Legal Education
National Law Journal and AmLaw Daily
The National Law Journal and American Lawyer report on “Future Ed 2: Making Global Lawyers for the 21st Century,” an international conference held at Harvard Law School from October 15-16, and co-sponsored by Harvard’s Program on the Legal Profession and New York Law School. PLP Faculty Director David Wilkins concluded that “[t]he good news for change today is that there is pretty widespread feeling that the old model of legal education is not sustainable.” The conference featured substantive discussions regarding the theory and context of modern legal education (including, for example, global and cross-disciplinary comparisons) as well as concrete proposals for reform (including, for example, expanding experiential learning, increasing diversification and specialization, harnessing technological developments, providing greater global perspectives, and rigorously measuring learning outcomes). The conference was the second of three gatherings, with the third and final conference scheduled for April 15-16, 2011, at New York Law School. Visit the PLP website to view video of the keynote addresses delivered by Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and Chris Kenny, CEO of the UK's Legal Services Board.
The National Jurist
Law firms are hiring fewer highly paid associates, leading two legal scholars to predict that law school applications will eventually drop, forcing some lower-tier law schools to actually fold. University of San Diego Law Professor David McGowan and Stanford Law Fellow Bernard Burke argue their case in the article, “Big But Brittle: Economic Perspectives on the Future of the Law Firm in the New Economy.”
The National Jurist
Law school grades are more important to “long term success” than the prestige of the schools attended, according to a recent study by professors at Brooklyn Law School and the University of California Los Angeles. Grades also determine success on the bar exam. Co-author Rick Sander observes that while “[t]here is this remarkably pervasive conventional wisdom which dismisses law school as too theoretical,” in reality “[l]aw school should be viewed as the beginning of your legal career.”
Innovation and New Models
The Legal Intelligencer
The legal profession in the United Kingdom is experiencing significant changes, forcing some law firms to retool their business models and experiment with new structures. Moreover, in the new economy “[f]irms should think of themselves as the managers of solutions and recognize they will do some of the work and send some out to other providers.” UK firms have been among the first to routinely send select client work to smaller firms or offshore to reduce fees. And UK firms also pioneered “professional support lawyers”—constituting a separate tier of non-partner track lawyers within a law firm—who specialize in supporting particular practice groups or performing routine functions.
ABA Journal
Paul Lippe, the CEO of Legal OnRamp, discusses the impact of Twitter and similar technologies on the legal profession. He predicts that “most lawyers will do Twitter-like communicating in more closed systems” because the “‘micro-blogging’ and following aspects of Twitter allow a distributed network of a legal department and their outside counsel to stay in touch and, if they wish, limit access to a control group to manage confidentiality and privilege.” Lippe concludes that “Twitter is for real and will undoubtedly evolve in interesting and important ways, as have all previous forms of communication from stone tablets to e-mail.”
NBC Connecticut
A law firm in Connecticut is the first in the country—and possibly the world—to operate a “drive-thru” law firm. The Kocian Law Group, which specializes in personal injury and malpractice, converted a local Kenny Rogers Roasters fast food restaurant into a fully functioning law practice, including a drive-thru window designed to make non-consultative visits more convenient for clients.
Business Wire – LexisNexis
A survey of 600 legal professionals in five countries – the U.S., China, South Africa, the U.K. and Australia – found that “information overload” is reducing productivity, work quality and morale. Nearly half of the legal professionals surveyed stated that “information overload” will reach a “breaking point” if the flow of information continues to increase. Professionals spend half of their work day receiving and managing information, and up to half of the information they receive is not important for their job duties.
Professional Development
National Law Journal
A new survey by the National Association of Law Placement reveals that over half of law firm professional development and recruiting departments experienced staff cuts in the last two years. More than a quarter of departments lost more than two people; firms with 250 or more attorneys suffered the largest reductions. According to consultant James Wilber, “I’d say that law firms probably have cut back more than they will think they should have in five years, but hindsight is 20/20.”
Slate and National Jurist
As the economy declined, many students were encouraged to pursue a career in law—a traditionally stable career choice even in tough markets. But the demand for lawyers has plummeted. Law is no longer the safe haven from economic storms that it may have once been. Slate details these recent trends, noting that “the job market for lawyers is terrible, full stop—and that hits young lawyers, without professional track records and in need of training, worst.” Writing for The National Jurist, Professor Bill Henderson also examines the legal market’s impact, specifically on potential law firm associates. Henderson argues that the “traditional credential-based model” of hiring based on “pedigree and grades” is being dismantled because clients are “no longer willing to absorb the cost of bad hiring decisions.”
Law Firms and Practice Management
American Lawyer
Based on lessons learned as a risk manager with professional insurers, lawyer Anthony Kearns compares high-pressure decision making situations in aviation, medicine and law. While commercial pilots and surgeons have well-established processes for analyzing decisions, partners lack similar tools aimed at “improving the quality of future outcomes through organizational learning.” Kearns argues that senior legal professionals often see themselves as immune from error and would benefit from an “immediate and predictable response” with high-quality feedback when mistakes occur.
ABA Journal
Industry changes are now affecting mid-sized firms with 100 to 300 lawyers. These firms have traditionally enjoyed independence from and pricing advantages over larger firms. But many larger firms have responded to the market by lowering overhead and improving efficiency and project management skills. As a result, mid-size firms now find themselves in direct competition with these larger firms, and it may be time for the mid-size firms to change, including providing specialty services and/or more routine commercial services at a lower cost.
New York Times
The New York Times and Richard E. Susskind of London’s Gresham College advise how purchasers of legal services can save money for routine and unexpected legal costs. Examples include hiring specialists to save time and money; retaining small-firm or small-town lawyers who possess valuable experience but cost less than their Biglaw counterparts; negotiating flat fees or spending caps; and identifying in advance which tasks can be completed by a paralegal or even the consumer him or herself.
Science Daily
According to a study in Social Psychological and Personality Science, law firms are more profitable when led by managing partners with powerful faces. Researchers from the University of Toronto and Tufts University showed people photos of managing partners and asked them to rate the faces for dominance, maturity, attractiveness, likeability and trustworthiness. According to Science Daily, “[r]atings of dominance and facial maturity together formed a measure of power, and this facial power measure was a strong predictor of law firm profitability,” while “human warmth in the face—likeability and trustworthiness—was uncorrelated with law firm profits.”
American Lawyer
Midlevel associates’ overall satisfaction is at its lowest level in six years, according to the 2010 Am Law Survey. While these associates have survived the economic recession and job cuts, they have become disappointed with pay reductions, heavier workloads and less staffing, among a host other factors.
Globalization
National Law Journal
At a global conference co-sponsored by Harvard's Program on the Legal Profession, legal educators from China, India and Japan discussed the challenges of producing effective lawyers. The number of law schools (and law students) is rapidly increasing in China, for example, but there has been limited emphasis on job skills training. India also faces challenges with a large and growing number of law schools, many of which are experiencing major reform and all of which vary significantly in quality. Japan, on the other hand, is confronting a shortage of attorneys and is reforming legal education while trying to bridge the gap between practice and theory.
National Law Journal and American Lawyer
According to the National Law Journal, the ABA is using President Obama’s visit to India “to push for lawyer reciprocity with that country.” But the American Lawyer reports that the Obama Administration took the issue off the official agenda, with one observer noting that “opening up India’s legal market to foreign firms was a relatively low priority and ha[s] been sidelined in favor of discussions on job creation and democracy.”
Brooklyn Eagle
Chief Judges of the New York State Court and the Supreme Court of New South Wales (NSW) signed an agreement to exchange judicial expertise in matters impacting both jurisdictions. For example, if a case before the Supreme Court of NSW involves New York law, judges from New York may assist their Australian counterparts in interpreting that law in the Australian context.
Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Legal experts are considering an international court to handle complex financial products, particularly "over-the-counter" (OTC) derivatives. The value of outstanding worldwide OTC contracts last year exceeded $615 trillion, and the proposed tribunal would improve stability in the OTC derivatives markets. The court would be comprised of legal specialists and would consider disputes between private parties, whether cross border or within a single country.
American Lawyer
In the last two years a large number of American law firms have opened offices in São Paulo, Brazil, in order to pursue cross-border deals and benefit from Brazil’s growing market opportunities. These firms have chosen different strategic paths: some have friendly ties with large local firms, others have entered into formal alliances with smaller law firms. Yet despite promising business prospects, foreign firms struggle with significant bureaucratic and regulatory challenges.
East African Business Week
Following the ratification of the Common Market in East Africa (enabling businesses and people to move freely within the region), law firms from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda have formed a legal alliance to provide coordinated legal services in the region.
Corporate Counsel
Legal Week
The British law firm Eversheds recently launched “Eversheds Consulting,” which advises general counsels with respect to managing legal services such as procurement, compliance, processes and record management. Eversheds hopes to compete in the legal sector against consultancies such as McKinsey & Company and Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and has targeted the United States as a key market for the new venture. According to Legal Week, this “unusual initiative is a rare case of a major law firm switching from poacher to gamekeeper to directly advise in-house teams on legal services procurement and commercial matters.”
Corporate Counsel
Corporate expenditures for outside counsel in the United States decreased by 1 percent from 2008 and 2009, according to a survey by Hildebrandt Baker Robbins. At the same time, the size of in-house departments grew and spending on in-house legal staff increased by 2 percent worldwide. Hildebrandt believes that the reduced spending on outside cousel resulted primarily from aggressive initiatives to create more favorable billing arrangements, rather than falling revenue. In the nine years preceding the survey, companies increased spending on outside counsel by an average of 7 percent per year.
Diversity
Wall Street Journal
Addressing two firms appearing in his courtroom, Federal Judge Harold Baer strongly encouraged the firms to “diversify their ranks,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Judge Baer later explained that the two firms “are behind where they should be” and he declared that firms should strive for diverse staffing “in similar cases that come before me.”
National Law Journal
While the number of men and women serving in law review leadership positions is roughly equal, women account for only 33% of law review editors-in-chief, according to a new survey conducted by Ms. JD, a non-profit organization that seeks to advance women in the legal profession. Jessie Kornberg, Executive Director of Ms. JD, concludes that "[t]here is obviously some lingering glass ceiling when it comes to the highly coveted editor-in-chief position.”
Public Interest
National Jurist
Quoting various practitioners, the National Jurist reports that the struggling economy “has had a huge impact on public interest law” and “legal aid budgets have been cut, just as the need for legal aid is increasing.” Many legal aid organizations have reduced staff, causing increased workloads for remaining employees. Some help may be on the horizon, however, as the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee recently approved $430 million in Fiscal Year 2011 funding for the Legal Services Corporation, a major federal funder for legal aid organizations.
New York Times
Eager to win the prestige associated with arguing before the Supreme Court, high-priced lawyers (with great resources but limited Supreme Court experience) often offer their assistance for free. According to the New York Times, however, this help can actually impose costs upon the clients and causes the attorneys offer to represent. This representation can also adversely impact public interest lawyers, criminal defense attorneys and appellate specialists. “There’s one and only one reason they’re interested,” according criminal defense attorney Barry A. Schwartz. “It’s not because they love your client or believe in the legal principle your case presents. They want to get the case into the Supreme Court.”
Attorney Regulation and Ethics
Harvard Business Review
PLP Distinguished Senior Fellow Ben W. Heineman, Jr., engages the debate whether business management is—or should be—a profession like law or medicine with objectives to promote responsible conduct and trustworthy leadership.
