The Jenga Don’t Lie: BigLaw Relies on the Whole of its Parts

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandias is instructive for those who believe that large law firms will always have an unassailable stranglehold on the vast majority of corporate legal work:

I met a traveller from an antique land, 
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, 
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; 

And on the pedestal, these words appear: 
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; 
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! 

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare 
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Much like Shelley’s traveller, 25 years from now we may only vaguely remember the names of the current members of BigLaw club; just as we vaguely remember law firms like Dewey & LeBoeuf and Heenan Blaikie today. [In Mitch’s article I have taken the liberty of eliding ‘Big Law’ into ‘BigLaw‘. The latter form connotes the business model that underpins – and is the cause of – many of the challenges faced by law firms that rely on the dynamics of the model as it currently operates.]

I base this assertion on Richard and Daniel Susskind’s astounding suggestions in their latest work, The Future of the Professions. They claim that the purpose of the legal profession is nothing more than to produce and distribute practical legal expertise to clients. And furthermore, we are now living in a time where the production and distribution of legal expertise can be done by other means.

By extension, therefore, I suggest that the only purpose of BigLaw is to produce and distribute practical legal expertise at a size, scale and complexity that is required for corporate clients.

And if that is correct, we need to determine if we are now living in a time where the production and distribution of legal expertise, at a size, scale and complexity that is required for corporate clients, can be done by other means.

To answer this question, it’s helpful to consider legal work undertaken by BigLaw as akin to a gigantic Jenga® game. Each Jenga block of legal work adds to the health of BigLaw; removing them diminishes that health. Over the past 50 years BigLaw has risen like a sturdy set of Jenga blocks; in fact growth prior to 2008 was of historic proportions; but since then, growth has been anemic.

Besides the obvious economic conditions, something else is at play.

For BigLaw clients who are unable to increase the size of their legal teams, they’re beginning to become more comfortable with disaggregating work and using alternative providers for certain files and certain aspects of BigLaw files.

We have heard for years that the “more for less” challenge has driven the growth of in-house legal teams. And yet general counsel around the world – the core clients of BigLaw – still overwhelmingly tell the market they would prefer to grow their internal teams even larger. As internal teams increase in size, shifting legal work away from BigLaw, they take out a slew of Jenga blocks required for the health of BigLaw.

For BigLaw clients who are unable to increase the size of their legal teams, they’re beginning to become more comfortable with disaggregating work and using alternative providers for certain files and certain aspects of BigLaw files. This activity removes another slew of Jenga blocks required for the health of BigLaw.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Google’s Deep Mind®, IBM’s Watson®, ROSS® and Kira Systems® should convince you that technology can and will increasingly displace the number of lawyers needed to do a set of tasks. To paraphrase the Susskinds: systems and machines, operating alone or operated by people that look very unlike traditional professionals, will take on more and more of the tasks that we associate with BigLaw lawyers. Again, Jenga blocks that are required for the health of BigLaw are removed.

Once the Jenga blocks are removed from BigLaw, they never return.

Author

‘The Death of Big Law’ is a phrase often used as a vague notion or as hyperbole to fill event rosters and sell books. Read the opposing view in this debate, authored by Josh Kubicki, which will be re-published in Dialogue next week.