Legal Rebels

How law firms are innovating when it comes to hiring

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” then-Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said at the outset of the Obama Administration. And yet, for many organizations, inertial forces are very difficult to overcome and crises—like what the Great Recession meant for law firms—fail to inspire innovation. So it…

Jul 15, 2015 8:30 AM CDT

Have you hired an innovation intern?

Dan Elliott of Michigan State University College of Law’s ReInvent Law Laboratory is going to Australia for August. He is not going there for vacation—it will be winter in Australia—but rather to be an innovation intern at Kain C+C Lawyers in the city of Adelaide. Kain C+C (which stands for…

Jun 23, 2015 8:30 AM CDT

Where rule of law is present, corporations can invest and promote human rights, panelists say

Global corporations can, and should, play an important role in promoting the rule of law around the world. That was the consensus of a panel of attorneys, barristers and academics during a Saturday seminar at the ABA London Sessions commemorating the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta.…

Jun 13, 2015 11:58 AM CDT

4 steps for reinventing legal education

As lawyers who also are legal educators, we must accept that the new normal is here to stay – a world with decreased law school enrollment, increased student debt, a tight job market, and changing priorities in preparing students to be lawyers. Hoping for the past to return while clinging…

Apr 15, 2015 2:15 PM CDT

Nominations open for Legal Rebels 2015; find out how to submit a candidate

The ABA Journal is seeking nominations for the 2015 list of ABA Journal Legal Rebels. Our Legal Rebels are risk-takers and innovators, attorneys who are pushing the envelope to expand and improve legal practice. And though many past Rebels use technology as their innovative tool, others have used food truck…

Apr 8, 2015 8:45 AM CDT

Welcome to the future: A travel guide to tomorrow’s legal careers

The current state of the legal market probably feels unsettling, disorienting, and downright irritating to you. If so, then it might help to know that that’s exactly how the whole process is supposed to feel. We’re now several years into a period of fundamental change in the legal services market,…

Apr 1, 2015 9:00 AM CDT

Firms of the future must orbit around the client

I recently received a strategy presentation from a very sophisticated law firm, which can be summarized in one, MBA-ish slide. The client is in the center planet, surrounded by “law firm” on top, and then other planets in an ecosystem representing what we have called the “unbundled” service providers like…

Mar 26, 2015 1:55 PM CDT

Merging law schools, merging firms: What does it mean?

Last week brought the announcement that William Mitchell and Hamline law schools of St. Paul, Minnesota are merging. Hamline is the smaller of the two, part of a smaller private university; Mitchell (full disclosure, I have had some engagement with Mitchell) is a medium-sized, long-standing, innovative stand-alone school generally considered…

Feb 19, 2015 3:03 PM CST

9 ways to change the carnivorous partnership model and save BigLaw firms

At the beginning of a career as a lawyer, you often set upon a course of being a good soldier, doing what the system asks of you in the profession’s self-described “tournament-style” search for excellence. You must perform better than others so that you may advance within the organization. A…

Feb 4, 2015 2:40 PM CST

Freelance attorney network Custom Counsel acquired by CuroLegal

Custom Counsel, a service which matches lawyers available to do contract work with law firms and legal departments that need temporary or project-based help, was recently acquired by CuroLegal, an outsourced law-practice-management company. Many lawyers use Custom Counsel for litigation support work, including brief writing, says founder Nicole Bradick, who…

Feb 3, 2015 1:30 PM CST

Facing up to the challenge: It’s time to prepare law students for their profession

The legal profession is under immense pressures. Clients are demanding steep discounts and increasingly insist on fixed prices or other forms of value-based fees. Law firm realization rates (that is, revenue received versus what was reported on time sheets) once averaged 92 percent, fell to the lower 80 percent range…

Jan 29, 2015 8:45 AM CST

Can a new breed of firms solve the attrition problem for women in the legal industry?

Earlier this year, The National Association of Women Lawyers released the results of its National Survey on Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms. This annual survey provides sobering news on the state of women at the 200 largest firms in the country, collectively known as BigLaw.

Dec 17, 2014 8:45 AM CST

10 predictions about how IBM’s Watson will impact the legal profession

In July, we talked about whether the change in law should be characterized as “Disruption, Eruption or Interruption?” This week, we drill down into one likely source of change, IBM’s Watson. Lawyers have been thinking for a while about whether artificial intelligence would ever start to displace or complement lawyers.…

Oct 2, 2014 8:35 AM CDT

Gerald Abila’s Barefoot Law helps Ugandans use smartphones to learn about their legal rights

Uganda’s legal system is based on English common law, but criminal defendants who can’t afford legal representation—and most can’t—aren’t appointed counsel unless they face a death sentence or life in prison.

Sep 29, 2014 8:45 AM CDT

Ronald Deibert’s ‘CSI of cyberspace’ exposes global injustice and promotes cybersecurity

Ronald Deibert likes to refer to the laboratory he directs as the CSI of cyberspace. Much like TV’s CSI, the Citizen Lab consists of specialists from several different fields of expertise. Founded by Deibert in 2001, the interdisciplinary initiative based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs…

Sep 25, 2014 8:30 AM CDT