Welcome to another edition of my Making Fun of Lawyers series. In this edition, Dear Reader, we’ll discuss attorneys’ and law firms’ well-deserved reputation for resisting change. Is this aversion true across the board? No. Is it a fair general assumption for most firms? From this blogger’s first- and second-hand knowledge, 100%.
Why should any lawyer or firm care? After all, if being change-resistant has worked so far, maybe it’s not a problem.
Alas, this change-resistance hasn’t worked for a great many firms, at least in recent decades. Sure, the industry has proved resilient, with increasing revenues and some overall strong firms.
But look a little deeper. The industry has been consolidating for years. In-house counsel are much less resistant to switching outside counsel, taking work in house, or bidding out work than they once might have handed to one particular firm or another. At the same time, attorneys at law firms have jumped to firms that are more progressive and/or tech-savvy. And while revenues are up at a lot of firms, profitability (measured as profits per equity partner) is a more complex story. In this blogger’s estimation, it’s risen among many large law firms in many cases because the number of equity partners has declined while the number of lawyers generating revenues has increased.
OK, boomer
I was inspired to write this post after reading David Lat’s post on the blog Above the Law titled, “What Good Might Come Out Of The Coronavirus Crisis?” In it, Lat set forth two positive changes for lawyers and firms that he sees coming out of the crisis: (1) a greater openness to working remotely and (2) more tech savvy lawyers (and especially older lawyers).
With all due respect to senior lawyers, for all the experience-based wisdom they bring to running firms, I’ve found them to be the primary resisters to positive changes. Both for clients as well as attorneys and staff in the firm. And while I get that plenty of other industries are backwards and slow to change, law firms are far-too often often comically change-resistant.
Lat spoke to, and quotes in his piece, one of America’s highest-profile lawyers, David Boies. Let me start by saying that I have great admiration for Boies because of his role in same-sex marriage legalization. But on the issues he comments on in Lat’s piece? Hmmm . . . not so much.
Here are the relevant passages that prompted me to write this post: “‘I’ve always been dubious about working remotely,’ Boies told me when we spoke by phone yesterday. ‘I didn’t quite understand how you can have the interactions that are so critical for practice. But now I’m getting into experiences and patterns of working remotely where I’ve developed these same kinds of interactions.’ . . . Boies . . . marveled at how many tech tools he has learned how to use in the past few weeks — out of necessity. ‘I’m meeting with co-counsel by Zoom, I’m arguing to a court of appeals in a few weeks by videoconference, and I’m FaceTiming with my grandkids,’ he said. ‘Like many senior lawyers, I resisted adopting new technologies — but now we’re being forced to, and it’s a good thing.'”
Reading those passages, I almost had an aneurysm. Every single word of what Boies said infuriated me. If you’re an in-house counsel or even an infrequent consumer of legal services and you didn’t have the same reaction as me, I think you’re not reading closely enough. Or you enjoy overspending on legal fees.
Pique me up
What provoked me? Let’s start with the first part of the quote: “I’ve always been dubious about working remotely.” Really?! Did you have hard data supporting your position? I’m gonna guess no. Did you even have ample supporting empirical evidence that you evaluated on the merits? I’m gonna guess that’s a no, too. Do you know how much money you potentially could save by at least being more flexible on remote working and how you could pass savings along to clients? Mmmmm. I’m gonna guess that not only is the answer “no,” but that the thought never even entered your mind. Had it, you probably would have done some research, if not some experiments.
And how about this, “I didn’t quite understand how you can have the interactions that are so critical for practice. But now I’m getting into experiences and patterns of working remotely where I’ve developed these same kinds of interactions.” To paraphrase, Boies essentially says: “Yeah, I had a hunch about something. I didn’t care if it was true in fact. Or at least, I never even considered testing it. Now that I’ve been forced into this situation I see that I was very wrong. How about that.”
I shudder to think how many dollars have been wasted — with consequently higher bills passed on to clients — because lawyers like Boies had a hunch that remote working couldn’t work and therefore dismissed it in whole or in part. I’m going to spitball that the aggregate number of dollars is measurable in the billions every year. And yes, “billions” is not a typo. My math is based on a calculation based on a few hundred dollars an hour wasted daily by tens of thousands of lawyers.
Ditto on this: “. . . Boies . . . marveled at how many tech tools he has learned how to use in the past few weeks — out of necessity. ‘I’m meeting with co-counsel by Zoom, I’m arguing to a court of appeals in a few weeks by videoconference, and I’m FaceTiming with my grandkids,’ he said. ‘Like many senior lawyers, I resisted adopting new technologies — but now we’re being forced to, and it’s a good thing.'”
And there you have it. “Like many senior lawyers, I resisted adopting new technologies — but now we’re being forced to, and it’s a good thing.'” Wow. Just, wow.
Boies will be Boies
Necessity is for sure the mother of invention. But clients have been screaming for years about their outside counsel expenses. These high expenses are in part caused by high and increasing rates. But inefficiency — in no small part resulting from firms’ failure to adopt efficiency-raising technologies — is every much an equal reason.
But I suspect that Boies and other senior lawyers who now are seeing the light — as a result of the COVID-19 crisis exposing the hollowness of their preconceived notions — aren’t yet aware of what I believe will be the real benefit of adopting these changes: those lawyers and firms that change will benefit — financially and otherwise — as much as their clients.
How? I could list dozens of ways. But, to keep things brief, I’ll name three.
First, by conducting more business remotely, expenses related to travel, space rental, etc. will be limited. Any costs related to conducting the business remotely should be minimal by comparison. And by outside counsel and client not having to carve out a ton of extra time to travel to any given destination, both can spend the saved time being even more productive.
Second, more flexible work-from-home policies should benefit parents and other caregivers. Given that women disproportionally are family caregivers, that will benefit them more than men. At least now and for the foreseeable future I think. For an industry long criticized for it’s lack of diversity, including as to women, this change may go some way toward making it easier for caregivers to juggle their responsibilities at and outside of work. Those who are more productive working remotely also likely will be pleased by these more relaxed policies. Perhaps they’ll also be less likely to jump to a competitor, too.
And third, I suspect that senior lawyers adopting technology will result in better legal services. Maybe by these attorneys’ using technologies that free up time for them to work on other issues for the client that they might not have. Or maybe by providing information leading to data-based conclusions rather than conclusions based on hunches. There’s no replacement for the human brain, but a little help doesn’t hurt.
Dear Reader (or at least the lawyers or especially nerdy among you), it’s sad that it may have taken a pandemic to convince senior lawyers of the benefits of long-clamored-for changes. But I suppose one shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
