Got an interesting post from our former intern who is now deeply ensconced in her 2nd year.  Among her other thoughts, she reports that at law schools,”legal technology” basically means “Word and Westlaw” and nothing else. 

Take it away, embedded 2-L…

“The thing lawyers have in common with everyone else is the need to find balance. Balance between work and home, business and pleasure, etc. Then, there is also the balance between tradition and technology. This is particularly relevant to lawyers, especially given the world we live in. Lawyers are often trained to think in terms of tradition and precedent. And there are those, including myself, who believe in taking notes by hand. But, the practice of law is changing and that change is being felt everywhere.

This year, I am working in one of the Law Clinics here at Syracuse. When drafting documents, Word is the only software used and Westlaw is the extent of research technology.

But, legal search engines are not the extent of technology in actual legal practice. Both law students and lawyers need to be trained in more than Westlaw and LexisNexis. There is a lot of software out there designed to make work faster and more efficient. Given how quickly technology is becoming commonplace for clients and corporations, lawyers need to know it too.

That’s not to say that technology should replace all traditional legal practices. There is clear value in law as it is currently practiced. However, like all fields, it should be flexible enough to allow for growth and change. By allowing technology to handle certain tasks, lawyers have more time to practice law. Balancing between legal traditions and legal technology is possible in both law schools and law firms. Not only is balance possible, but it’s essential.”

From a very senior partner we work with at an AmLaw 25 firm…

“We now know that we will increasingly need to stop leveraging associates and start leveraging technology…”

If you happened to pick up this month’s Corporate Counsel magazine, you would have been struck–as we were–by the fact that it actually had three separate covers.  Each featured a different large-corporation general counsel (FMC Technologies’ Jeffrey Carr; Cisco’s Mark Chandler; Sun’s Mike Dillon) who has become well-known as a  advocate/evangelist/early adopter of change when it comes to how their departments conduct their internal practices and their relationships with outside counsel.  

the early adopters

When it comes to changing the way that corporations deliver and purchase legal services, these guys are very, very well-known: Carr, for the design and implementation of his company’s FMC-ACES legal engagement management model and for driving rigorous process management throughout his department; Chandler, for his early advocacy of technology-based solutions to legal process inefficiencies; and Dillon, for his thoughtful and influential and blog.

So, it was completely unsurprising to see any of their faces (and only a little surprising to see all three) above the lead story title, “IS IT THEIR HOUR? Longtime Champions of Fixed Fees Recruit More Followers to Their Cause.”  After all, the reformation of client-firm economic models has been a familiar theme in their collective speaking and writing for at least a few years now (two years ago, Dillon forecast the traditional model going, “the way of the mastodon“).  If you’re going to write about champions of fixed fees, then these are the faces of your article, right?

Well no, actually.  We were stunned (stunned I tell you!) to open to the magazine’s lead article and find  Benjamin Heinemann and William Lee’s byline affixed to thought piece (re-posted in printer-friendly format here under the title “Getting Your Fix“) that bluntly advocates a rapid move from time-based to fixed-fee billing.

If you don’t know them, Benjamin Heineman is the former SCOTUS clerk to Potter Stewart and Sidley Austin partner who helmed GE’s legal department for the better part of two decades.  And William Lee is the managing partner of Boston’s biggest, oldest, and most prestigious law firms, Wilmer Hale.

These guys are not (not, I tell you) edge-cases or outliers or bomb-tossers or part of the chasm-crossing vanguard.  They’re not known for tilting at the windmills of the establishment.  They ARE the establishment.   And if they are throwing their impeccable reputations behind the Carrs and Chandlers and Dillions of the world, them some fundamental change is underway in the economic relationship between law firms and their corporate clients.

When the old school becomes the new school, things begin to change quickly.

Can law firms continue to make as much money in this new regime?  We think they can actually make more.

How?  Ask us.