I recently discovered the Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law School. They just wrapped up their annual conference titled: Law Firm Evolution: Brave New World or Business As Usual?
Notice how we all now increasingly use questions as titles. In all fairness, the more I read and attend conferences, the more I realize that no one knows what is really going on. Much like the scene of an accident or mob riot, we all know something is going on because of all the activity, but no one person has a clear idea of exactly what’s going on in our profession.
The conference website generously provides the conference papers to download for free. I’m hoping we can send an OBA delegation next year to demonstrate the evolution in SSFs and VLOs cooperating on a global scale! Anyone interested?
Eversheds presented a paper titled: Law firm of the 21st Century: The Client’s Revolution. (By Bryan Hughes, Chief Executive of Eversheds LLP)
I’m including an excerpt from their conclusion:
“….overall lawyers will actually be more significant business players in the new world. The increasing role of regulation, ethics and the re-examination of risk are heartland areas for the lawyer, ensuring that even as the transaction ‘go-go’ days wane, they still have an important role to play. What they might not see any more are super-high fees and, at the premium end of the profession, headcount may shrink for the next generation.
For Western law firms, the shift to the East is well underway both as a move to follow a global economic trend but also as the drive to efficiency dictates that low-cost jurisdictions are a key component of cost base reductions(italics added).”
In 2008, when the recession hit, I was contacted by recruiters for a position in Singapore with ESPN as media counsel. I was quite perplexed that they would even interview me all the way from the USA. The recruiter told me that already very well paid lawyers from Titanic-sized US firms and wall street, and some British firms, were jumping on the available lifeboats and heading East to Asia and the Middle East.
I imagined how different our profession would be as we become net exporters of highly educated and experienced lawyers. How would this minor exodus affect those countries? We won’t know exactly for another 5 -10 years. Part of what excites me is the global scale of the opportunities available to us in the next 5 years.
Big Law is going to go through a consolidation for a few more years. It will be even bigger law as capital investments move into the market at the top. Decentralization in all professions will benefit Small and Solo firms (SSFs) willing to organize into vast networks of mutual support made up of reputable talent from around the world (OBA). If SSFs don’t organize themselves into competitive and trusted enterprise networks, they can still work in niche areas they own, or as labor for the new capital infused and publicly traded firms.
Wait?! Will we see lawyer unions next?
Jorge Colón's Blog 