The New Normal

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

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

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

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

Attorneys who can address clients’ operational problems as well as their legal ones have an edge

Over the past two decades or so, general counsel have become increasingly accountable for effective management of their legal departments. Legal teams are expected to add value to the enterprise, and when they turn to outside counsel to aid in this mission, the ones who can understand and help address…

Sep 10, 2014 8:30 AM CDT

‘Satisfaction guaranteed’—it’s never caught on with lawyers

The other night I was listening to Terry O’Reilly’s Under the Influence podcast as I drove home. The episode, titled “Satisfaction Guaranteed,” focused on “companies that offer 100 percent, no questions-asked, no fine print, lifetime guarantees.” Valorem Law Group has always offered our clients the unqualified right to adjust the…

Sep 3, 2014 8:38 AM CDT

Tech test could give law firms an incentive to make efficiency gains

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they attack you. Then you win. As a legal technology trainer, I’m eagerly anticipating the winning that should accompany the launch of the Suffolk Flaherty Legal Technology Audit. For more than a year, I’ve been working on the automated version of…

Aug 18, 2014 1:30 PM CDT

Disruption, eruption or interruption: 3 views of change in law

The New York Times described the challenge of understanding changes in atmospheric measurement “you have to know what’s happening before you know why it’s happening.” Living through a change like we’re experiencing in the legal market requires us to come up with appropriate metaphor for why things are happening, based…

Jul 31, 2014 1:30 PM CDT

Change afoot in American civil justice system

My husband is a cattle and sheep rancher, and during the 36 years of our marriage, I have learned a few things—for example, in the spring, livestock can overgraze on sweet new grass to the point of killing themselves. It is called foundering. Due process in the American civil justice…

Jul 22, 2014 1:30 PM CDT