession, is finding new ways to practice law, represent clients, adjudicate cases and train the next generation of lawyers. We'll accept nominations for this year's project through close of business June 8.

A Trusted Adviser in the New Normal Must Be Like a Symphony Conductor

Tue, 08 May 2012 10:24:21 -0500

When I started practicing law in 1982, a good lawyer was one who possessed superior substantive knowledge of an area of the law. Those lawyers read cases and law review articles. Their ability to advise clients on what the law was made them masters of their craft. Things have changed. A lot, as it turns out. At a recent program offered by the Association of Corporate Counsel, Nancy Jessen of Huron Consulting shared this graphic, which she kindly allowed me to use here: Nancy had perfectly captured the evolution of the top-flight lawyer, the trusted adviser. It was not a…

Don’t Give It Away: Value Doesn’t Mean Cheap or Free

Wed, 02 May 2012 13:47:32 -0500

Scott Bishop wrote a worthy post on his blog, Real Time Marketer. It’s his position that you shouldn’t give away what you do for free or for a discount in order to generate future client business or loyalty. I have to agree. In this market—in which so many clients are trying to cut or control rising costs by asking for freebies or discounts, and so many firms are willing to accede to their demands—this is a hard lesson to learn and apply for lawyers and firms that are hungry for business or opportunities to create stronger institutionalized relationships. Don’t get…

Is Your Firm or Legal Department ‘Old Normal’ or ‘New Normal’? See Our Checklist

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:30:28 -0500

When we first started this series, there were many lawyers who thought the New Normal was overdue, others who thought it had already happened, and perhaps still a majority who thought law was just in a short-term blip and that we would "return to (the Old) Normal." Now, several years in, I think there is widespread agreement that things are changing in law, and even general agreement on the contours of that change. One way to understand what's happening in the legal market is to look outside law at other industries. One of our pharmaceutical industry customers just sent me…

If Lawyers Sell Legal Expertise to Clients, Who Owns the Resulting Product?

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:30:35 -0500

I’m still mulling over the implications of an article by Mark Hamblett in the New York Law Journal about some lawyers who have filed suit against Lexis-Nexis and West Publishing for what these lawyers say is the “unabashed wholesale copying of thousands of copyright-protected works created by, and owned by, the attorney and law firms." While the article’s story is about whether authoring lawyers or their firms are copyright holders of documents filed in courts and stored as public records—especially if folks retrieving them them want to resell access to and discussion of them as Lexis and West do—I’m more…

A ‘Valorem Dozen’: The Ingredients for One New Normal Firm

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 08:30:52 -0500

Several recent posts by Paul Lippe have highlighted the problems currently being encountered by Dewey & LeBeouf. Already this year, more than 45 partners have abandoned the firm, and American Lawyer recently restated, rather dramatically, Dewey's revenue and profits per equity partner for 2010 and 2011. Comparisons to Howrey abound: The slow drip, drip, drip of the "run on the bank" surely seems to have started. While the focus for the moment is on Dewey and its remaining partners, the truth is that most BigLaw partners must at least secretly wonder what they would design if they were required to…

The Dewey Dozen: Capital Sufficiency and Survival

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:20:21 -0500

When news first broke about troubles at Dewey LeBoeuf, I wondered whether problems like Dewey’s are an outlier or representative of broader trends. Then, I explored the long-term trends that are likely to lead to more Deweys. In this third piece, I want to describe what happens in the very short term when a firm finds itself in a liquidity squeeze. According to the published reports, Dewey: • Missed targets, announced layoffs and deferred payouts. • Has both outstanding notes ($125 million and a bank revolving credit.) • Has had significant and ongoing partner defections. • Says that its primary…

Stanford Law School Dean: We Aim to Teach Our Students Not Just to Spot Problems, But to Solve Them

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:00:17 -0500

While failings of legal education have been much in the news these past few years, the need to change long predated the economic downturn—which mainly accelerated trends that have been unfolding for years. Stanford began revamping its curriculum in 2004 and already offers a program that does most of what thoughtful reformers say is necessary. One thing we did not change was the first year, which inculcates core skills of legal problem-spotting and analysis: the essence of what it means to “think like a lawyer.” The problem was that law school consisted of almost nothing but this style of education,…

The $60-Per-Hour Lawyer—Why Dewey Isn’t Ab-Normal

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 09:05:53 -0500

When structural change happens, we like to look for individual agency – find someone who made a mistake and blame them. But Dewey’s problems are more indicative of basic changes happening in law (driven by the broader world) than they are unique boo-boos by Dewey. The best description of the legal market and the implications for firms in the New Normal comes from Jeffrey Carr, the General Counsel of FMC Technologies. According to Jeff, lawyers do four things: Advocacy – representing the client’s interests in relationship to external parties, most commonly litigation; Counseling – advising the client on actions that…

Dewey or Don’t We: Abnormal or New Normal?

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:29:32 -0500

The continuing revelations about uncertain accounting and significant partner defections at Dewey & LeBoeuf, have me mulling whether the problems at Dewey are unique or emblematic of broader trends. Back in the day, coal miners would take canaries into the mine because the birds were more sensitive to build-up of carbon monoxide and methane than humans, and would serve as a leading indicator of dangerous conditions. So is Dewey a canary in the legal market mine-shaft, a more sensitive indicator of tricky conditions, or is it just an outlier? The best description of Dewey’s travails can be found on Bruce…

Changing Stripes: How to Work Collaboratively on Alternative Fee Arrangements

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:19:09 -0500

I was just at the Ark Group's AFA conference Thursday in New York City, and the sentiments that Roya Behnia details in the New Normal column "Alternative Fee Arrangements Are a Tool, Not a Strategy" were in the fabric of pretty much every conversation we had with speakers and participants in breakouts. Based on those conversations, and my experience working with the Association of Corporate Counsel Value Challenge, here are a few additional thoughts for the pile: On client reticence: It's really important to remember that law department leaders are trained and experienced in the same work environments as their…

Alternative Fee Arrangements Are a Tool, Not a Strategy

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 08:49:45 -0500

Earlier this year, I met Pat Lamb, one of our fearless leaders in the New Normal, for coffee near his office. Given his success in delivering high-quality legal services under alternative fee arrangements, I wanted to hear his thoughts about their use in practice. Pat emphasized that lawyers should be paid for successful outcomes and not for quantity of work. We talked about my own early experience with an AFA in which my outside counsel arrived at a flat fee by multiplying the number of hours they expected to put into the matter by their traditional hourly rate. We agreed…

Where Are the Legal Jeremy Lins?

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 09:49:57 -0500

The best news of the last decade has been the emergence of Jeremy Lin as the point guard of the Knicks. It's good news because his style of play makes the whole team better, because he confounded expectations, and because he is a decent, hardworking, humble human being. (Full disclosure: Jeremy’s younger brother played with my son for several years, where Jeremy helped out the team. I hope he’ll marry one of my daughters before becoming president, and I am a longtime Harvard basketball fan, so I make no claim of objectivity.) Although Jeremy had a very solid track record…

The Legal Innovation Ecosystem: 10 Actors & Their Roles - An Early Review

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:00:33 -0600

With Apple’s stock and overall performance continuing into the stratosphere, Steve Jobs has attained the status of a secular saint. But it doesn’t take anything away from Jobs’ accomplishments to say that he wasn’t necessarily the lead musician of every part of the orchestra so much as the conductor. As Walter Isaacson illustrates in his recent biography, literally since Jobs was in high school, he was immersed in the Silicon Valley (broadly understood) ecosystem, starting out with the Homebrew Computer Club, then working with HP, Atari, Xerox Parc and Sony. To create the iPhone and iPad, Jobs had to orchestrate…

What a Physics Professor Can Teach Us About Collaborating with Clients

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:13:07 -0600

Usually, when my alumni magazine arrives in the mail, I skip the articles to go straight to the class notes section and catch up on my classmates. This time, however, I stopped on a headline proclaiming the “twilight of the lecture” and that a “trend toward ‘active learning’ may overthrow the style of teaching that has ruled universities for 600 years.” Intrigued, I took a closer look at the story of a physics professor, Eric Mazur, who has abandoned the traditional lecture format in exchange for “peer instruction” in his introductory physics class. What is “peer instruction” or “interactive learning?”…

Managing Partner Shares Perspective on the New Normal

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:14:56 -0600

K&L Gates Chairman and Global Managing Partner Peter J. Kalis spoke with ABA Journal reporter Rachel M. Zahorsky on the future course of the legal profession and the broader legal industry in the context of the New Normal. On the New Normal in general, Kalis said that what the legal profession is seeing now "is a much overdue debate on the future course of the profession and the broader legal industry. A lot of us have sharply defined views on that subject, and it is a privilege to be able to share them." Below, Kalis shares his perspective as he…

10 Concrete Ways to Measure Law Performance

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:21:47 -0600

A few days ago, my compadre Paul Lippe wrote a thoughtful post: What if Someone Could Measure What Lawyers Do? Paul addressed the “fancy term” for the argument that what lawyers do can’t be measured: “credence good.” As good as Paul’s post was, the comments on it were particularly interesting. FMC Technologies Inc. general counsel Jeff Carr, who has been measuring lawyer performance for a decade, wondered why this was still a topic of conversation. Others suggested measuring outcomes, but the some wondered how you measure quality. At a recent lunch, Mark Herrmann, associate general counsel of Aon and its…

Show Me the Numbers

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:13:17 -0600

Our thesis here at the New Normal is that the legal services that corporations buy will come to look more like other activities inside companies, and the legal services small businesses and consumers buy will come to look like other consumer activities. My thinking on this is driven by experience, having spent most of my life either running the legal function inside a company or in other operating roles, or trying to be an aggressive consumer of online services. When lawyers attack the New Normal thesis, the rejoinder usually comes down to three things: • Because change hasn’t fully happened…

What if Someone Could Measure What Lawyers Do?

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:38:52 -0600

Based on what we’re seeing with sophisticated legal departments, the four horsemen of the New Normal will be: • Legal process outsourcing. • Substitution of technology for people in repetitive work. • Treating legal work as teamwork rather than individual work. • The emergence of one or several standards for measuring quality (perhaps value) in legal services. The New Normal doesn’t claim that 100 percent of today’s legal work gets disrupted in this way, but 30 to 40 percent will—with significant impact. Yet whenever we introduce this topic for the first time, some skeptic will insist these things are impossible.…

Lawyer Comp: The Third Rail of Legal Value Conversations (Part II)

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:21:16 -0600

In Part Two of this article, Susan Hackett, the former general counsel for the Association of Corporate Counsel, and now the CEO of her own consulting practice, Legal Executive Leadership, explores new ways to assess lawyer compensation in the New Normal. In part one, she discussed her concerns with law firm comp as it arose in conversations at the end-of-year—namely focused on end-of-year large law firm bonuses and frantic partner efforts to realize work billed but not yet collected in preparation for partner comp conversations in 2012. In this concluding segment, she offers a framework for sustainable and better-incented lawyer…

Practice Group Leaders: Masters of the Legal Renaissance?

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:33:55 -0600

Before I left my job as general counsel at a software company, I was offered the chance to become general manager of a product group. Unlike my previous role, the GM job didn’t report to the CEO, but in corporate terms it was still viewed as more important than a “staff” job, because you were responsible for overall profit and loss; product definition and pricing; composition and compensation of your group; and for ensuring service delivery (in a complex software product, there is always a lot of service). My pay would be tied to the financial performance of the group,…

The Agile Manifesto Round Three: ‘What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate’

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:48:27 -0600

Three years ago, I was part of a law firm panel discussion on effective business development. We covered the usual topics, including alternative fee arrangements, budgeting, marketing, etc. I emphasized the importance of having lawyers who made my job as an inside counsel easier. I spoke of outside counsel who anticipated needs I didn’t know I had or didn’t have the resources to address. Imagine my surprise when one of the senior partners asked the panel, “How do I know what will make your job easier?” When my turn came, I said, “It’s simple. Ask me.” Open communication underlies all…

A View from AALS: What Change Looks Like

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:42:36 -0600

When historians of the 31st Century convene to consider this question: How did America manage (or fail) to renew itself at the beginning of the 21st Century to continue its remarkable period of economic, political and cultural leadership? They will consider themselves quite lucky if they have comprehensive access to the proceedings of the Association of American Law Schools annual meeting last week in Washington, D.C. The AALS meeting, at which I had the opportunity to speak, presented in very clear terms the central question of our time: Will smart and privileged people be able to pull together to effectively…