Remaking news of the week: No consolidation

Today Remaking the news of the week celebrates some of the American Lawyer’s best writing in years.

On May 22, Hugh Simons and Nicholas Bruch opened their article with “A mistaken and dangerous belief pervades much thinking about the US legal market: that it is consolidating as larger firms grow more quickly than the market by taking share from their smaller rivals. A thoughtful look at the numbers reveals that no such consolidation is happening.”

Barriers to tech adoption in BigLaw

Remaking news of the week: Mergers don’t make sense 

Today’s Remaking the news of the week post is a bit unusual. This a post about a post about a 2012 WSJ article on BigLaw firm mergers. Ron is a brilliant blogger (and an active contributor to Dialogue), so I read his argument all the more carefully, asking myself ‘Is this still true?’. And I concluded, yes it is – and it’s newsworthy.  

Break the law firm business model

Today we re-publish Break the law firm business model, Jordan’s Furlong’s inaugural post on the blog of the ABA’s Center for Innovation, on the Advisory Board of which Jordan serves. He starts by quoting what is becoming an apocryphal statement by Neota Logic founder Michael Mills: “Innovation destroys hours” and goes on to say those three words in a 2014 blog post summarize the fundamental challenge that every law firm faces today. They reflect two market realities that are inherently incompatible with each other.

Since I published Remaking Law Firms: Why & How in 2016 (ABA) the realisation that the business model of BigLaw firms is their Achilles heel has been gathering momentum. Jordan concludes this post by addressing BigLaw leaders and owners: “You’re going to have to change your law firm’s business model eventually”; read on to understand the logic of his argument.

Remaking news of the week: Equity profit-sharing

Today’s Remaking the news of the week post is on the old chestnut and increasingly thorny topic of equity profit-sharing.

Why the economics of free agency should worry partners

Some years ago, during a conference of BigLaw leaders in Chicago, I came to understand why the economics of free agency should worry partners in BigLaw firms. Until then I had not paid full attention to the free agent phenomenon.

David Parnell opens his book on The Failing Law Firm with an exposition of the adverse impact of free agents on that American religion, baseball. With David Goener, I updated the analysis of why law firms fail in this October 2017 post.