Category Archives: Competition

The year of living dangerously

So there goes 2011, and from a legal marketplace perspective, you could probably call it the year of hanging on. Large law firms hung on in the face of flat-lined or diminishing revenues, in no small part through the wonders of de-equitization. Small law firms hung on despite an expanding sea of legal service providers [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Globalization, Innovation | 5 Comments

Law schools and the law of supply and demand

If law schools were publicly traded companies and you held some in your portfolio, I would be strongly advising you to sell. Fast. Here’s a quick review of some recent news concerning the US legal education industry and the legal profession it is purportedly preparing its graduates to enter. As reported by the Wall Street [...]
Also posted in Law School | 6 Comments

Not wanted on the voyage

From the incumbent’s point of view, the only thing worse than a revolution that topples you is one that renders you irrelevant. You can mount a comeback from exile; you can’t mount a comeback from Nobody Cares. Law firms, pay close attention. We’re now less than six months away from the implementation of the Alternative [...]
Also posted in Big Firms | 4 Comments

Lawyers and the red balloon

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 [...]
Also posted in Access, Innovation | 5 Comments

The new battlefield: convenience

Whatever happened to Napster? Depending on your age, you might remember it either as a piracy-enabling nuisance, a groundbreaking music-swapping service, or the dusty antecedent of iTunes. Time magazine caught up with Napster’s founder, Shawn Fanning, and three other pioneering hackers in a recent article that describes them as “The Men Who Changed The World.” [...]
Also posted in Clients, Innovation | 4 Comments

The law firm of the future: Thomson Reuters

Earlier this month, I wrote a blog post called “Destroying your own business” that explained why law firms, in order to adapt to the emerging marketplace, needed to blow up their own business models and essentially start over. I also lamented the fact that hardly any law firm was willing or able to do this. [...]
Also posted in Innovation, Publishing | 13 Comments

Destroying your own business

Well before Blockbuster Video actually filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this fall, The Onion produced a prescient video about a museum tour based on the movie rental chain: Historic ‘Blockbuster’ Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past. One dazzled visitor remarks: “It’s like stepping into a time machine … it’s hard [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Innovation | 4 Comments

Will-writing and the redefinition of “legal services”

Last month, a BBC investigative program called Panorama exposed a wide range of illegal and unethical practices by “will-writers,” advisors who help people prepare wills and who are not lawyers. One result of that broadcast could be a significant clawback of lawyer regulatory power over the legal services marketplace in the UK, with implications for [...]
Also posted in Clients, Governance, Outsourcing | 3 Comments

Law firms and the JetBlue guy

Even if former JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater didn’t plan his famous chute-deploying resignation in advance, he seems ready and willing to exploit the moment, perhaps to land a reality-TV hosting gig. If it does turn out that his Big Quit was staged (like that of Elyse Porterfield, the “Dry-Erase Girl” whose hoax didn’t even [...]
Also posted in New Lawyers, Talent | 4 Comments

How to kill a law firm

There’s a story told about Jack Welch, former GE president — it might be from one of his books, or it might be apocryphal; quite possibly it’s both. The story goes that soon after he took over the company, he called in his vice-presidents and other senior people and advised them that countless smaller companies [...]
Also posted in Innovation | 13 Comments

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