Blog

Apr 06

The Death of Lawyers is Greatly Exaggerated

Richard Susskind gave palpations to thousands of lawyers back in 2008 when “The End of Lawyers?” was published. The author’s track record as a legal soothsayer, coupled with the convulsions affecting the global economy to which law was far from immune, ruffled many stiff feathers. Of course, the provocative title... read more →
Mar 31
Mar 24

The Reluctant Rise of Project Management in Law

Snapshot: Project Managers in the U.S. versus the UK According to the Altman Weil Flash Survey “Law Firms in Transition 2014,” 41.3% of the law firms surveyed (including 42% of the 350 largest US law firms) reported that training in Project Management (“PM”) is key to increased efficiency in legal... read more →
Mar 16

Memo to File: Keep it Simple

“Simple” versus “Simplistic” Why can’t lawyers make things simpler? After all, if they were to apply a “relevancy” test (think: The Rules of Evidence) to each of the matters and tasks they perform, wouldn’t the product be delivered faster, cheaper and unambiguously with no compromise of quality? Who is served... read more →
Mar 09

Litigation, Baseball and Big Data

As a former trial lawyer and lifelong baseball fan, I was interested to learn about an upstart legal technology company that claims to have developed an Artificial Intelligence system it has applied to litigation. I had a lengthy conversation with its CIO/inventor who explained the system creates complex tables that... read more →
Mar 02

Self-Regulation and Corporate Law

This is the second of a two-part consideration of the affects of self-regulation on the legal industry.  Last week's post focused on retail law; this post examines the corporate segment. To compare the impact of self-regulation on the corporate and retail legal segments is to invite the conclusion that lawyers operate... read more →
Feb 24

Self-Regulation and Retail Law

This is the first of a two-part overview of self-regulation in the U.S. legal market. This installment focuses on the retail segment; the corporate side will be the subject of the second part. Lawyers in the retail segment of the legal market have priced themselves beyond the reach of most... read more →
Feb 17

What a long, strange trip it’s been.

The phone started to ring shortly after the press reported that Clearspire had died. In fact, it had been sold, but that was of no moment to anyone other than our employees and investors. We had swung for the fences and hit a long fly ball caught at the warning... read more →
Feb 09

Practical Suggestions for Law Schools and Recent Graduates

The Problem in Context  The crisis in legal education–particularly for law students and recent graduates–is well known and has received considerable media coverage extending well beyond the legal arena. Though some consider it symptomatic of a larger broken educational model, legal education is particularly noteworthy because it is post-graduate, professional... read more →
Feb 02

Law Firms, Condominiums, and A New Model Law Firm

“Lawyers are Condos” I was invited to breakfast the other day by an old friend who is the Managing Director of one of the nation’s most powerful lobbying shops. He has a law degree but never practiced--not in the narrow sense, anyway-- opting instead to become a political operative, first... read more →