Legal education is in the early stages of remodelling and renovation. Thus, we are living through a period of messiness. Evidence of this is a virtual Symposium at PrawfsBlawg, a forum of law professors for law professors. The symposium is called “The Futures of Legal Education.” The organizer is Dan Rodriguez,
“When I grow I up, I wanna be a Chief Legal Strategist” (045)
Well, that is not exactly what I used to say when I was a kid. But had I known such a thing existed, that would have been my saying. The truth is, I wanted to be a lawyer as far back as I can remember. Yet, I never knew how much I’d love it until
Lucy Bassli shares her thought process behind her major career move (044)
Earlier this year, Lucy Bassli left her position as Assistant General Counsel of Legal Operations and Contracting at Microsoft to become Chief Legal Strategist for LawGeex, a promising legaltech start-up, and to open her own hybrid law firm-consultancy.
Why would one of the legal industry’s most respected legal ops professionals leave the safety and
The Institute for the Future of Law Practice (043)
I am pleased to introduce readers to the Institute for the Future of Law Practice (IFLP), a new nonprofit collaboration between law schools, law firms, corporate legal departments, NewLaw service providers, and legal technology companies. Details of this new venture can be found online at www.futurelawpractice.org.
Per the picture above, IFLP (“i-flip”)
Legal Services and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) (042)
The price of legal services is increasing faster than the CPI’s basket of goods and services. Perhaps that is not surprising to those of us working in the legal sector. However, legal services are also losing wallet share. In 1987, legal services made up 0.435% of the CPI-U basket. By December 2016, the proportion was
Successful technology adoption: David Cambria (ADM) and Eric Elfman (Onit) discuss their collaboration (041)
When David Cambria sat down with Eric Elfman to discuss his willingness to try Onit software, he stated that if ADM in-house lawyers were required to engage “in a single unnatural act,” the implementation would fail.
Cambria elaborates, “Why are we all so comfortable with Word, Excel, and Outlook? Because these tools don’t have an
“The Lawyer Theory of Value” by Casey Flaherty (040)
In a recent post at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, Casey Flaherty puts his finger on a big problem. The opening paragraphs are too funny not to quote in their entirety:
My friend John Grant [of Start Here HQ] made a mistake.
Many moons ago he was consulting on process improvement for a
Can Intrapreneurship Solve the Innovator’s Dilemma? Law Firm Examples (039)
If a successful large law firm faced an Innovator’s Dilemma, what would it look like?
On the one hand, the firm has a wonderful set of endowments: (1) longstanding and lucrative relationships with industry-leading clients; (2) a business that requires very little operating capital yet generates significant cash and profits; and (3) an established
Student Capstone Presentations: Visitors Welcome (038)
On Wednesday, November 29 from 6 to 8 pm at Northwestern Law, student teams in my “How Innovation Diffuses in the Legal Industry” give their capstone presentations. Topics include Everett Rogers’ rate of adoption model (see Post 008), the role of change agents (see Post 020), and crossing the chasm (see
The Decline of the PeopleLaw Sector (037)
The graphic above tells a simple, painful, and important story about the U.S. legal profession that we can’t afford to ignore. The graphic compares the receipts of U.S. law firms in 2007 and 2012 based on “class of customer” data from the Economic Census, the U.S. Census Bureau’s official five-year measure of American business.