If you’re interested–really interested–in how to bring innovation to the delivery of legal services, and if you haven’t thoroughly checked out Rich Baer’s blog, ‘Reliance on Counsel” yet, you should stop reading this right now and go there. Now. Seriously…go on. Go. Don’t worry….we’ll wait for you.
[Why are you still here? You shouldn’t be here. Go here instead. C’mon…go…]
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Good. They’re gone. Let’s talk about Pulp Fiction until they get back.
You remember 1994’s Pulp Fiction,right? By Quentin Tarantino? When it hit movieplex screens Pulp Fictionchanged how popular movies tell their stories. Since the early Greek tragedians, popular storytelling in visual media was always structurally the same: events occured chronologically across a three or five act story arc while tensions built and then ultimately resolved. You might get an occasional flashback (Godfather II), or an out-of-sequence coda (the burning Rosebud in Citizen Kane) or an onstage recitation of pivotal off-stage occurrences (“Sorry Hamlet…Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ain’t coming down for breakfast no more. Time to move to plan B”). Basically though, on stage or screen, plots and themes and characters always just progressed sequentially and in rigid lockstep with each other. Beginning. Middle. End. Always. Why such predictability? That’s basically the way we humans operate. A formula for doing something just builds by inertia, accreting over the years and hardening to the point where it seldom gets challenged, even after it has long grown stale.
Quick side thought: If this could happen in a the theater and movie industries, which are ostensibly built on originality and individualism, how might the forces of inertia and accretion stifle innovation in an industry built on adherence to precedent, observance of community standard, and strict avoidance of risk? Hmmm…let’s put that thought aside for a bit. Maybe we’ll think of just such an industry.
Pulp Fiction abruptly changed this rigidity. In the film, events occur in almost random order. Plotlines just barely interrelate. Characters die in one scene, and then appear in later scenes that chronologically took place earlier. Basically, it’s a complete re-shuffling of the traditional movie structure. But it works really well because when Tarantino tosses out the accreted form (sequence…sequence…beginning, middle, end…), he focuses instead on the underlying purpose: storytelling. Because of this focus on story over form, and because of Tarantino’s skillful technique, the center holds: characters develop; plot strings come full circle, tensions rise and resolve, all with great poignancy and salience. As NYT reviewer Janet Maslin noted at the time, “far from confusing his audience, Mr. Tarantino eventually makes the film’s time scheme crystal clear, linking episodes with dialogue that may sound casual but sticks indelibly in memory.”
One indelibly recurring nugget of such dialogue conveys much character growth. Throughout the movie, Samuel L. Jackson’s hitman character, Jules, recites, and alludes to off-camera recitations of, Ezekiel’s emotional prophecy against the Philistines (Ezekiel 25:17).
“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is The Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.”
As he profanely informs us towards the movie’s end (I won’t link to it, but if you search Youtube for some combination of the words Pulp-Fiction-Ending-Diner-Scene, you’ll find the scene pretty quickly), Jules is at something of an inflection point in his life when he drops his last Ezekiel 25:17 on us. He’s been through a lot in the course of fulfilling his duties to his employer. Now, he’s just going to walk the earth for a bit. He doesn’t exactly know where he’ll end up or what he’ll do as he moves away from his previous role (a role he excelled at, by all accounts). But he recognizes that he wants to guide others with what he has seen and learned. He’s trying real hard to be the shepherd.
And that’s really all I wanted to say about Pulp Fiction. By rearranging the stale and accreted practices of his industry, Tarantino revitalized moviemaking, spawning scores of imitators and—for while anyway—making movies a bit less rigid and a bit more interesting. He also makes us remember that it’s never really the existing structure that drives innovation, it’s the characters who emerge from that structure.
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Oh. You’re back. See what we mean about Reliance on Counsel? Someone who actually knows what they’re talking about writing succinctly and well about deep-rooted structural inefficiencies in the legal service delivery model. And then (wait for it….) actually suggesting solutions and offering to help.
Different, huh? Better, right? As we’ve noted before, too many legal blogs are thinly veiled attempts to get the reader to buy whatever legal service or technology the writer is peddling.
Baer isn’t selling anything. As Qwest General Counsel and Chief Administrative Officer he just quarterbacked the massive $20B M&A deal whereby his company got A’ed by and M’ed with CenturyTel without getting F’ed by the government. So, he’s sold enough for a few hundred lifetimes, thank you.
Because of the high-profile jobs he’s held, Rich has been in a unique position to observe how legal services can sometimes do disservice to the clients they’re supposed to serve. Because of how well he did his last job, he probably has an audience that will listen to his suggestions about how these service providers need to adapt. If he’s offering his help now in shepherding industry change, we should all be listening.
So, we encourage you to start reading and keep reading Reliance on Counsel.
Or we will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger.
