Managing Legal
The Point Physicians and business lawyers: The work of both professions is consequential for those they serve. On the capabilities of the first group depend life and death of their patients — literal, personal health outcomes. On the capabilities of the second group depend — if not life and death and personal health — people’s […]
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A Billable Hours Standard Hurts Attorneys’ Health — and It Impairs the Quality of their Work
The Point The legal profession’s business model incentivizes physical and mental exhaustion by looking to hours billed as the yardstick by which an attorney is measured. This is bad for the lawyer and bad for the client. This Matters to Your Business A recent piece in the Financial Times documents this (“Junior lawyer burnout:M&A boom […]
Another Lesson from the FisherBroyles Law Firm: Inexperience Has No Place on Your Company’s Legal Team
The Point In a recent post, this blog covered the FisherBroyles law firm, which recently won acclaim for becoming one of the 200 highest revenue U.S. law firms (“AmLaw 200”). It has no offices, no associates, and no secretaries—what partner James Fisher calls, “the headwinds of profitability.” As to “no associates”, since its inception 20 […]
Law Firms to Pay $200,000 a Year to Law Grads Who Have Never Practiced — Inexperience Is Costly
The Point Earlier this month several top U.S. law firms announced that they’d be paying 2021 law graduates $200,000 per year (Wall Street Journal: “Entry-Level Lawyers Are Now Making $200,000 a Year”). Whether the law firms account for this as overhead (very unlikely), or pay for it by charging clients for the time of such […]
COVID-19’s Lesson for Managing Legal Risk: Tough Times Demand that You Cut to the Chase (Part 1 of 3)
THE POINT Wall Street Journal, Saturday / Sunday, April 11-12, 2020, commenting on New York State’s response to COVID-19’s demands on its healthcare system: ” … New York’s biggest force multiplier has been regulatory relief.” DISCUSSION I invite your attention to my recent series: “‘Ethics’ Rules Shape the Legal Services Market: To Protect Clients? Or […]
Sometimes I Am Shocked to be Reminded of How Un-Businesslike Lawyers’ Hourly Billing Model Really Is
Last Thursday (March 5, 2020) I was, for the umpteenth time, shocked to be reminded of how un-businesslike the legal industry’s billable hour-based business model really is. I say “un-businesslike” rather than “crazy” — or something more colorful — because the clients I serve are businesses themselves. And their businesses succeed or fail based on […]
Bet-the-Company vs. Just-Run-the Company: Legal Tasks Vary — And So Should Their Price
On bringing to Legal the same cost, staffing, and technology disciplines that apply everywhere else in the business enterprise — other than Legal — cooler heads have emerged. But they have not yet prevailed. Many lawyers still blow litigation dangers and regulatory peril out of proportion to their real magnitude and immediacy. Hit them in […]
Protecting a Business from Legal Risks is a Management Role — With Lawyers as Supporting Cast, Not as the Director
After 12 years running two divisions at Whirlpool Financial, and then as an executive at GE — and having been a business lawyer before that, and thereafter — I have reached this conclusion: Protecting the business from legal risk should be entrusted mainly to management — with attorneys accountable to the CFO, COO, or some […]
Artificial Intelligence Can Cut Clients’ Attorney Fees, While Offering More Accuracy: Salazar Law Firm & ROSS Intelligence
The legal profession as a whole tends to resist adoption of new technologies that can save on lawyer time and enhance the accuracy of work product. This is because the legal profession’s prevailing business model is based on the following: Hourly billing, rather than pricing according to the task performed; Multiply the lawyers assigned to a […]
Conventional Law Firms (& In-House Departments) Who Claim a “Customer Focus” But Ignore Client Companies’ Basic Operational Needs
Conventional law firms working to their profession’s prevailing business model — with its various forms of built-in waste — often claim to have a “customer focus”. And the in-house law departments who hire these conventional law firms may make the same claim. But creating waste — or tolerating that waste by paying the bill for […]