Tag Archives: Practice of law

For  years, some members of the bar have fought a pitched battle to preserve the practice of law as a profession than a business like any other. Often, this was done with the best of intentions: after all, lawyers are assigned a public trust when licensed. Officers of the court ought to be expected to see the greater lovely. Sometimes, though, the motives were less pure: a thinly guised try to protect cherished revenue streams.
Either way, at this point the battle is largely a rear-guard action. Legal practice is changing, not because lawyers need it to but because clients are changing it for them – increasingly insisting that attorneys utilize the discipline driven by the same market forces to which every other business is subject.
Clients are imposing more sophisticated & varied cost controls on legal expenditures. The increasing need for both predictability & cost containment makes the business case for legal outsourcing as part of the solution more compelling to clients on a regular basis. If legal sourcing vendors offer quality work product, they can expect that, as in IT & back office outsourcing, they will gradually but steadily move up the worth chain.
The expertise of the senior partner, whether through local knowledge of judges & juries or ability to offer high-end strategic advice, will likely never be outsourced. Still, lawyers must understand that, as never before, their work will need the same relentless drive to accomplish more with less that their clients have been dealing with for years. The days of unquestioned year-on-year fee hikes, independent of increased value-adds, are coming to an finish. Adjust your business model accordingly because trying to hold on to sure profit centers in the short term may cost you clients in the long term.
For young lawyers, recognition of the competition that they face from abroad is critical. Clients will become increasingly less tolerant of having to pay premium rates to train them how to do basic tasks. Lifelong additions to their skill sets to provide something uniquely valuable to the client will be a must if wage levels are to be maintained in this surroundings. The responsibility for seeing to it that such opportunities are made obtainable falls to legal educators. Practical training beyond basic writing & research & elective courses in trial & appellate advocacy must be instituted now.