*Interesting to see this ultimate class of American mandarins discovering modern instability. Cue Anatole France.
*"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
via @allenvarney
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/paradigm_shift/
"The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift—one that will leave it dramatically transformed in the coming years.
"There’s no doubt that the financial crisis beginning late in 2007 was for most lawyers a game-changer, prompting drastic measures as firms laid off thousands of associates, de-equitized partners, and slashed budgets and new hires.
"But many hoped—and still do—that the effects of the recession would ebb, and that the profession, which had just witnessed a golden age of prosperity unmatched by any other industry, would re-emerge relatively unscathed.
"The golden era is gone, but this is not because the law itself is becoming less relevant. Rather, the sea change reflects an urgent need for better and cheaper legal services that can keep pace with the demands of a rapidly globalizing world. The Great Recession—a catalyst for change—provided an opportunity to re-examine some long-standing assumptions about lawyers and the clients they serve.
"Whether BigLaw lawyers, boutique specialists or solo practitioners, U.S. lawyers can expect slower rates of market growth that will only intensify competitive pressures and produce a shakeout of weaker competitors and slimmer profit margins industrywide. Law students will find ever-more-limited opportunity for the big-salary score, but more jobs in legal services outside the big firms. Associates’ paths upward will fade as firms strain to keep profits per partner up by keeping traditional leverage down.
"And those who wish to rise above the disruption will have to deal with technology that swallows billable work, a world market that takes the competition international, and a more sophisticated corporate client with vast knowledge available at the click of a mouse. (((A mouse the client can use to figure out how he himself was disrupted.)))
"NO HISTORY (((why do people keep saying that)))
"The biggest problem affecting U.S. lawyers is a failure to understand the origins of our own success. For nearly a century, industry after industry underwent dramatic transformation while lawyers continued to ply their artisan trade. Many lawyers prospered under this conservative path because the substance of what they did was too important to an increasingly complex, interconnected economy.
"No more. As the balance of power shifts from traditional law firms and toward clients and a raft of tech-savvy legal services vendors, the price of continued prosperity for lawyers is going to be innovation and doing more with less.
"Law touches on virtually every aspect of our social, political and economic lives. As the world becomes more interconnected and complex, new legislation, regulation and treaties bind us all together in ways that promote safety, cooperation and prosperity. Not surprisingly, over the last 25 years government data shows legal services constitute a slightly larger proportion of the nation’s GDP—now nearly 2 percent—with no hint of decline. (((Okay, what about the obvious decline of international law? What safety, cooperation and prosperity is being described here?)))
"However a very different piece of evidence is the change in total law firm employment, or lack thereof. According to payroll data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, the multidecade surge in law firm employment hit a plateau in 2004. Between 1998 and 2004, total law firm employment grew by more than 16 percent, or 169,000. Yet between March 2004 and March 2008, several months before the Wall Street meltdown that initiated an unprecedented wave of law firm layoffs, the nation’s law firm sector had already shed nearly 20,000 jobs.
"This is a drop in the bucket for an industry that employed more than 1.1 million workers in 2004. But the flattened number of law firm jobs occurred at the same time major law firms in large urban areas were in a bidding war, taking entry-level salaries from $125,000 to $145,000 to $160,000. The public dialogue in the legal press and blogosphere was so fixated on the rising profits per partner at the nation’s top 100 law firms that the broader, systemic patterns went largely unnoticed—at least until the financial fallout descended in the fall of 2008.
"By overgeneralizing how well the big firms were doing, we failed to notice a slow but fundamental economic shift..."
