Well I fucking hope so.
"The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"
91–100 of 113 posts
Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely! BigLaw is (was?) a house of cards waiting for the right circumstances to blow it over. My law practice is only part time, and I run it like my software company operates - lean, innovative and hellbent on providing really good value for clients. I have more than enough legal clients in the pipeline to keep me busy and my startup background gives me a great foundation for advising my target clients. As for…
You sound like my kind of lawyer. We should be organizing like-minded lawyers and forcing changes on a bigger scale. Please get in touch with me. My firm's homepage should appear in my profile.
Another lawyer here who feels the same way. Cheers.
Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"
#93We're enjoying the substantive conversation this story has generated over at the ABA Journal! I've been jotting down future story ideas based on some of the comments and invite anyone to send insights and tips to Rachel.Zahorsky@AmericanBar.org.
- Rachel M. Zahorsky, Legal Affairs Writer
Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope you don't take this as a flippant comment, because it isn't meant to be, but the answer to your latter question is - it's what the market bears (or did bear). There's plenty of lawyers out there - but, like in programming, there are a lot fewer good ones. In general, people are willing to pay $500 / hour because they can't find one of similar quality for a lower price.
Quality is very, very difficult to measure in this context. It's a bit like measuring the quality of a doctor or other professional whose advice you need to trust beyond a shadow of a doubt. In the end, law firms tend to trade on longstanding reputation, which is a fine, but imperfect, way of handling this problem. These days, there is no reason to assume that high rates == quality, or vice versa. The market will sor…
In re bloat - if our unit testing took 15 years and millions of dollars and could even end up involving the Supreme Court, I think any of us would tend towards bloat just to be on the safe side.
Code and the law kind of do the same thing (which is why we use the same word for it) but the platforms are vastly different.
Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just a lawyer failure, but a legal system collapse. People are being denied justice. The lawyers themselves are not necessarily to blame. There are two or three interlinked aspects: 1. The growth in regulations, which draws away limited legal resources toward big companies, leaving less (or higher fees) for criminal or civil defense 2. The growth in criminal prosecution of victimless crimes and especially ra…
It's not just a lawyer failure, but a legal system collapse. People are being denied justice. The lawyers themselves are not necessarily to blame. Then who else is to blame? Nearly everyone with in the system with significant decision authority is either an active member of the bar or was before they became a politician. Voters? Perhaps. But usually the choice is between two lawyers.
There are may problems for which nobody is to blame. They are emergent phenomena of a system, to which all parts contributed. Assigning blame is not necessary to start solving the problem and attempting to assign blame is counterproductive.
Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quality is very, very difficult to measure in this context. It's a bit like measuring the quality of a doctor or other professional whose advice you need to trust beyond a shadow of a doubt. In the end, law firms tend to trade on longstanding reputation, which is a fine, but imperfect, way of handling this problem. These days, there is no reason to assume that high rates == quality, or vice versa. The market will sor…
In re bloat - if our unit testing took 15 years and millions of dollars and could even end up involving the Supreme Court, I think any of us would tend towards bloat just to be on the safe side. Code and the law kind of do the same thing (which is why we use the same word for it) but the platforms are vastly different.
Hmmm, I usually argue this the other way around: if you could be sued for bugs in your software, many software products would probably be better designed, better tested and more usable.
Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just a lawyer failure, but a legal system collapse. People are being denied justice. The lawyers themselves are not necessarily to blame. Then who else is to blame? Nearly everyone with in the system with significant decision authority is either an active member of the bar or was before they became a politician. Voters? Perhaps. But usually the choice is between two lawyers.
There are may problems for which nobody is to blame. They are emergent phenomena of a system, to which all parts contributed. Assigning blame is not necessary to start solving the problem and attempting to assign blame is counterproductive.
The comment was:
It's not just a lawyer failure, but a legal system collapse.
So it's entirely relevant to ask if there's a meaningful distinction there.
What is our "legal system" if not primarily a collection of lawyers practicing law and politics?
Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"
#98The problem is that law school is an absurdly expensive exercise that, incredibly, doesn't actually teach graduates how to practice law. How else can you explain the fact that there are tons of unemployed JDs out there, and yet the average citizen can't afford basic legal services?
Would allowing non-JD degree holders to take the bar help?
Something like this is already established practice. In some states you need a lawyer involved with every real estate transaction, because it's considered "practicing law."
In some other states, like Colorado, a lawyer does not have to be involved in a real estate transaction. In these states real estate agents have been granted the right to practice this very limited segment of law. They don't take the bar, they just go through real estate school (easy and minimal), take a test (easy), and keep up minimal continuing education.
So that's a very narrow slice of law, practiced by non-lawyer specialists.
In these states you can, if you want, still involve a lawyer, and in some cases it's probably a really good idea. In most suburban lot/block transactions it's probably not necessary, but IANAL.
Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can provide better service than ever before, because I have better tools at my disposal. Can you go into more detail about the tools you use? This seems like a good opportunity (as a software product) for selling to smaller firms.
I typically represent customers in contract negotiations with their upstream suppliers. That means I do lots of deals with many of the same names on the other side of the table, again and again (Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, etc.) After over a decade of doing this, I notice that my clients really want the answer to two questions: 1. What are the market standard terms for the transaction? 2. What did we (i.e., the client) a…
Re your comments document orientation. This is a very good point and one that I have given a bit of thought. Contracts do indeed consist of business data and should be treated as such. To create such data in Microsoft Word and keep it in Word documents is as criminal. But the problem is worse than that. Contracts are also business logic manifest in a completely useless format called human language. If you are interested you should check these links out: http://contracts.scheming.org/ http://www.stefansen.dk/presentations/isola-contracts.pdf
Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
In re bloat - if our unit testing took 15 years and millions of dollars and could even end up involving the Supreme Court, I think any of us would tend towards bloat just to be on the safe side. Code and the law kind of do the same thing (which is why we use the same word for it) but the platforms are vastly different.
Hmmm, I usually argue this the other way around: if you could be sued for bugs in your software, many software products would probably be better designed, better tested and more usable.
Ha! I guess that could go either way, yeah!