The Changing Fortunes of 2016

  Photo credit: L. Tripoli

Can the Legal Industry Sustain Itself?

The New Year’s news of layoffs at BigLaw’s Reed Smith and the reminder that firms are quietly relying more on contract associates rather than on partnership-track ones show that the legal business is far from staid and is ripe for continued shake-up. So much of what’s happening on the BigLaw scene reminds me of my days as a political science student during the end of the Cold-War era when so many of my professors would say that they didn’t see how the Soviet Union could possibly sustain itself. Ultimately, it couldn’t. I see BigLaw being in the same sort of transformative moment no matter how much industry leaders may want to avoid it.

Industry followers foresee continuing shifts for the coming year, as the LexisNexis Business of Law Blog posted. Check out my forecast in Beautiful Minds: 41 Legal Industry Predictions for 2016.

—Lori Tripoli

Interested in the trajectory of the legal business? You might like these posts: 

• What the Future Holds for the Legal Business
• The Takeaway from the Dewey Mistrial
• What’s Sexy in the Legal Biz? 
• Make the Most of Market Unrest
• The High Price of Keeping Up Appearances
• Should Law Firms Proactively Cut their Fees?

 

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

The Versatility of a J.D.

I was heartened to see that the cover subject of the most recent edition of my law school’s alumni magazine is someone who pursued an alternative path. Savannah Guthrie, Georgetown University Law Center class of 2002, opted out of law review and big-firm life to pursue her broadcasting career. Now the co-anchor of the Today show, she still remembers her gig answering phones in the dean’s office while she was in school.

At a moment when law schools are under fire for, possibly, fudging the post-employment statistics of their graduates, and in an era when big law is facing some big struggles, remembering the versatility of a law degree seems especially opportune. Not everyone has to march from associate to partner or counsel. Nontraditional paths abound.

Some lawyers ditched their day jobs back when the economy was good to become investors and financial advisors on their own; they realized they could make a lot more money if they were doing more than the paperwork on any transaction. The analytical and decision-making skills learned during law school certainly bode well for leaders in the business world. Any number of legal marketing folks, both in-house and out-, have J.D.s in their pockets.

In D.C., the federal government beckons; plenty of policy makers don’t practice law but are admitted to the bar. Publishing, P.R., small business—any arena where the ability to research, reason, and think are especially useful—all provide viable avenues for a lawyer longing to leave the legal biz. The only time my J.D. held me back was when I was trying to break into publishing. Having moved from D.C. to New York, I was told by one interviewer that he worried about giving me a job for fear that I would stay just long enough to pass the bar in a new state. I’d been surprised at the time; back in Washington, plenty of people at the federal agency at which I had worked had law degrees and no intention of practicing. I persisted and became a writer and editor and have never begrudged my legal education. Habits I picked up during my own years at the Georgetown University Law Center, my reading and research skills, my tenacity, have only helped me over the years. J.D.s can help any number of people in any number of fields nowadays, too.

—Lori Tripoli