From Georgetown Law: Dinner with Richard Susskind, John Palfrey, Paul Lippe, Mark Harris, and Jeffrey Carr

Our coverage of “Law Firm Evolution:  Brave New World or Business As Usual?”, a conference held March 21-23, 2010 by the Georgetown Center for the Study of the Legal Profession.  For all our posts on the conference click here.

Reported by:   Gregory P Bufithis, Esq.    Founder,  ThePosseList.com and ProjectCounsel.com  

The dinner/panel discussion was titled “What is our legacy to the next generation of lawyers?” and featured as the keynote speaker Richard Susskind, IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England but best known for his book “The End of Lawyers?”   In his keynote address he spoke about the evolving and fluid spectrum of legal services categories, the deep and rapid technological advances changing the law firm business model, and the “decomposition of legal tasks” into component parts.  For our full video interview with Richard click here.

The remainder of the panel was composed of Paul Lippe (Founder and CEO, Legal On-Ramp), Mark Harris (CEO and Founder, Axiom), Jeffrey W. Carr (Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary, FMC Technologies Inc.) and John Palfrey (Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law; Vice Dean, Library and Information Resources, Harvard Law School; Faculty Co-Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society). 

Paul Lippe (panel moderator) started us off with his presentation “Is There A“NewNormal” For Law?” and made a great analogy with Lewsi and Clark and Google Maps.  The essence of his point:  the law firm model is like Lewis & Clark:  just go out and explore.   For the rest of world that “gets it” …. well, they use Google maps.  Paul’s point is quite simple:  law firms have always insisted “we are different” but they are missing the boat and need to realize that their way is gone and they need to do what so many other businesses (and the law is a business) have done to become successful.  Paul spoke of the “new normal”  and the and how different structures will delivering legal services. 

Paul had several themes:

1.  In law, the attitude has been “more is always better”–smarter, more credentialed people working more hours in bigger firms; for clients “better is better.”  In the new normal, the theme will be alternate staffing, as clients and firms show that there are a great array of folks who can deliver outstanding work product in different organizational settings.

2. In law, prices have only gone up; for clients, prices of lots of goods and services (including the ones they sell) have gone down. In the new normal, the theme will be predictable pricing, where clients and firms share a reasonable expectation of price and value, and work together to meet it.

3. In law, the attitude has been “what we do is so complex it can’t be measured.” Meanwhile, clients have grown accustomed to measuring everything. In the new normal, the theme will be defined quality, where work product will be assessed according to explicit, outcome-based criteria.

4.  In law, the emphasis has been on “bet the company” matters, driven sometimes by Eliot Spitzer (pre-scandal) and his ilk. For clients, every day is a “bet the company” day due to intensifying global competition. In the new normal, the theme will be client intimacy, where firms do a better job of enabling success and preventing failure (including pre-empting “bet the company” scenarios altogether) by being more tightly integrated with and knowledgeable about clients.

5. In law, the way to do things is usually “how it’s always been done”; for clients there is a relentless questioning of “how can we do this better?” In the new normal, the theme will be technology enhanced services, where new tools enhance, but don’t displace, smart lawyers, enabling them to work better.

6. In law, the attitude toward innovation has been “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”; for clients the underlying awareness has been “somewhere a 26-year old is inventing something that will blow up your business.” In the new normal, the theme will be process innovation, where firms and clients find ways to do work better, faster, and cheaper.

For Paul’s full presentation click here.

For Mark Harris, the demand for corporate legal services broadly segments into three categories: 

1.  experience

2.  effciency

3.  exceptional events

The legal demand that arises from exceptional events are urgent, episodic, material to the overall corporation and can require rare expertise. !ese events are often handled by hierarchical, heavily infrastructured and expensive firms.

The legal demand of experience is of moderate urgency, material to the internal business unit, and requires sophisticated legal training and skills, industry expertise, and integrated knowledge of the client’s business.  This work is often handled by in-house counsel or firms such as Axiom or boutique or regional law firms.

The legal demand of efficiency is high volume, quasi-legal in nature, and can require process expertise.  This workload is often handled by paralegals, temp attorneys and LPOs given that efficient workflows have been established to best suit the needs of the company.

Jeffrey Carr is, to say the least, a visionary general counsel.  In a way, his message is also simple/basic:  “we are not lawyers.  We are business people with legal training forged into a cohesive legal team committed to the success of FMC Technologies through focused effectiveness, relentless efficiency, constant improvement, creative disruption and unyielding integrity”.   He spoke about the FMC legal “tool box” which involved numerous vendors, teams and technologies and (roughly) broke down like this: 

*  Integrated matter management –Serengeti

*  Performance based pay –ACES

*  Early case assessment –Decision Pro

*  Streamlining process –P-Card, Serengeti, Sharepoint

* Driving Performance –Meaningful metrics & Snapshot

*  Delivery/Execution –Project & monthly MPR

*  Leveraging internal knowledge –Sharepoint

*  Leveraging external knowledge –Legal On Ramp

*  Leveraging resources –“Cook Book”; Guidelines

*  Leveraging time/space –Webex; Telepresence

*  Continuous Improvement –L2A2

He ended with what may become the quote for the legal industry:  “If you dislike Change, you’re going to dislike Irrelevance even More”  (U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki)

For Jeffrey’s full presentation click here.

John Palfrey (author of an excellent book Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives and among other roles director of Harvard’s library and co-chair of the IT committee)  came with a clear understanding of the competition and global shifts affecting law firms.

He said that the competition for clients and the best talent in lawyers (especially new, young ones) is getting increasingly fierce.   This competition will also lead law firms to explore a broader range of strategies and business models than ever before.   The ecology of types of firms will get increasingly mixed.   A truly consistently first-class firm will continue to be able to charge a premium and will succeed.   But not all law firms can be consistently first-class across all offices.

One view is that U.S. firms will have to adopt a “more internationalist approach” as business continues to head East.  Without an Asia strategy (China and India in particular), no firm can have a leading global practice over the next 10 to 15 years.  The big challenge will be integration of cultures in global practices.  One challenge: developing international skills and dropping the baggage of a colonial past.   The litigation business is much higher for the U.S. firms than for big European firms; and litigation can be huge in the local US market.  There is less need to fish in other ponds for big US firms as there is for European firms, for instance.  What it means to be a “global law firm” is an elastic definition.