Dec
22
It will be a glum holiday season for the lawyers and staff at King & Wood Mallesons (KWM). The multinational law firm giant, a single-branded legal network anchored by British, Australian, and Chinese member firms, is dissolving. The firm website describes the 2,700 lawyer amalgam as ‘the global elite firm...
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Dec
15
Good lawyers are problem solvers. The best ones forestall problems and, when they inherit them, prevent metastasis. So with demand for legal services robust and law firm demand flat three years and counting, law firms have a problem. Its crux is a misalignment of the traditional law firm model with...
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Dec
08
Victor Borge likened lawyers to clarinets–both have cases, mouthpieces, and need a constant supply of hot air to function. There are just over 1.3 million licensed lawyers in the U.S. according to the American Bar Association 2015 National Lawyer Population Survey. That’s a lot of hot air and mouthpieces. Paradoxically,...
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Nov
23
I recently had a long conversation with Iohann Le Frapper, a French lawyer and Board Chair of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC). We identified several common challenges confronting lawyers – legal education and new skillsets, access to justice, technology and globalization yielding automation and labor arbitrage, the ‘gig economy,’...
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Nov
17
The steel cage match called the Presidential campaign and the election is over. The people have spoken. The orderly transfer of power is underway–even as protests and cries of ‘He is not my president’ remind us that things are different. Deep, painful wounds remain that must be healed. Lawyers alone...
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Nov
09
At a time when bipartisanship and consensus have taken an extended holiday, most Americans agree this election cycle has been unlike any in memory. As the late Gilda Radner’s SNL character Roseannadanna would say, ‘It’s always something.’ And all those ‘somethings’ have taken a terrible toll on America’s institutions–particularly the...
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Nov
03
Remember Martin Short’s wedding planner character in the remake of ‘Father of the Bride’? If so, you will recall his memorable ‘Welcome to the ‘90’s, Mr. Banks’ retort to Steve Martin (father of the bride) who could not stomach a $1,200 wedding cake. Its a couple decades later and excess...
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Oct
28
My wife is a great cook and watches “The Cooking Channel” for new recipes. I’m fascinated by her ability to translate the TV chefs’ recipes into delicious meals at home. It made me wonder: is there a recipe for affordable legal representation? Approximately 90% of Americans as well as a...
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Oct
24
I gave a talk last week at University College London. The topic was The Changing Legal Services Marketplace: A View From Across the Pond. It began with my admission of ‘acute ABS envy.’ No, ABS is not a Midlands light lager. It refers to ‘alternative business structures,’ an element of...
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Oct
13
John Grisham captured a common perception of lawyers in The Client: “You advised him not to get a lawyer, giving as one of your reasons the opinion that lawyers are a pain in the ass.” Lawyers have an image problem. A 1973 Harris survey found that only 24% of respondents...
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