idealawg

The legal profession is changing, but how?

High salaries and prestige, training and loyalty, alternatives to traditional law firms, and generational differences are just a few of the topics addressed in  "Junior Associate Woes - The State of the Legal Profession, Part 2" (FindLaw), an article reporting on a symposium held last month at Stanford Law. Although I urge you the read the article in its entirety, below are a few excerpts I found most provocative of thought.

"Young lawyers want to work at home in their pajamas, looking at their fish tanks and listening to their iPods," said Gordon Davidson, Partner and Chairman, Fenwick & West LLP. Although his statement is tongue-in-cheek, it captures the "play ethic" embodied in younger generations.
. . .
According to some lawyers who post on FindLaw's Greedy Associates, the current state of the profession is so unfulfilling that there is a distinct career path for attorneys, from "BigLaw through to non-legal employment." Essentially, the professional life of an attorney is a progression from money to self-fulfillment.

. . ."The law firm that cracks the lifestyle

Three new serial features announced for THE COMPLETE LAWYER: Solo practice, ADR, and the billable hour

Don Hutcheson, publisher of The Complete Lawyer, is adding several new features as announced on the blogosphere today.

First, Susan Cartier Liebel tells us:

[T]his month is my writing debut for The Complete Lawyer  (which currently has an on-line readership of more than 400,000 and growing).  The March/April edition focuses on women in the law and I will be their main contributor on all matters solo. You can read my article here. I feel very privileged to be writing for this publication and to be in such esteemed and talented company.

Next, I announced the new ADR column at The Complete Lawyer: "The Human Factor."

And Ron Baker, the guru of value pricing, posted about his new series:

The Complete Lawyer provides “Tools and insights on professional development, quality of life, and career issues that impact every lawyer’s success and satisfaction.”

[T]hey will be running a 4-part series of articles, the first one is an interview with me on The Firm of the Future.

The next three will deal with Value Pricing. . .  .

Much going on over at The Complete Lawyer.

Note (added March 21, 2008, 7:49 PM Mountain): Julie Fleming-Brown has posted an overview of the current edition of The Complete Lawyer, including of an article she wrote: "The Whole Enchilada" about what women lawyers want.

White Shoe, Black Hat: MICHAEL CLAYTON's devastating critique of the legal profession

A review of the movie Michael Clayton was published at Salon.com today. Click to read "White Shoe, Black Hat: Michael Clayton's devastating critique of the legal profession." The article includes commentary on the legal profession, such as:

Whatever the explanation, Michael Clayton offers an only slightly exaggerated portrait of a profession undergoing a kind of slow-motion existential crisis. It does so at a time when in the real world, midlevel associates are dropping out in droves. At Sullivan and Cromwell, where annual associate attrition has reached 30 percent, management recently prevailed on partners to "be sensitive to not canceling associates' vacations." Firms are attempting to accommodate the lifestyles of their employees in a variety of ways, from "kindness committees" to weekly yoga sessions.

Interesting read. Have any of you seen the movie? What did you think?

"If I had two billion dollars" from Law21: Dispatches from a legal profession on the brink

Excerpt from Jordan Furlong's post If I had two billion dollars:

There is persuasive authority for the proposition that if I had a million dollars, I’d buy your love. So what would I be able to buy with two billion dollars? Apparently, a whole lot of wide-eyed attention and breathless commentary from various legal media outlets. That’s pretty much all I’ve seen over the last few days after Latham & Watkins, DLA Piper and Skadden Arps each announced that it had broken the $2 billion revenue barrier in 2007.

Now, if this is the sort of thing you like, then the foregoing links will give you more than enough to pass the weekend, what with the debates over total firm revenue versus profit per partner versus profit per equity partner, each metric relatively able or unable to determine the richest and/or most profitable large law firm in the world. For myself, I’d like to step back here and suggest that the more we obsess

Legal Highlight #12: Rochael M. Soper

Rochael Soper is our twelfth Legal Highlight. Soper is a negotiator and an entertainment lawyer practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area. I learned about her when she was interviewed for a San Francisco Chronicle article "ZEN and the art of lawyering." (idealawg blog post on that article.)

Please click back to the first of the Legal Highlights to learn about the Legal Highlights process and the reason behind this idealawg feature which focuses on what is right and working well in the legal profession. Here are all the Legal Highlight interviews.

And now read on the see what this Legal Highlight has to say in response to the seven questions . . .

1) Think about your experience in the legal profession and of a specific incident or event that made you feel extremely satisfied or proud. Give a brief description of the incident or event. The reasons I felt satisfied or proud were . . .

Recently I had an opportunity to raise the issue of diversity (particularly racial) with a client of mine and how they, as a company, might be depriving themselves and their clients of the benefits of having a more diverse community of employees.  And conversely, how being a company composed mostly of white, educated, upper middle class people, they were likely recycling and reinforcing conclusions and insights rather than really expanding their borders.  I shared with them how many law firms’ clients had demanded diversity from the law firms that represented them and posed that they may want to consider diversifying before their clients either imposed it on them or went with competitors who did understand the benefits of diversity.  I was able to share this because of the emphasis in California on elimination of bias in the profession and the many lectures I’ve listened to or discussions I’ve led on the topic.  Many at my client were surprised to hear that the legal profession had been so dynamic in their efforts to diversify.

2) I attended law school because . . .

I was smart and loved learning and knew I would continue on to graduate school of some kind.  I was drawn to law school because it was a great degree to have and I felt it would give me many opportunities in life.

3) I would recommend the practice of law because . . .

I do not recommend the practice of law often because I sense that many people get into the law for the wrong reasons and end up being very unhappy.  I also do not recommend the practice of law in large law firms beyond a couple of years of training because my experience in big firms was very life-depleting.  I would recommend the practice for people who feel strongly about the role of law in society and the need for good stewards of the law.

4) My colleagues who practice law appreciate doing so because . . .

Two essay contests for lawyers: One on work/life balance and the other on the legal profession as the "best profession in the world"

From the ABA Journal:

"$1K Offered for Best Work/Life Essay, $5K for Legal Profession Essay"

Posted Jan 18, 2008, 01:47 pm CST   
By Martha Neil

A $1,000 prize is being offered by the Ms. JD law blog and the Project for Attorney Retention for the best essay of 1,500 words or less on work/life balance.

The contest is intended to address the question: "How Do We Close the Gap Between Baby Boomers and Millennials on Work/Life Balance?" according to Ms. JD, which provides an online application form. It is apparently open both to lawyers and law students.

Essays must be submitted by Feb. 29, and the winner will be announced by March 28.

Meanwhile, members of the American Bar Association are also invited to submit an essay of 600 words or less to the ABA's Ross Essay Contest, which also provides an online entry form. This year's question is "Why do you believe the legal profession is the greatest profession in the world?"

The deadline for entries is March 3, and the prize for the winning essay is $5,000.

The Lawyer's Commandments by Eduardo Juan Couture

These ten wise commandments for lawyers were written by Eduardo Juan Couture and translated by James A. Diaz.

The Lawyer's Commandments

I. Study: The law is changing constantly. If you do not follow in its footsteps, each day you will be a lawyer less and less.

II. Think: The law is learned by studying, but it is practiced by thinking.

III. Work: The law is an arduous battle placed at the service of justice.

IV. Strive: Your duty is to strive for the law, but the day you find conflict between law and justice, strive for justice.

V. Be Loyal: Loyal to your client whom you should never abandon even when you learn he or she is not worthy of you; loyal to your adversaries even when they are disloyal to you; loyal to the judge, who is not knowledgeable of the facts and must rely on what you tell him or her, and, as to the law, every now and then must rely on what you advocate.

The last 5 commandments are here or here. (Hat tip for the second link to Law Is Cool.)

On an aligned note, here is A Physician's Affirmation by Dr. Fredrick Ralph Abrams (a wonderful man with whom I have had the pleasure of talking on several occasions).

Educating the new professionals: "In but not of" the legal institution

Change magazine published "A New Professional: The Aims of Education Revisited" by Parker J. Palmer. In this article, Palmer looks at how to educate the new professional and he defines that professional as

a person who is not only competent in his or her discipline but has the skill and the will to deal with the institutional pathologies that threaten the profession's highest standards.

He distinguishes between professions and their institutions.

[T]he functions of a profession are not necessarily those of the institutional structures that house it. The fact that we have schools does not mean we have education. The fact that we have hospitals does not mean we have health care. The fact that we have courts does not mean we have justice. We need professionals who are "in but not of" their institutions, whose allegiance to the core values of their fields makes them resist the institutional diminishment of those values.

I find that paragraph to be very provocative of thought. How about you?

Parker then asks,

How might we prepare students to be teachers, lawyers, physicians, and clergy—to say nothing of parents and neighbors and citizens—who can help transform the institutions that dominate our lives?

He makes five proposals which I will list here. I urge you to read the article for fuller explanation of what he is recommending by each of these five.

• (1) We must help our students uncover, examine, and debunk the myth that institutions are external to and constrain us, as if they possessed powers that render us helpless—an assumption that is largely unconscious and wholly untrue.
• (2) We must take our students' emotions as seriously as we take their intellects.

Lawyers and depression: Two podcasts

Late last month, Australia's ABC Radio National program"Life Matters" broadcast a two-part look at lawyers and depression. By going to their Web site, you may listen to both segments (or click on the links at the end of this post). From the first part's Web page:

By its nature, the legal profession is fiercely competitive.

Entry to law courses at university demands high marks and then there's competition to get positions in the major law firms.

Hours are long and the pressure is high.

This takes a psychological toll. Research shows that the incidence of depression in the legal profession is between two and four times the rate of the general population.

The Tristan Jepson Memorial Fund helps highlight the issues of mental illness across the legal profession, from students to judges.

From the Web page at which you can listen the second segment:

The Complete Lawyer: "It's like Oprah for lawyers."

This is how Jeremy Colby of A Buffalo Lawyer characterized The Complete Lawyer: "It's like Oprah for lawyers." Great observation, Jeremy. Do you readers agree? Is TCL the legal profession's Oprah?