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Is Steve Jobs Really the Legal Industry’s Super Hero?

Attending a continuing legal education conference on the legal business last week, I was surprised by how many panelists and audience members were citing Steve Jobs reverentially. The co-founder of Apple (and a nonlawyer) famously said that “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” See Chunka Mui, Five Dangerous Lessons to Learn From Steve Jobs, Forbes.com (Oct. 17, 2011), http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2011/10/17/five-dangerous-lessons-to-learn-from-steve-jobs/. Apparently, a number of lawyers are enamored with the notion that sellers have to figure out a way to sell legal services to clients who don’t even know that they need them. But are iPads and product liability defense work really comparable? Or iPhones and bankruptcy filings?

As heartened as I was to see major law firms embracing business practices, I thought the mention of Jobs in this context demonstrated some callousness toward legal clients. I wish I’d heard more discussion of the other side of Jobs, the brilliant thinker, the rejecting market-research Jobs, the one who managed to come up with incredible products that many of us couldn’t possibly imagine that we would someday need. And yet, today, we have them.

At the legal business conference I attended, though, I sensed more desperation: that in a challenging time for major firms, some lawyers are scrambling to sell you everything, anything, the coffee pot in the conference room if need be, as a means simply to stay viable. I’d be more than wary if I were a major corporate client of what my lawyers were now trying to push. Sadly, I didn’t hear much talk of innovation or of developing an incredible product or service that would change the legal world and the way that clients consume legal services. Perhaps the big-law representatives attending the conference have selected the right train, but they just might be on the wrong track.

­—Lori Tripoli