K&L Gates Chairman Advises Would-Be Law Students to Reconsider
The chairman of K&L Gates says would-be lawyers should think twice before going to law school.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.), chairman Peter Kalis made clear that he doesn’t like debt. Law graduates have too much of it, he said, while his own firm doesn’t have it, making its expansion less risky.
Other topics included fixed-fee billing (K&L Gates is “quite open” to alternative fees) and law firm finances (K&L Gates hopes to “hold our own on the bottom line”).
The Wall Street Journal asked Kalis whether college graduates should think twice before heading off to law school, given cuts in law firm hiring. He replied this way:
“Yes. The business model of the U.S. law school doesn’t quite make sense to me. Law schools will bring you in from college and educate you, but they will encumber you with six-figure indebtedness at a tender age.
“The assumption was that there was no problem, because law firms like K&L Gates would pay that off for you. And that is where the wheels are falling off.
“I’ve heard that law school applications are actually increasing. We will be pouring tens of thousands of young people into a market that I suspect is not going to be able to absorb them at the remuneration levels that would have justified them taking on that debt.”
Kalis also addressed debt as it relates to his own firm. He said expansion would be “terminally risky” for some law firms, but not for K&L Gates. When you have no debt, as we do, and you combine with other firms with little debt, the risk is manageable,” he said.
In the last two years, K&L Gates has merged with three law firms: Bell, Boyd & Lloyd in Chicago; Kennedy Covington Lobdell & Hickman in Charlotte, N.C.; and Hughes & Luce in Dallas. The firm has also opened new offices abroad, including in Singapore, Frankfurt and Dubai.
