Law21 Twitter Updates- This article on national law firm regulation was password-protected the other day; here's an accessible version: http://bit.ly/9fBDje
- More law schools should follow Northwestern's lead, swap tradition for rationality: http://bit.ly/9DQScz
- @peterfrankl All the more reason why firms shouldn't charge by the pilot, but by the successful flight. :-) #fixedfees
- Thx to @jasnwilsn @stevematthews @glambert @advocatesstudio for great comments on my case law update piece: http://bit.ly/cDJ00L
Category Archives: Competition
Going to town
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the numerous factors leading to the continuing contraction of the legal profession in smaller urban centers and in rural outposts. Here’s another one: competition for legal talent. Large-center practice is operating at unprecedented levels of profitability these days; even if small-center practices were still reasonably feasible, large-center [...]
Also posted in Careers, Generations, Small Centers Leave a comment
Law practice in the 21st century
This article was first posted at Slaw on September 29th, 2006.
Earlier this month, I visited San Francisco for the first time. I’d long been fascinated by the thought of a city built on a geological time bomb, and walking its streets was quite an experience.
Everyone knows there’ll be a massive seismic rupture underneath the city [...]
Also posted in Generations, Globalization, Small Centers Leave a comment
21st-century legal innovation
This article was first posted at Slaw on September 25, 2006.
I had the great fortune to attend the annual meeting of the College of Law Practice Management in San Francisco earlier this month. The topic of the day was at the heart of 21st-century lawyering: innovation. Specifically, why lawyers aren’t very good at it.
One of [...]
Also posted in Clients, Innovation Leave a comment
Rage against the machine
You’re surely familiar with those lists of famously bad technology predictions that make the rounds by e-mail every so often. One of the most commonly cited is Digital Equipment Chairman Ken Olsen’s 1977 observation: “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
Amusing, sure, but rarely quoted in the proper context. Olsen [...]
Also posted in Technology Leave a comment
A to Z: 26 trends for the legal profession
This article was co-authored with Mélanie Raymond, then-Senior Editor of National, and appeared as the cover story in the April/May 2006 edition of the magazine.
The legal profession is turning upside down, and many of the familiar landmarks are disappearing or bring replaced by brand-new structures. There are so many changes afoot that National’s editorial team [...]
Also posted in Billing, Clients, Generations, Globalization, Innovation, Law School, Leadership, New Lawyers, Satisfaction, Technology Leave a comment
We mean business
I’ve been in legal journalism for more than ten years now, so I’ve heard pretty much all the clichés about the law (I’m guilty of having used more than a few myself).
My current favourite is the lament, “Law isn’t a profession anymore; it’s a business.” Lawyering is at least 400 years old, and I’m willing [...]
Also posted in Clients, Law School Leave a comment
China syndrome
China is shaping the world we live in — along with India, Wal-Mart, Google, RSS, Wikipedia, wireless, and the World Wide Web 2.0. It’s not just manufacturing jobs moving to Asia, it’s white-collar professional work, too. And that’s just the start of it.
From what I can tell, we’re poised on the edge of great upheaval: [...]
Also posted in Globalization, Innovation, Technology Leave a comment
Change, competition and clients
The pace of change in and around the legal profession these days can’t really be overstated. The external marketplace of legal services is transforming itself daily — vast numbers of non-lawyers are now supplying legal services to clients, who have more knowledge and leverage than ever before. Simultaneously, young lawyers are redrawing the internal map [...]
Also posted in Clients Leave a comment
What clients want