Thoughts on the legal profession

Even though I've left  the "big law firm" I manage my new consultancy and therefore still read about professional service firm management (as well as business management generally).

So I've collected some links to articles about the legal profession I've bookmarked recently. They look at the profession from both sides, internally at how lawyers practice, and externally from the clients' perspective.

While they're mainly US articles, the issues they raise apply to Australia.

The Tyranny of the Billable Hour gives a historical overview of time billing and looks at the recent ABA Commission on Billable Hours.

Some excerpts:
“The unending drive for billable hours,” said the ABA Commission on Billable Hours, “has had a negative effect . . . on family and personal relationships.” The result is that “many young attorneys are leaving the profession due to a lack of balance in their lives.”

One of the major problems with the billable hour system, as the ABA commission pointed out, is that it is “fundamentally about quantity over quality, repetition over creativity. With no gauge for intangibles such as productivity, creativity, knowledge or technological advancements, the billable hours model is a counter-intuitive measure of value.”

What Do Your Clients Really Think Of You looks at the service clients expect from their advisers.

This article from the New York Lawyer discusses an age discrimination case against a major US law firm. The interesting thing  is that the prosecution is arguing that law firm partners are merely employees:

In an opinion by Judge Richard Posner in 2002, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that the EEOC had sufficiently shown that the affected lawyers could be considered employees in order to proceed with its investigation and subpoena the firm.

Judge Posner pointed to the highly centralized management of the law firm, in which partners never voted on issues, and a self-selecting executive committee that made all major decisions, in suggesting that the partners could, in fact, be employees.

Adam Smith Esq discusses which profession is most likely to suffer from stress, depression, and alcohol or substance abuse?

The Tech Evolution: Change Or Die by Laura Owen, the Legal Services Director of Cisco , challenges lawyers to collaborate more and share knowledge with their clients. She gives some examples of "how to do it".

These articles are just a sampling: there are many people discussing different models of how lawyers can best serve their clients.

For example, read the [non]billable hour and My Shingle in addition to the above.