Monthly Subscription Plan

Alternative billing models are a frequent topic of conversation these days, with the focus primarily on a fixed rate or flat fee for a specific deliverable.

San Francisco firm Smithline Jha, though, is putting another option on the table -- the monthly subscription model.

According to Northern California legal newspaper The Recorder, 90% of Smithline Jha's revenues are now generated via monthly subscriptions.

While clients are purely on a month-to-month contract, a projection of overall annual expenditures is prorated to calculate a monthly charge. For new clients, an exploratory month is used to familiarize Smithline Jha with the client in order to help project annual services.

Law.com's profile of Smithline Jha notes that the monthly subscription model seems inherently geared for clients with consistent, measurable work taking place over an expected period, which does seem to fit the firm's focus on IP licensing for software and internet companies.

The value add, though, is that clients are more eager to spend time leveraging Smithline Jha's experience, which fosters a legitimate relationship.

Now clients tend to invite them to the deal table earlier, while terms are still being discussed, rather than bringing them in to review a ready-made contract. "They're not afraid to call anymore," Jha said. "They didn't feel like the meter was running every time they talked to us. The net effect was we got so much closer to our clients."

It's the difference between simply receiving a product and experiencing an actual working relationship.

This allows Smithline Jha to produce invoices which list only deliverables, not hours.

In other words, invoices document collaborative goals achieved, not a divisive accounting of my time versus your money.

And maybe that should be the first consideration of any paradigm shift -- how can we improve the relationship between attorney and client.

Lean and Mean

We've recently discussed the surge in public airings of client dissatisfaction with Big Law, as well as calls for change in some key areas of Big Law business practices.

Obviously, a situation in which the client base yearns for new products or alternative pricing typically results in the market rewarding the innovative and proactive.

It didn't take long for 2010 to offer a concrete example.

Law.com recently profiled Chaffetz Lindsey, a boutique firm founded last year by five former partners of big law Clifford Chance.

While Chaffetz Lindsey is gaining traction with referrals from other large firms due to conflicts, they've also crafted a business model positioned to appeal to clients turned off by large firm cost structure.

"The partners say the ability to offer billing rates lower than their large-firm counterparts is attracting and keeping clients. Chaffetz Lindsey lawyers have been able to bill up to 20 percent to 30 percent less than they did at Clifford Chance, said partner Charles Scibetta. The firm's preference is to try to negotiate with clients to sign a fixed fee agreement or make a deal with a contingency fee component, Scibetta said."

"What I believe is going to be important to a client is we have the big firm expertise but we're at a smaller place now and we're able to be more flexible on rates" said Cecilia Moss, 40, another partner who was previously counsel at Clifford Chance.

While clients say they appreciate the flexibility of fixed fee or contingency pricing, strategic alliance is also part of their business plan.

"Chaffetz Lindsey is relying on a low-leverage model to keep costs down, but it has also made arrangements with Jaeckle, Fleischmann & Mugel, a Buffalo, N.Y., firm where Scibetta used to work, to staff cases should the need arise."

Lean, mean, and nimble. Definitely a model to keep an eye on.

State of the Legal Industry Survey

As we wind down what has certainly been one of the more noteworthy years for the legal profession, it seems both appropriate and timely to look at LexisNexis's State of the Legal Industry Survey.

The survey describes itself as "the first of its depth and breadth to be conducted on the legal industry since the start of the economic crisis. Of the 550 respondents polled, 300 were private practice attorneys, 150 were in-house corporate counsel and 100 were law students."

If a snapshot of the current mindset of legal professionals provides any sort of view into the coming year, then here's what we have to look forward to in 2010...

Transformation, evolution, contrary opinions, uncertainty, and opportunity.

Some highlights of the survey are:

• 71% of corporate counsel responded that law firms today are not doing enough to respond to the current financial pressures on their business model.

• Almost half of the in-house counsel polled (46%) say they have requested rate cuts since the start of the economic downturn, yet less than one in five (18%) private practice attorneys say their law firms have reduced billing rates.

• Only 38% of corporate counsel believe that law firms are being responsive on changing fees and costs given the current economic recession.

• 69% of corporate counsel have shifted work in-house since the start of the economic downturn; 56% have reduced spending on outside counsel.

• 57% of corporate counsel believe the billable hour will give way to alternative billing arrangements.

One finding that really stands out in the midst of this professional climate that seems poised to reward an entrepreneurial approach to business is this:

• According to the survey, 65% of law school students (and 90% of lawyers) say that school teaches students legal theory, but does not teach the practical business skills needed to practice law in today’s economy.

In other words, buckle up. For better or worse, 2010 looks to be just as turbulent a ride as 2009.

Until then, all of us here at LegalEase wish a happy and healthy New Year to you all.

The Culture of the Billable Hour

There is no shortage of talk about redesigning the billable hour model. And many firms are making inroads with fixed-price offerings for specific services.

However, there is a huge chasm between a billable hour firm that also happens to have an a la carte fixed price menu and a firm that has entirely stepped away from the billable hour.

The stark difference between the two is the corporate culture. As the vast majority of Big Law associates will attest, work-life balance can become distorted in a billable hour culture, because the hour is the final product, not the service itself.

So it's worth shining a light on a firm that bills itself as the first corporate law firm in the nation to exclusively adopt fixed price billing. Exemplar Law Partners.

As a growing chorus of industry analysts and consultants have noted, the legal landscape is poised to reward firms willing to deviate from a business model that made sense prior to the internet -- before the commoditization of legal service, before exponentially increased access to information, before virtual offices erased the historical limitations of distance.

Consistent with that sort of forward thinking, Exemplar is entrepreneurial at every level, treating their firm as a startup company rather than a partnership or solo law practice.

According to a profile at Legal Rebels:

"There simply is not a billable hour, and the culture of the company from the top down seems to be to discourage that mode of thinking entirely.

“We don’t count time. We are a timeless culture,” Marston says of the firm’s commitment to abandon hourly rates as well as time-tracking for its employees. “The only way to be profitable in business is to be profitable, not in six-minute increments or only at 30 percent [profit].

“We know how much work our professionals turn around each month; we know what value they provide, and we know what we are charging. We track it at a macro level rather than at a micro level. And they get paid for being effective and efficient.”

Which brings us to the magnitude of contrast between the billable hour firms and a firm that is completely divested from the billable hour.

Putting mechanisms in place to create a fixed price model is a matter of execution. But changing the mindset of an organization is the real hurdle, and the real reward.

Eliminating the culture of the billable hour is a tall order, but one that Exemplar's growth (doubling revenue each of the last three years) seems to support.

The ACC Value Index and Value Challenge Model

Further to our post on the Association of Corporate Counsel's Value Challenge, here's a nod to Discovery Resources recent discussion regarding the tipping point for the value challenge.

The upshot is that as part of the Value Challenge, the ACC offers their Value Index, a forum for Corporate Counsel to rate law firms in terms their cost control and cost predictability, resulting in the Value Index.

And the index seems to be supporting Counsels' demand for value realignment.

As the ACC's original Value Challenge notes:

"According to a recent issue of the California Bar Journal, a survey by the Corporate Executive Board found that “while non‐law firm costs increased by 20 percent over the past 10 years, large law firms’ prices jumped almost 75 percent in the same period.” These numbers confirm the disconnect most if not all of us have been feeling."

To even further support Counsels' overall discussions with Law Firms, the ACC commissioned the Value Challenge Model, an interactive spreadsheet that allows users to test how changes in a law firms use of partners, associates, rates, and overhead may affect efficiency and profitability.

It's definitely worth giving a look.

The Association of Corporate Counsel Value Challenge

The Association of Corporate Counsel continues their Value Challenge in 2010, pursuing an initiative designed to meet head-on the seismic shifts currently taking place in the traditional delivery model and cost structure of legal services.

According to the ACC:

"With the economic meltdown, law firms are now facing additional pressures: loss of clients and business, reduced access to bank lines of credit, a need to downsize and better manage overhead, and at the same time, keeping as many people employed as possible.

Believing that solutions must come from a true dialog and a willingness to change things on bothsides, the ACC Value Challenge is based on the concept that firms can greatly improve the value of what they do, reduce their costs to corporate clients and still maintain strong profitability. Our task is to help shift the discussion to a focus on value and to find solutions that work for all sides."

It's noteworthy that as part of the value challenge, the ACC endorses a number of practical approaches to bring change to your company, one of which is to:

"outsource, offshore, and farm-shore process oriented work to increase efficiencies."

Also of note is their Covenant For Counsel, a philosophical agreement between client and counsel created to advance mutual goals. Included in the covenant are pledges to:

"Proactively offer value-based alternative fee structures"

and

"Seek to reduce our costs creatively and constantly"

Law School R.O.I.

The current economic recession, which according to the National Bureau of Economic Research is soon to enter its third year, has had two significant effects on law students.

1) Law school admissions have increased, as prospective students seek the shelter of an ostensibly secure profession.

2) The profession of law may not be as secure as it once was, with all reports showing decreased hiring and the postponement of new associate hiring (and even an instance of a law school asking incoming students to defer their start date.)

With that in mind, the New York Times' Economix column featured a recent research paper written by Vanderbilt professor Herwig Schlunk measuring the return on investment for a current law school education.

In general, the paper looked at what kind of salaries law students could have been pulling in if they weren't in law school, factored in some time value for that period, and added tuition to that "opportunity cost" to arrive at a number that needed to be surpassed by earnings as a lawyer.

For the group of law school applicants deemed Hot Prospects (those who would have made $80,000 a year without a law degree), the paper concluded they'd need to earn a starting legal salary of slightly more than $198,000 to break even on their law school investment.

Unfortunately, according to the ABA Journal:

"...top BigLaw starting salaries paid to a small fraction of the nation's graduating law students are now around $165,000. Even many major firms, however, are paying significantly less, and a number of law graduates are having difficulty finding legal work even at much lower salaries due to the economic downturn that hit the legal profession hard last year."

So, the cautionary note to prospective law school applicants is to run the numbers on your investment first. And an MBA might help with that.

More Year-End Numbers

The National Law Journal released the results of their 2009 census of the largest 250 law firms, and the numbers are predictably gloomy.

A few of the lowlights:

The number of employed attorneys at these top 250 firms plunged by more than 5,200. That's a 4% decline.

This is only the third year since the NLJ started tracking in 1978 that saw a decline. 1992 saw a 1% decline, and 1993 dropped 0.9%.

Of the top 75 firms, 15 had reductions of more than 100 lawyers.

The number of associate attorneys dropped by almost 9%.

Many firms declined to near or below where their numbers were five years ago.

113 firms reported deferring nearly 2,800 new associates.

Interestingly, the number of partners increased by .9%. Of the top 50 firms, 30 reported an increase in partners.

A consultant with Altman Weil, Ward Bower, concludes that "the cuts made were done primarily to preserve workloads for partners." Which means that clients can only conclude that work currently being done by partners is work that would have previously been executed by associates. And that is exactly what clients have been trying to avoid.

The National Law Journal has a number of accompanying features, analysis, and breakdowns.

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet

Any conversation about marketing legal services these days is bound to include a discussion about social media. For some professions and industries, Twitter and Facebook are a slam dunk.

For others, including attorneys, it's not quite as simple.

There are those who maintain that anybody not utilizing Twitter and Facebook are completely out of step. But Eric Turkewitz has an interesting blog post about the less discussed but equally relevant downside of social media as a professional marketing tool.

The first potential pitfall pertains to overly enthusiastic posting. Anyone who has been waiting on a colleague or vendor for work to be delivered, only to see semi-hourly tweets or FB posts, knows the resentment that can build.

The lesson here is to make your posts occasional and relevant.

The other potential downside to social media posts is the appearance of sloppy work. The nature of the legal profession requires reason, accuracy, thoughtfulness, and thoroughness. So a type-o riddled, grammatically butchered post is going to immediately defeat its purpose.

Now, many may think that the risk of undercutting your credibility with poorly written posts might be short lived. But, interestingly, they might be wrong.

Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that the algorithms used in Google's searches disproportionately weight Twitter and Facebook accounts to appear on the first page of search results. According to Eric Turkewitz's personal research:

"I wondered, if a potential new client was given my name by another, and that person Googled me, what would they see?

Well, the first page of my results shows three separate social media sites: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. They show up there despite the fact that I've not exactly been the biggest user of those sites over the last year.

So this is what the potential new client will see, even if you have an active presence on the web. Since I've written over 800 posts in this space since I started in November 2006, and received thousands of inbound links, I probably fit the definition of active presence. And yet, those three sites still manage to crowd out links from so many others."

Of course, this is all fluid, given google's very recent announcement of "social search", which may ultimately be a competitor of facebook, as well as their new agreement with twitter to bring real-time tweets to search results.

Regardless, the lesson for attorneys considering -- or already exercising -- a Facebook or Twitter presence is this: Your social media contributions may carry disproportionate weight within search engine results.

Potential clients may form opinions and make decisions based on those search results.

If you are an attorney using social media, do a general google search on yourself and monitor the page ranking of your social media accounts.

And then tweet accordingly.

Sam Glover

Continuing with our discussion on lawyers embracing an entrepreneurial approach to their work, Legal Rebels recently featured attorney Sam Glover.

Mr. Glover, a Minnesota-based legal entrepreneur who manages a consumer rights practice, is also the author of the always useful lawyerist.com, which manages to weave together insightful commentary on legal practice, technology, productivity, and marketing.

Some of the highlights from Mr. Glover's profile regarding the state of the industry:

• Today, the internet-informed public needs lawyers less, but there are more lawyers than ever.

• There is little imagination in the practice of law.

• There are many smart but unemployed lawyers with little to lose by trying some new things.

• Lawyers must think more like entrepreneurs. Clients' changing needs will demand it. The economy demands it.

• To distinguish your practice from the next, look for an opportunity to serve new clients, or a new way to serve existing clients.

• Never be afraid to experiment. All you stand to lose is money. But if your experiments work, you could make even more money and gain happier, more-loyal clients and employees.

Taking Issue

Misleading. At best.

Law.com reported today on Kroll Inc.'s annual survey on corporate fraud. And for some reason law.com used the following headline:

"Legal Pitfalls of Outsourcing May Outweigh Benefits, Says New Survey"

Except, that's not at all what Kroll's report says.

The first sentence of law.com's post reads:

Companies that choose to outsource work to save money may be buying themselves more legal trouble than it's worth. That's one conclusion from Kroll Inc.'s annual global corporate fraud survey released Monday.

Except, um, that's not even close to any conclusion reached by the survey.

Based on that headline (at a legal-based web site) and that opening sentence, you might think the survey discussed Legal Outsourcing. It doesn't.

Based on the headline and that opening sentence, you might think the survey discussed the legal ramifications of other types of outsourcing. It doesn't.

The second paragraph of law.com's post opens with:

Asking if outsourcing is really worth the risk, the survey says companies often make the decision "without a thorough assessment of the risks involved in determining what is to be outsourced, and to whom."

The quote from the Kroll's report is pulled from a section solely dedicated to the discussion of IT Outsourcing. The title of that section is IT Outsourcing: Is it Worth the Risk?

But not even in this section are legal ramifications discussed. The intent of this section of the report -- in the report's own words -- is to present "a strong reminder that technology companies, including IT outsourcing ones, are vulnerable to the same common frauds - such as internal financial fraud, vendor or procurement fraud, and the theft of physical assets - that can occur in any other business."

The survey never intimates that the risks outweigh rewards. The survey simply says do your due diligence. Just like you would do in any other business capacity.

What does the report actually have to say?

It says that the financial services industry has been hit the hardest by fraud.

It also says that the professional services sector (which includes legal services and legal outsourcing) reported the lowest level exposure to fraud.

So, at the end of the day, the report says that while the internet has expanded business services, it has also created additional sources of potential fraud. Nothing earth shattering there. The report says to make sure that any vendor or business partner has proper data security safeguards in place.

Again, business as usual.

But nowhere in the survey does it conclude that legal pitfalls may outweigh the benefits of outsourcing.

Unbound

Unbound: How Entrepreneurship is Dramatically Transforming Legal Services Today is a timely and relevant new book for anyone tracking emerging trends in the legal profession.

Wasting no time, the opening paragraph dives right in with observations we've been discussing for the better part of this year:

"The financial and economic crisis of 2008 delivered the final blow to any skeptics still resisting change in the legal industry. The legal industry is now rushing toward dramatic transformation. Change is long overdue... Over the next three to five years, the legal landscape will be dramatically reshaped. Law will continue on its global march. Even small firms are outsourcing legal support work overseas."

Author David Galbenski founded Lumen Legal, a legal staffing and consulting company, in 1993. His fifteen years as a legal consultant has informed his identification of a number of major trends that he believes will affect the legal industry in the coming few years. Some of those trends are:

• New ways to buy legal services. Consumer demands will force the legal industry to behave less like a profession and more like a business.

• New ways to provide legal services. Globalization is a force that will expand the ways in which legal services are provided to the end consumer.

• New ways to organize legal services. Tasks will become unbundled, as a result of both business pressures and globalization.

• New categories and types of people will be called upon to perform legal services.

Unbound underscores many of the opinions in Richard Susskind's The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services.

Additional quotes from the Financial Times' review of Unbound:

"The highlight of the book is a series of interviews with leading general counsel, who explain the changing global landscape their companies operate in and the pressures in-house lawyers face to rein in costs since the economic collapse. Their observations are stark and should raise the hairs on the arm of every managing partner, group practice leader and legal marketing expert in the business."

"The legal industry is facing unprecedented change, and law firms that don't modify the way they run their businesses face extinction."

"Law firms may be coping with a downturn in business by trimming their costs, but the recession is moving the entire industry toward a range of new, entrepreneurial models that will eventually put the legal industry more in line with other types of businesses."

Real Overhaul in Associate Hiring?

Two weeks ago we discussed how some major firms were rethinking their summer apprenticeship programs.

But last Friday's article in the Boston Business Journal indicates a far more systematic revisiting of the entire recruitment model, and at an even faster pace than previously noted.

The BBJ's title says a lot: Traditional Associate System Collapsing Under Economic Pressure.

According to the article: "Many law firm leaders now are taking the time to rethink the recruitment process soup-to-nuts, from pondering the wisdom of summer programs to slashing first-year salaries."

You know it's significant when the article is peppered with quotes like:

“It is antiquated. It just does not make economic sense. It does not make good business sense,” said John V. Snellings, hiring partner at Nixon Peabody LLP

“The age-old system hit a brick wall with the sharp downturn,” said Brian Bickerton, partner at legal staffing firm Major, Lindsey & Africa. “Never before has there been any kind of real consideration by firms to change the ways they recruit and hire."

“My guts says that there are bigger changes coming,” said Randi Friedman, assistant dean at Northeastern University School of Law. “It’s going to be the beginning of a new era."

“I spend a lot of time out in the world talking to clients. One thing I hear over and over again is that they are not willing to pay the kinds of hourly rates for young associates that they used to,” said Walter G.D. Reed, managing partner of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge. “Either we’re going to have to come up with a new way of pricing our services or we’re going to have to figure out a different way of bringing young lawyers along.”

It's a refrain that's becoming more and more familiar. 1) The historic summer associate/hiring pattern is based on little other than tradition at this point. 2) Clients are less and less willing to pay large hourly fees for associate-level work.

Now, for the first time, large firms seem to be legitimately open to evaluating new approaches to associate-level work.

More Movement Away From Hourly Billing

LegalWeek.com reported last week that both Mayer Brown and Reed Smith are evaluating new cost structures that will bring fixed or capped fees for transactional work.

"Mayer Brown's senior management is in the process of reviewing how the firm bills clients and is considering proposals to overhaul fee structures for core transactional practices including corporate, banking and real estate.

The proposed changes, which the firm said have been accelerated as a result of client demand for greater certainty during the downturn, would see Mayer Brown offering fixed fees for all transactional work, as well as more regularly using abort agreements and success fees.

Separately, Reed Smith has also been looking at changing fee structures within its transactional practices. The firm has a committee made up of partners from across the firm reviewing proposals and is looking at an increasing use of fixed or capped fees for clients within its financial industry group (FIG), corporate and real estate practices, for transactional work."

Sure, this is an important development simply because it signals the readiness of two of the larger global firms to reassess historically entrenched billing practices.

But, actually, the implications are even more profound. This development is more than a possible trend in cost structures and more than a comment on difficult economic times.

Fixed pricing for transactional work, by definition, encourages the unbundling of legal services. The act of articulating an a la cart menu of legal services is, in itself, a form of unbundling.

Transactional pricing isolates the tasks being performed and separates them from other services. And that is inherently different than the traditional business model of a firm offering a stew of services, all intertwined, and all covered by the umbrella of billable hours.

As we quoted Robert J. Ambrogi back in April:

"Legal services are evolving from a highly bespoke, highly customized product toward becoming a commodity. As part of this evolution, legal work will be unbundled into its constituent tasks and many of those tasks will be standardized and systematized."

Another brick in the wall.

Adjusting to Fewer Associate-Level Positions

As noted recently in the ABA Journal, many large firms are delaying hiring new associates, and some are putting their summer apprenticeship programs on hiatus altogether.

Obviously, though, a decreasing number of entry-level associate positions doesn't necessarily mean there is less associate-level work to be done.

That's why one of the major challenges facing firms today is reshaping business practices to accomplish associate-level work without charging clients senior-level rates.

One of the solutions many firms are turning to is the flexible use of off-site associates for legal research.

An example of this trend is LegalEase's own Research Pathfinder, a program that offers thoroughly researched breakdowns of all relevant case law, statutes and any other opinion, law review, and any secondary research related to a specific legal issue.

All within 24 hours and all for a $250 flat fee.

LegalEase's Research Pathfinder applies two levels of quality checks by U.S. attorneys to our network of global attorneys to provide the 24-hour turnaround.

You can view additional information on LegalEase's Research Pathfinder here.

A Change in Seasonal Hiring

As we discussed back in February, the seasonal hiring pattern at large law firms is a tradition that becomes ripe for reconsideration during tough economic times (and potentially altogether as the professional landscape evolves).

The practice of offering employment to a predetermined, fixed number of newly minted law school grads at the end of each summer is based on the expectation of a corresponding level of attrition from more senior attorneys.

Many of us, though, anticipated that the current sea of churning economic uncertainty would result in far fewer senior staffers choosing to jump ship. Fewer empty deck chairs would mean fewer new hires, especially with many firms working to trim overall headcount.

Well, those predictions are now actuality.

The ABA Journal reported this last week that many large firms are delaying job offers to summer associates.

This comes as especially unwelcome news to current second year law students after last week's reports that many large firms a scaling way back (or even eliminating) their 2010 summer apprenticeship programs and recruiting.

Again, according to the ABA Journal:

• "Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has cut the size of its 2010 summer program by more than half.

• Morgan, Lewis & Bockius has canceled its summer program and all on-campus recruiting.

• DLA Piper and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe have postponed recruiting.

• Law firms opting against interviews at Yale include Baker & McKenzie; Milbank, Tweed, Hadley, & McCloy; and White & Case.

• Law firm interviews are down by a third or a half at New York University, Georgetown, Northwestern and other top law schools. It’s even worse at lower-ranked schools."

The wrinkle here is that this will leave organizations top heavy with more senior attorneys, causing dispraportionate billing fees for associate level work, potentially creating further demand for "virtual associates" available through LPOs.

Here Come The Numbers

As fiscal years start coming to a close, official revenue figures are starting to confirm everyone's expectations.

As reported at Am Law Daily (and discussed at Above The Law), Baker McKenzie's fiscal year ended on June 30th, and last year's 2nd highest revenue generating firm reported a 3% drop in global revenue and a 17% drop in profits per partner due to the recession.

"The financial crisis progressed into an economic recession that has been very challenging for our clients, for all law firms and for us,” says John Conroy, chairman of the firm’s executive committee.

To put Baker McKenzie's numbers in perspective, this is a firm whose fiscal year 2007 "reported profits per partner of $1.06 million, breaking the $1 million mark for the first time in the firm’s history. The firm reached another milestone in fiscal year 2008 when total revenues came in at $2.2 billion, surpassing the $2 billion barrier for the first time."

However, Baker McKenzie has also been a leader in terms of outsourcing legal work, and past year's numbers have been anchored by a global approach that encompasses more than 3,900 lawyers at 67 offices in 39 countries.

Given the squeeze in profit per partner this year, it won't be surprising to see an even greater emphasis on pushing work to more efficient cost centers.

And, while we can only speculate on how much worse Baker McKenzie's numbers would have been without their aggressive outsourcing stance, it will be interesting to see how comparable firms' numbers stack up as the year progresses.

Shameless Self-Promotion

LegalEase is pleased to introduce our Legal Process Outsourcing Handbook, free for viewing and/or downloading here.

As increasing numbers of both in-house and firm-based counsel adopt new strategies to respond to the evolving legal marketplace, The LPO Handbook provides a one-stop resource to help you evaluate whether strategic use of LPO is an efficient addition to your business initiatives.

Connecting Dots

As anyone who's worked on a large project knows, you can start to view the world through the prism of that project. New data gets filtered through the context of that project; patterns emerge.

Which is probably why some recent essays and analysis of fields unrelated to the legal profession are resonating with similarities.

Take, for instance, a very informative and insightful recent post from Barrett Garese, founder and CEO of Spytap Industries, a company specializing in online content and social media strategies.

You can read it in full here, but the upshot is this:

The entertainment industry is at a crossroads because the internet has essentially acted as a disruptive technology, in that it is providing alternative access to content and/or services that were previously the sole domain of thoroughly entrenched, system-wide gatekeepers.

Read that paragraph again, and we could be talking about the legal profession.

Garese notes that "the argument is often made that the internet is putting thousands of people out of work and killing off professional content."

This same argument is heard in legal office hallways, as well, as the internet has modified access to legal content (i.e., online legal forms sites and legal information sites), the cost of legal work (LPO, virtual attorneys, and virtual associates), and the physical proximity of legal service providers (i.e., skype, VOIP, social networking, and every other online tool that allows people thousands of miles apart to share a virtual office).

But Garese dismisses that argument, saying "This may or may not be true, however it’s irrelevant for the following reason: disruptive technologies always put people out of work…temporarily."

Temporarily. Because new models emerge. That is fact. Not a question of 'if', but 'what' and 'when'. Just like a forest fire is nature's way of clearing out the dead mass so that new growth can emerge.

While Garese's summation is aimed at the entertainment industry, it is also so directly appicable to the legal profession that it's worth quoting in full.

Big changes to established industries are both painful to the aforementioned established companies, and an opportunity to the more nimble. Business models will change drastically over the next few years to compensate and remain relevant, but when everyone is comfortable there’s no room or interest in changes.

Right now, entertainment is in a low-to-mid-level state of chaos. There’s little confidence in the status-quo, and unlike past decades no one seems to know what the future will bring. This means that those who are willing to experiment will have first opportunity to rewrite the rules. Those who are content to live with the status quo will be replaced. This is equally true across the entire scale of entertainment, from large to small. We’re well placed in a disrupted field, and that presents unprecedented opportunities.

So what is the future of entertainment? It’s up to us to decide. All of us. Because we now have a seat at the table. Fortune (in all forms) favors the bold.

So grab a seat and speak up.

Legal Rebels

The ABA Journal has started a new feature they're calling Legal Rebels. Their intent is to shine a light on the current transformation taking place in the business of the legal profession.

Obviously, they're preaching to the choir, as far as we're concerned.

The opening paragraphs from their new website frame it nicely:

In these times of great economic chaos lies great opportunity.

The legal profession is not just struggling through a recession, but also undergoing a structural break with the past. There is a growing consensus that the profession that emerges from the recession will be different in fundamental ways from the one that entered it.

Dozens of lawyers nationwide aren't waiting for change. Day by day, they're remaking their corners of the profession. These mavericks are finding new ways to practice law, represent their clients, adjudicate cases and train the next generation of lawyers. Most are leveraging the power of the Internet to help them work better, faster and different.

The Legal Rebels project will profile these innovators and describe the changes they are making. It will tell their stories in the ABA Journal, on this website and through a variety of social media channels using text, pictures, audio and video. The first of these profiles will appear here on August 25. Several will be added weekly through the end of November.

We're looking forward to keeping an eye on the Legal Rebels project.