Here and elsewhere

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Posted in: Law21

It’s time for my semi-regular roundup of articles and items that I’ve written for other websites and publications recently. I hope you enjoy the following entries as much as I enjoyed writing them.

1. Contributing to Stem Legal’s Law Firm Web Strategy blog, as a senior consultant to Stem, is a welcome opportunity for me to sound off on law firm communication, publishing and social media topics. I’ve been especially busy at LFWS over the last couple of months:

2. I penned two more columns for The Lawyers Weekly.

3. I was honoured to be among the first contributors to a great new site called Attorney At Work (“One really good idea every day”), where I also serve as an advisor. If you haven’t yet subscribed to the Daily Dispatch of short but insightful recommendations, you really should.

  • My first entry talked about lessons for lawyers from Sean Connery and The Untouchables: “What are you prepared to do?”
  • My  second contribution borrowed its title shamelessly from Lao Tzu for thoughts on teamwork: “The art of we.”

4. I wrote a guest column for Canada’s Precedent magazine, which focuses on the lives and careers of young lawyers in big law firms, that talked about merit-based compensation for associates with the admittedly provocative title: “Seniority pay must die.”

5. The good people at JD Supra invited me to join a stellar group of contributors and write about what surprised us in 2010 and what 2011 likely will bring. Here’s what I submitted.

6. Finally, no list of my written contributions would be complete without my column at Slaw. My most recent edition talked about the fundamental irreplaceability of trust in a successful client relationship: “Your client is not your enemy.”

Finally, I was honoured to receive the Sherry Fowler Best Writing on a Blawg Award for my work here at Law21 from Dennis Kennedy in the 2010 edition of his coveted Blawggie Awards. My sincere thanks to Dennis, to all the hosts who invited me to contribute to their excellent publications, and to all of you for continuing to tune in here and elsewhere.

The future of lawyer associations

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Posted in: Governance, Innovation

Thomas Wolfe says you can’t go home again; nevertheless, I’m returning to my alma mater Queen’s Law School tomorrow to give a presentation on the future of the legal marketplace. While preparing slides for my section on networking, I noticed that examples of old-line bar associations (the volunteer kind, not mandatory or regulatory bodies like law societies or state bars) were becoming outnumbered by examples of new networks, everything from Facebook, Twitter and Quora to LinkedIn, Legal OnRamp and Solo Practice University. And that got me thinking about the future of lawyer associations.

This is a topic, I must tell you, into which I tread with caution. After all, I spent ten years drawing a paycheque from a bar association, and I continue to speak to and advise legal associations among my current consulting engagements. But I think it’s time to take a hard look at what lawyer associations, some of which trace their origins back to the 19th century, are and aren’t capable of selling to a 21st-century marketplace.

Lawyer associations of all kinds coalesced around a basic truth: there’s strength in numbers. Joining a group of professionals with similar practices, interests and affinities provides a practitioner with the comforts of collegiality, the advantages of an amplified voice, and the possibility of personal gain (referrals, learnings, and so forth).

But maybe more importantly, lawyer associations provide the benefit that every kind of club bestows: self-affirmation. Almost every member of a lawyer organization is proud to be a lawyer and enjoys the elite and rarefied atmosphere of other lawyers who feel the same. Lawyer associations, in this sense, are aspirational: membership is often an endorsement less of the specific association’s virtues or policies or activities, than of the idea that lawyers are special and have special roles in (and responsibilities to) society. Lawyers like that notion, and they like the company of others who share it. That fact has to underlie a lawyer association’s purpose and functions.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of lawyer associations have lost sight of that. Most lawyer groups these days are preoccupied (reasonably enough) with value: are we providing sufficient return on lawyers’ investment of membership fees and volunteer time? It’s the right idea, but I think many associations take it in the wrong direction, by focusing too much on tangible rather than intangible benefits.

Lawyer associations spend a lot of money providing business-improvement resources (checklists, practice pointers, forms and templates), publishing practice management materials (newsletters, magazines, handbooks, etc.), carrying out CLEs (both the in-person and online variety) and obtaining member discounts. These activities are sensible, legitimate and valuable — I’m a former association magazine editor, after all. But the thing is, many other people are offering them too. There’s not much unique about a CLE or a handbook or a discount provided by a lawyer association — it’s rarely a positive differentiator from the rest of the market. Lawyer associations that over-emphasize these services have to answer the question: what do you provide that I can’t also get from the market at large, on an à la carte basis, for less than my annual membership fee?

Many lawyer associations recognize this risk and undertake less tangible activities too, chief among them advocacy on lawyers’ behalf (or, put less delicately, lobbying governments as a special interest). Certainly, no one else will advance lawyers’ claims, given the perception that such interests are not always, shall we say, fully aligned with the greatest public good. But lawyers have as legitimate a claim to advocacy as any other constituency, and lawyer associations can and should uniquely fulfill this role. The problem, though, is that lobbying is not exactly what you call aspirational: necessary as it may be, it’s not a parlour game and it can be an unpleasant experience for all concerned. A lot of lawyers hope for something more from their association than simply aggressive self-interest.

Maybe the answer is public-interest advocacy? Many lawyers are motivated by the belief that laws should be fair and justice should be accessible, so a lawyer organization that publicly urges progress on these fronts will attract aspirational lawyers without repelling the average citizen. That makes a lot of sense and again, is a worthy undertaking for a lawyer association. But there are problems here as well. Public-interest advocacy is a difficult and thankless task that produces relatively few wins against a series of draws or losses; “social justice” issues adopted by an association can be internally divisive and even incendiary; and most pointedly, lawyers do tend to ask, after a while, what benefit they personally get from their association fighting the good fight.

Again — all of these activities have merit, to one degree or another, and lawyer associations legitimately can pursue any of them. The challenge is that, especially in a recessionary period and in the face of unprecedented private-sector competition, they can’t pursue all of them. Associations have to choose strategically — and more importantly, they have to decide what their foundation is. What’s that one thing, that single unique and effective purpose, that associations primarily serve and upon which they are built? It’s not annual meetings, which have dwindled in attendance and importance as physical distances have become less of an obstacle to networking. It’s not improving the image of lawyers, investing thousands of dollars in fruitless efforts to make lawyers more appreciated and valued by a public that is quite happy to stereotype and scapegoat us. So what’s left?

My own suggestion is this: lawyer associations should transform themselves into lawyers’ marketplace evangelists. They should adopt as their mission a sustained campaign to trumpet the unique advantages of choosing lawyers over the many other options spreading throughout the legal services market. Our de facto monopoly on legal services is already disappearing, and our regulatory advantages likely will follow shortly. Lawyers need to differentiate themselves from the people, processes and programs that are coming into the marketplace and drawing clients away; but no lawyer or firm is going to launch an expensive and complex campaign that will benefit competitors as well as colleagues. Lawyer associations can. And they can do so by emphasizing lawyers’ training, professionalism, ethical standards and other outstanding characteristics with which lawyers are proud to be associated.

That’s what associations can do externally. Internally, I think they need to focus on collegiality and collaboration. As society becomes more virtual, face time becomes far more valuable. But lawyer gatherings of all kinds still over-emphasize the role of educational sessions and business meetings — events that lawyers can attend from their desks or on their smartphones — while relegating socializing and networking opportunities to short coffee breaks or abridged cocktail parties at the end of the day. Associations should reverse this: host gatherings to network and socialize first, and to learn or conduct business formally as a sidebar. Look for ways to encourage face time and personal interaction among lawyers — hold un-conferences, sponsor speed-roundtables, form micro-panel discussions for small, specialized groups, and so forth.

Law firms are difficult organizations in which to effect change, and law schools even more so. But the challenge of transforming lawyer associations might be the greatest of all, because institutional memory and habits are powerful and deeply ingrained and decision-making ability is often widely diffused. But the need is real, the challenges are building, and the clock is ticking. One way or another, voluntarily or otherwise, change is coming to the lawyer association sector, too.

Jordan Furlong speaks to law firms and legal organizations throughout North America on how to survive and profit from the extraordinary changes underway in the legal services marketplace. He is a partner with Edge International and a senior consultant with Stem Legal Web Enterprises.

Lawyers and the red balloon

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Posted in: Access, Competition, Innovation

Like many parents of small children, I’ve gotten to know Thomas The Tank Engine, and the peculiar universe he inhabits, far too well. As an example, I’ve now read the story James and the Red Balloon so often that I’ve begun to draw lessons for the legal profession from it.

To summarize: among the trains that work the Sodor Island Railway is James, a generally decent but often fussy and sometimes belligerent engine. On this occasion, James is unhappy to learn that a new mode of transportation has come to the island: a big red hot-air balloon. While the other engines admire the new arrival, James is peeved. “Taking vacationers around the island is our job,” he complains. “What if the balloon takes our passengers away? What will happen to us then?” By the end of the (admittedly brief) story, James has brought his grievances to rotund railway boss Sir Topham Hatt:

“But now the passengers will ride in the hot-air balloon.”

Sir Topham Hatt laughed.

“You’re right, James,” he said. “But they will need a ride home — in a train!”

James was delighted.

Sir Topham Hatt was right. The engines were busier than ever taking vacationers to and from the airfield.

On Sodor, as the Thomas stories bear out, change is rarely welcomed — but once everyone understands the situation better, change is accommodated and in the end, usually turns out to provide a net benefit. This is a message aimed at children but that resonates in the grown-up world, where we all tend to resist change despite the fact that eventually, it usually makes things better for everyone.

Few grown-ups resist change as staunchly and successfully as lawyers, of course — we’ve always shot down red balloons as soon as they appear in our sky. That doesn’t just apply to new technology, where we were among the last professionals to adopt email and where many of us still insist that Facebook is just a fad about which 500 million people are sadly misguided. And it doesn’t just apply to new ways of doing business, where we still reflexively feel that selling our work in tenths of an hour is natural and sensible or that 1,000 lawyers in 20 law offices worldwide can call themselves “partners” with a straight face. It applies above all to our approach to the legal marketplace over which we maintain, in most jurisdictions, strict regulatory control.

Lawyers, as a matter of course, restrict the supply of legal services and enforce Unauthorized Practice of Law provisions. We rail against title insurers and do-it-yourself will kits and independent paralegals and downloadable contracts and legal process outsourcers and a host of other low-cost competitors. We say (and we often believe) that we do this to protect the interests of clients and the public — but outside the soundproof walls of the profession, we come across more as protectionists than as guardians with a selfless concern for the greater good. We come across as hostile to change simply because it’s different and threatening.

My point is not that all these new providers and approaches are inherently trustworthy and high-quality. My point is that we won’t so much as let them make their case — even if, over time, they could introduce changes and innovations that make the pie bigger and better for everyone. Take, for example, LegalZoom. Richard Granat at the E-lawyering Blog gives us one of the most arresting titles in recent law blog history: Will LegalZoom become the largest law firm in the U.S.?

LegalZoom has been beta-testing a concept which links its marketing capabilities to a network of law firms that offer legal services under the LegalZoom brand. With some state bar associations accusing LegalZoom of  the unauthorized practice of law, it might make sense for the company to seek deeper alliances with networks of attorneys who are able to offer a full and ethically compliant legal service. Solos and small law firms, leveraging off the visibility and prominence of the LegalZoom brand, could reduce their marketing costs and enable these firms to better capture consumers who are part of the “latent legal market”  on the Internet.

Richard goes on to list the challenges that this concept likely would encounter, and suggests a “safe harbour” provision that would allow experiments like this to operate on a pilot basis in a specific jurisdiction to test their application. Another approach might be to simply launch the service, await the inevitable regulatory challenge, and let the courts decide whether the legal profession’s anti-competitive rules really serve the public interest. But for me, the lesson here is that LegalZoom, a company regarded with contempt by many lawyers, could end up using its considerable brand power to work with law firms, reduce their marketing expenditure and increase their business (not to mention, as Scott Greenfield points out, doing something to improve access to justice). That looks to me an awful lot like a red balloon bringing more passengers to the railway.

Smart companies in mature industries encourage red balloons (new competition and innovative technology) because they see them as a way to enlarge the market, reach more customers and increase everyone’s bottom line. The people at Amazon could foresee the day when Kindle users began swapping their books much like music listeners once traded tracks on Napster. Rather than fighting the trend, they’re now leading it by allowing users to “lend” an e-book to a friend for two weeks. Isn’t Amazon cutting its own throat by encouraging people to read books without buying them? On the contrary, says the founder of a Facebook lending book club: it will increase sales because people will want to own the book they borrowed (e-books can only be loaned once, ever) or weren’t able to finish in the two weeks. Libraries didn’t exactly kill the publishing industry when they first opened up, either.

It’s a pretty sad comment on the legal profession to say that publishing has become a more mature and forward-thinking industry than law, but that’s where we appear to be. If we want to change that state of affairs — if we want to grow up as a market and as a profession — then we need to stop thinking like a selfish train in a children’s story, viewing new arrivals as a threat to our narrow, entrenched interests. We need to find ways to welcome and accommodate the red balloons that are now floating, in growing numbers, into the sky above our heads. Chances are, at least some of them will end up bringing more passengers our way than we think.

Jordan Furlong speaks to law firms and legal organizations throughout North America on how to survive and profit from the extraordinary changes underway in the legal services marketplace. He is a partner with Edge International and a senior consultant with Stem Legal Web Enterprises.