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?

 

Are You Embarrassed by Your Firm’s Inversions?

As much as I might find corporate inversions (in which companies reincorporate in countries with preferable tax laws) unfortunate, I don’t have any problem with any law firm assisting companies looking to do this. If the practice is legal and a client seeks it, why shouldn’t a lawyer assist?  Some lawyers, apparently, prefer not to. See, e.g., Susan Beck, Top Tax Lawyers Mum on Inversion Debate, Law.com, Aug. 12, 2014. If lawyers or others find corporate inversions so deplorable, then they can try to have the law changed. 

There’s a lot that major law firms might be embarrassed about (starting with that whole gender inequity thing), but doing corporate inversions isn’t one of them.

—Lori Tripoli