Selling Your Practice
Will you be one of the 400,000 lawyers retiring in the next 10 years? Today, Ed discusses what can be done when it's time to move on.
Accountability
Have we lost accountability? Have we lost taking personal responsibility for our own actions. Some in the political arena are saying that government has little or no legitimate role in our lives. We need to restore caveat emptor and all will be o.k. again. While we may have more government involvement n some areas than we'd like, we probably have too little in other areas. And if we truly had caveat emptor all over, we would soon have anarchy and civil unrest.
In one area, however, this issue was brought home to me in a very different light. A former military man spoke on television recently (as well as written a book) about the lack of responsibility of the American people. He said this in the context of so many of our troops returning home with maladies, who need treatment of one sort or another, and who need jobs ... and their needs are not being met. His assertion is that the American public can ignore these issues because we are not involved in the war. Yes, we pay for it ... maybe. But, that's it.
In the past, there was a draft. If we went to war, the draft increased and many of the people we knew would be called up. Today, we have a professional army and so our daily lives are not disturbed. In the past, when we went to war, there was a special assessment or increased tax to pay for the war. When we went to war in Iraq, there was no such increase. In fact, taxes were lowered, a significant factor in our current deficit discussions.
The point is that we've lost touch with our personal responsibility and accountability ... and we need to get it back. Not sure how to do this, but we need to have this discussion. Perhaps the forthcoming political debate will address this issue. Just my $.02 worth.
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Value Billing
Ed discusses how increase your value by understanding what is most important to your clients.
Value Billing
Ed discusses how to increase your value by understanding what is most important to your clients.
Is a law license no better than a driver's license?
Judge Lippman, Chief Judge of the New York Appeals Court, announced a pro bono requirement to gain admission to the New York Bar. Every new lawyer will have to prove their performance of 50 hours of pro bono practice before being admitted to the New York state bar. Mandatory pro bono is now a reality in New York.
He said, "If pro bono is a core value of our profession, and it is—and if we aspire for all practicing attorneys to devote a meaningful portion of their time to public service, and they should—these ideals ought to be instilled from the start, when one first aspires to be a member of the profession."
His first error of judgement, in my opinion, is to conclude that pro bono is a "core value" of the legal profession. While many lawyers "give" many hours freely of their time and expertise, it is not the essence or "core value" of the legal profession. This has been substantiated many times over when bar associations call on their members to provide free services for low and moderate income people. Many do step up to the plate. But, not all. Thus, it's obviously not a core value of the profession.
He then said that "We think that if you want that privilege, that honor of practicing law in the state of New York...then you are going to have to demonstrate that you believe in our values." He is really saying that if you want to practice law in NY, you better meet my values. Interesting that he says that practicing law is a privilege, not a right. Seems as though we're taking a test to get our driving license. Driving a car is a privilege and in order to get you on the streets, you need certain requirements. I guess Judge Lippman equates getting a law license with a driver's license.
Why does this new requirement apply only to new lawyers? Why doesn't this requirement apply to all lawyers in NY, even those who have been practicing for a few years? Judge Lippman's excuse for this discriminatory practice is that existing lawyers' practices are very diverse and some lawyers already are having difficulty earning enough money to put food on the table. Thus, they should be excused from this requirement. The real reason is that the Judge would have a rebellion on his hands if he tried to spread the requirement to all present lawyers in the state.
Imploding law firms
In current times, we are becoming more familiar with law firms imploding, collapsing and even going bankrupt, literally. Wall Street Journal and it's reporter, Jennifer Smith, seem to be taking a great deal of pleasure in highlighting and repeatedly featuring the sad demise of the Dewey law firm.
Dewey highlights the unfortunate interplay of bad luck (the unexpected change in the general economy) and poor management (failure to anticipate alternative scenarios). One or two articles with new information would be illustrative; howevwe, the Journal seems to relish in "kicking the dog while down."
In the future, the Journal might do an article about how a firm in Dewey's position might avoid collapse. Would that be too much to expect?
The Key To Success
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Generation warfare will grow in law firms
In a recent issue of a major legal publication, as reported by the American Bar Association, the magazine looked at pension plans of law firms. It appears that a number of the country’s largest law firms have pension plans that are unfunded. In other words, these are firms with pension plans, but without money to pay the obligations of those pension plans as their lawyers retire. What we will increasingly see are law firms with the bulk of their lawyers leaving the practice for retirement with the hope and prayer that the fewer remaining, younger partners will be willing to fund the firms' obligations. We will also see many situations where these younger lawyers will find it to their economic advantage to torpedo the existing law firm and its pension obligations in exchange for creating a new firm with no pension obligations. Doing so will give them the opportunity to take on more of the revenue that is produced by their efforts. They will earn more and pay less.
This phenomenon will exacerbate the generation warfare that is building in today's law firms.
Language is Everything ...
We all seek the summit.
It's the journey, though, that counts. And every journey is unique.
Those who enjoy the search are the lucky ones.
Law market segmentation - It marches on
The Wall Street Journal, perhaps reflecting the concerns of its corporate readership, continues to emphasize what it considers to be the overpaid lawyers at the pinnacle of the profession. In a recent article that had the less-than-subtle title, “Biggest Lawyers Grab Fee Bounty,” the Journal reported that partners in the top 25% of more than 4,000 law firms examined in a new study boosted their average price to $873 an hour last year, up 4.9% from 2010. At the same time, the lowest-billing partners struggled to keep pace with inflation. Partners in the bottom 25% of surveyed firms charged an average of $204 last year, up just 1.3%. As the paper said, “That disparity between who can raise prices – and who can't – spotlights a growing segmentation in the $100 billion corporate legal market.”
Growing Your Law Practice in Tough Times
Learn the business and marketing tactics to get your firm out of the recession, as Ed breaks down his book.
The Business of Law® confirmed again
Once again, it is confirmed that law practice is a business. As I've been saying since I received the registered mark for The Business of Law®, law practice is a business. Yes, it's a profession AND also a business, a service business. Dewey & LeBoeuf confirms this.
This large, national law firm has just retained outside bankruptcy counsel. Why? To consider whether they can create a controlled bankruptcy ... filing a bankruptcy application with creditors and potential acquirer already in place. The beauty of such a filing is that it will i) stop the bleeding of lawyers leaving the firm a few at a time, ii) eliminate the unfunded pensions that would be a drain on the firm assets and future revenue, and iii) enable another firm to complete an outstanding acquisition quickly with a clean balance sheet and revenue stream intact. A side benefit of eliminating the unfunded pension obligations would be to avoid generation warfare that frequently arises between retiring partners and younger partners left with the responsibility of using current revenue to pay for the old debt.
This process is precisely the same process used by so many other companies, including some of the large companies in the recent financial crises that survived, but in different configurations. This is the same process as the airlines are implementing today ... to reduce their obligations to labor. This is the same process being contemplated by a number of prominent government entities (cities and counties) to get rid of their unfunded pension obligations that are expected to require more than 60% of their current tax revenues.
So what is different about Dewey? Nothing. We are in the world of business, The Business of Law®.
Lawyering and teaching come from the same cloth
Rebecca Mieliwocki, was named the 2012 Teacher of the Year and honored today by President Obama at a White House ceremony. She went to law school, among other things in her career. To me, this transition is not peculiar. Lawyers are, after all, teachers. They tell stories to persuade jurors and judges for the benefit of their clients. Law is a helping and caring profession, just as is teaching. Ms. Rebecca Mieliwocki took that same talent and focused it on young people in Burbank, CA. Congratulations to her.
