How to Thrive in the Diminishing World of the Legal Business

Opportunity is the word the keeps popping into my head as I read more and more discouraging pieces about the state of the legal field. (Some samples: Tom Huddleston Jr., Survey: Firm Leaders Admit Downturn’sPermanent Impact, AmLaw Daily, May 21, 2013 and Thomas S. Clay, 2013 LawFirms in Transition: An Altman Weil Flash Survey (2013).) Big clients don’t want to keep paying big dollars to big firms during a big recession/apocalypse/long-term decline. That makes sense. 

Some big firms can’t/won’t make the changes they need to remain competitive. That also makes sense. Try getting a speedy and good decision out of any large organization. It’s hard. No one wants to earn less than they previously did, or have fewer perqs, or diminish in stature. No one wants to make the unpopular decision, or be the ultimate fall-guy for a bad business choice. Cover-your-ass seems to be the modus operandi of far too many.

If big firms won’t make that change, someone else will. The solution seems quite simple: cut back and offer value. Clients aren’t buying the tasteful if bland art, the hushed hallways and soothingly lit corridors, the top-tier real estate and high-floor views. Big firms can rationalize these all they want. They can desperately cling to their turf even as it washes away beneath them. Charge clients less, pay lawyers and everyone else less, work fewer hours, and have a good life. How hard is this, really, to figure out?

—Lori Tripoli

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

How to Survive a Depression, a Recession, and a Free-Fall Plummet

There’s no real way to sugarcoat recent reports about the state of the legal industry. Law school applications are down, lawyers have been laid off, profits at some firms have diminished.

The thing is, I remember when reports like this were about M.B.A. students and teachers. There were once too many of those.

Every business is being impacted by globalization, the recession, and technology. Some old models will fail. Some new ones will become vast successes. Sure, someone whose lifelong dream has been to work in the legal field, whether to be a lawyer or a paralegal, could go to art school instead. Or she could get an agriculture farming certificate, or figure out what engineering degrees are all about and get one of those. But a dream’s a dream. If the legal business is featured in yours, make it work for you. And don’t forget to hussle.

On the bright side:

• If you’re a middling student, you just may well have a better shot at a better law school right now.
• The retrenchment that’s going on may well mean the end of ever-escalating associates’ salaries—and the 80-plus hour weeks those lawyers work to earn them. Make less; live more.

Ten years from now, we’ll all have adapted. Industry changes are never easy, especially if some measure of shrinkage is involved. The law’s not going away; crime hasn’t ended; civil disputes certainly still exist. Someone is always going to need a good lawyer, and a good lawyer is always going to need an even better paralegal. What that lawyer and paralegal do to get more business and remain competitive, though, is probably going to change. But shouldn’t it change anyway? At least no one can accuse the law biz of being stagnant.

—Lori Tripoli