The Business of Law vs. The Service of Legal Counseling

The New York Times ran an article last week on how the most venerable law firms -- we're talking multinational, centuries old, most upper of the upper crust firms -- continue to purge their ranks in unprecedented fashion.

As anyone who is paying attention knows, the landscape of how legal work is organized and delivered is shifting beneath us as we speak. What no one knows exactly is how it's all going to shake out.

But there were a few more interesting signposts offered in the Times article that may at least help shape the way we perceive and articulate it.

Here is what the New York Times had to say (and I'm reordering some of their paragraphs):

"The gentleman’s profession of the law is becoming a vestige of the past, removed enough from reality to be remembered, like phone booths or fedoras."

"... the natural order of this world has been set on end by the economic crisis and the possible disappearance of fixtures like the pyramid system (under which associates are thrown en masse at certain cases, fattening the fees), and the billable hour itself (increasingly replaced by flat rates or retainers in a client’s market). The tectonic plates have begun to shift in a nauseating manner, bringing fear, ambiguity and psychological scars."

Philip K. Howard, a senior partner at Covington & Burling, another multinational firm, laments
that as the bottom line increases in importance, the traditional role of the lawyer as a trusted counselor slips away.

In another passage, Mr. Howard underscores his observation, saying that he's not really "interested in the business of law".

In other words, Mr. Howard is equating the current emphasis on the bottom line with the "business of law", and distinguishing that from the role of lawyer as counselor.

And this is consistent with our conversation regarding the distinction between legal information and legal advise.

The unbundling of legal services that we've been watching unfold in front of us can be framed in this way: the business of legal work is being separated from the service of legal counseling.

If this way of looking at it is accurate, and if this divide -- between the business of legal work and the service of legal counsel -- continues to solidify, that would seem to argue for the continued growth of LPO as attractively priced virtual associates and virtual attorneys to contribute to the business of legal work.