In putting together an article this week on the tough times that some solo and small firm practitioners are going through, I talked with LaVern Pritchard, the founder of the LawMoose search engine and the moderator of the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Solo/Small Firm Listserv. I asked LaVern why, in his opinion, some lawyers don’t have enough work to do.
“While the situation is a generalization, the reasons are a combination of causes or explanations, ranging from global (worldwide economic downturn, for example) to the highly specific (an individual’s unpreparedness for solo practice, for example),” he said.
In an e-mail Pritchard provided these specific reasons:
- Too many new lawyers;
- Too many lawyers of all stripes who practice the same old way without innovations;
- Freeze or reduction in many public sector legal employment opportunities;
- Clients’ difficulty in identifying a reasonable universe of lawyers from which to put on their short lists for selection, which leads to less than optimal lawyer-client matching;
- Work hoarding by lawyers either as a long-term behavior or a short-term personal coping strategy, creating ripple effects for lawyers who might otherwise have received the delegated work;
- Long-term decline of the apprenticeship model and failure of law schools to prepare new lawyers for the real world new lawyers face these days;
- Inadequacies in continuing legal education and some firms to train lawyers in the full range of practice skills;
- Denial across the profession that the good times of the last few years could ever eventually end and that law practice is subject to the same risks and same imperative to evolve as the rest of the world;
- Society’s scaling back on legal services to the poor;
- Massive amounts of legal information and compliance advice added to the Internet by governments, nonprofits, associations and lawyers themselves;
- Lawyers’ voluntary concentration in metropolitan areas where lawyer competition is highest;
Clients’ own financial difficulties, viewing legal services as an unaffordable luxury or akin to a visit to the dentist for a root canal, an unpleasant experience; - Sophisticated clients’ reuse of lawyers’ work and building their own internal capabilities, including in contract negotiation and drafting and compliance,
- Corporate counsels putting the squeeze on their outside law firms;
- Law firms’ panic at the recession, showing it wasn’t really one for all and all for one, with cuts, deferrals and expulsions, however labeled;
- Offshoring work that associates used to do; and
- Outsourcing to specialized providers who claim more expertise or lower cost than lawyers.
“I’m sure [there are] scores of other reasons,” Pritchard wrote.
We’d like to hear your thoughts. Do you agree with LaVern? Are there other factors going on out there affecting the legal market? What are they?
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Too many lawyers, too many law students, too many new law schools being greenlighted. Law school is a cash business that is backed by an endless supply of easy federal loans available to anyone who can get a 150 on the LSAT. Schools are roping in more and more students who are seeking refuge from the recession with the idea that a J.D. will help them land a job. Nationally, law school applications were up 2.2% to nearly 80,000 for the past admissions cycle.
With the ABA (“Always Be Accrediting”) approving new schools at a breakneck pace, there will be no shortage of un/underemployed lawyers. Sadly, unlike other professional organizations (the AMA comes to mind), the ABA has no interest in regulating entry to the profession and keeping the number of lawyers at a sustainable level. However, it’s unlikely that most new graduates will ever gain “entry” the profession, because you actually need a job and clients to do so.
It’s interesting that the general response to this topic seems to be ‘too many lawyers, too many students, schools admitting anyone and everyone.\ It’s pretty simple…the legal profession is finally succumbing to marketplace pressures like any other profession. Are there too many salespeople? Business executives? Middle managers? Airline pilots? Why do schools continue to offer training in those professions when so many are laid off or out of work? The legal profession and the professionals in it simply need to adapt to market pressures. It’s a principle as old as time and for the first time is having a significant impact in the legal marketplace. It’s actually quite healthy. Those individuals and firms that adapt will ultimately thrive. Those that whine won’t.
“Adapt to market pressures” = be unemployed. God bless that free market, it sure makes everything work out.
I’m confused. Are Mr. Pritchard’s comments aimed at the dearth of work at small firms and among small practitioners, or at the legal profession more generally?
We all know cause and effect isn’t simple, particularly as one generalizes. But, in general, everything is related to everything else. Change one part of the ecosystem and the others have to adjust. Solo and small firm lawyers are just some of the players in a very complex, interconnected web of activity. Because most lawyers in private practice are solo practitioners or in small firms, general trends in law practice and general trends in client and potential client behavior affect them along with everyone else. A lot of issues are at play, some long term and general, some fairly recent, and some fairly specific. Some solo and small firm lawyers are far more affected than others. One could assert the most affected are the canaries in the coal mine.
One item that LaVern neglected to mention was the unwillingness or inability to market one’s practice. I certainly agree with LaVern that there are too many lawyers and the competition keeps increasing. I would have loved to have asked those surveyed what they are doing with all of the free time they have now with business so slow. I would bet the ranch that the vast majority have not been using the time to market.
Mr. Pritchard –
Any thoughts about what some good books would be on these trends of which you speak?
Thanks for a very salient point, Mr. Ginsburg. Even in a bad market, which lawyers sink and which lawyers swim is more than a function of blind chance. Business won’t just find you.
A short extract from an innovation bibliography I put together for two law practice innovation seminars I taught last year at Hennepin County Bar Assn. CLE:
Books on a Variety of Subjects, All Ultimately Relevant to Law Practice Innovation and / or the Internet, Some of Which You May Have Read, Some of Which You Probably Need to Read If You Haven’t
1. Only the Paranoid Survive, Andrew S. Grove, Currency Doubleday, 1996
Managing through “strategic inflection points”, ten times as powerful as you planned for, when the old rules don’t work and you haven’t yet learned the new ones. Some say the legal world has come to a strategic inflexion point and will never go back to “business as usual.”.
Written in the mid-90s, this book nonetheless speaks to the current challenges of managing in turbulent times and wrestling with changing forms of competition and technology.
2. The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen, Harper Business, paperback edition 2000
3. Blown to Bits – How The New Economics Of Information Transforms Strategy, Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster, Harvard Business School Press, 2000
4. Inside/Outside – How Businesses Buy Legal Services, Larry Smith, ALM Publishing, 2001
5. Diffusion of Innovations, 5th ed., Everett M. Rogers, Free Press 2003
Diffusion of innovations have been studied by researchers in many disciplines, examining many different kinds of innovations, in many different cultures. Rogers explains in detail how and why diffusion of innovations seems to be a universal communications process, following a predictable model. Some of the classic diffusion of innovation studies involve farmers’ adoptions of agricultural innovations such as hybrid seed corn here in the Midwest and the package of products and practices known today as the Green Revolution around the world. Some others: new technologies, public health practices, spread of new laws such as anti-smoking ordinances, new medical treatments, and new educational methods. Many innovations fail. Others are resisted because they are regarded as negative innovations. Some are transformed during their adoption cycle. Some lead to negative consequences their promoters and early adopters did not at all foresee. This is the motherlode synthesis of decades of work by scholars’ studies.
6. A Whole New Mind – Moving From The Information Age To The Conceptual Age, Daniel H. Pink, Riverhead Books, 2005
6. Urban Lawyers – The New Social Structure Of The Bar, John P. Heinz, Robert L. Nelson, Rebecca L. Sandefur, and Edward O. Laumann, The University of Chicago Press, 2005
A revealing social X-ray of the legal profession.
7. Thinking for a Living – How to Get Better Performance and Results from Knowledge Workers, Thomas H. Davenport, Harvard Business School Press, 2005
8. The Search – How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, Portfolio, 2005
9. Five Minds For The Future, Howard Gardner, Harvard Business School Press, 2006
10. The Long Tail – Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, Chris Anderson, Hyperion, 2006
11. Everything Is Miscellaneous – The Power Of The New Digital Disorder, David Weinberger, Times Books, 2007
12. Glut – Mastering Information Through The Ages, Alex Wright, Joseph Henry Press, 2007
You’ll notice virtually none of these books are by legal authors. That’s because one mostly has to look and read outside the legal profession to identify innovations that are happening or likely will happen.