On the other hand if the traditional professional qualities of integrity, judgment, confidentiality, professionalism and ethics are not factored into a lawyer’s value the job can be done by anybody (for example a paralegal) who masters the mechanics of organizing data and disseminating information. A lawyer’s true value to his/her client is the ability to connect with the client’s needs and guide them through a maze of complexity that they could not otherwise do, or have no interest in doing for themselves. A true lawyer is a confidante. In this situation of trust, most clients are happy to pay a lawyers negotiated rate.

The issue of value billing has become complicated because most professionals have high overheads (insurance, rent, continuing education, training, professional fees etc.) that paralegals do not. As a consequence a conflict of interest sometimes develops between the attorney and client because the lawyer is forced to see his profession as a business and try to pass costs on to the customer. Additionally, the widespread availability of non-proprietary information digitally, coupled with a potentially qualified global workforce means that the argument about legal complexity has lost some luster as we move into an age of transparency.

Further, clients are sometimes unwilling to absorb legal overhead in their billing structures if a paralegal can simulate the function for much less. Some clients have not been educated to buy into the high value of attorney confidence, privacy, or security in a transaction. Their view is, why pay more for the brand if you can buy a non-branded product (paralegal) for less.

The solution to this dilemma lies in a basic tenet of business. As attorneys we need to re-cultivate, re-brand and re-educate clients on the value of our services. We also need to truly serve our clients needs (by this I do not mean serve the client representative who cuts the check to pay us. He or she is often different from the client). More importantly we need to ensure that we condition the client’s reasonable expectation of our services while over-delivering on quality and job satisfaction.

There is a famous saying that “some people “know the cost of everything but the value of nothing.” If clients and or attorneys only emphasize money, cost and billing while losing focus on professionalism and “value”, or service driven relationships, then the lawyer client relationship disintegrates. Then, it will only be a matter of time before our entire legal system disintegrates into stress and valueless billing! Shakespeare said it best, if the objective is mayhem, then “Kill all the lawyers.” Most people do not recognize that there was a caution and consequence in the quotation. As lawyers we need to re-establish the bar (pun intended).

On the other hand as lawyers we should realize that our profession is not held in the esteem that we would like it and we are responsible for correcting this.

At the most fundamental level, the whole model of a modern law firm has evolved over the past few decades to align very precisely with the notion of very intelligent, highly independent professionals crafting bespoke solutions for clients and being compensated on an effort-basis. Changing it is not a trivial matter. Over the years, this has also been an extremely successful model. It is facile to argue (a finger pointed not at you but at others) that law firms are simply recalcitrant in not accepting change more readily. The magnitude of the change that is looming in this instance may be akin to what happened in the auto industry when Henry Ford introduced the Model T and assembly lines, driving manufacturers that were building automobiles by hand into bankruptcy or seeing them assimilated into other manufacturers that also adopted the new practices. It also easier for us to see the looming icebergs from our perspective at the masthead because we, as strategy consultants, pay so much attention to these issues, than it is from the perspective of our law firm clients whose lawyers toil in the innards of their ships, shoveling coal and serving passengers.

This is precisely the dilemma that Clayton Christensen describes in “The Innovators Dilemma,” that emerges in the face of a disruptive innovation (and I have no doubt that what we are experiencing right now fits the description.) If Christensen is right, the solutions will come not from the established leader-firms but from the small splinters and start-ups that are not trammeled by established convention and who can move nimbly and change radically with greater ease. Those solutions, once proven, may well be replicated by the more forward thinking established firms. Those that do not follow suit will decline and be absorbed by the new leaders, or eventually go out of business.

Over the next 3 – 10 years, I expect the landscape of the Amlaw 100 to evolve quite radically as these and other ‘icebergs’ wreak their havoc on those that will not / can not / do not change their course.