Segmentation

August 19, 2022

A Legal Profession Catch 22 Stymies Cost Efficiency for Now, But the C-Suite Can Fix This Problem

by Joel A. Webber

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The Point

You have two important, but different, types of resources to address legal issues facing your business:

1. LAWYERS: For advice that requires legal judgment to guide business decisions, your company needs accomplished individual attorneys (see July 27, 2022 post). You can’t get legal judgment from an automated platform.

2. AUTOMATED PLATFORMS: Fast, (relatively) cheap, and accurate performance of routine, recurring legal tasks calls for business process experts and technology of the sort operated by alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) (see August 3, 2022 post). Yet law firm junior associates and in-house counsel are the primary go-to sources for routine, recurring legal work. Not ALSPs and their automated platforms.

On routine, recurring legal tasks, the business faces a CATCH-22: The legal profession does everything it can to keep automated platforms and practicing lawyers from working together under one organization (see here). Outside of “reform” states Arizona and Utah, only licensed attorneys may hold an ownership interest in a law practice. So it’s no surprise that such automated platforms within ALSPs comprised only 1.5% of the global legal market last year (see here).

You can fix this. The marketplace affords workarounds to bar authorities’ protectionist impediments, if business leaders are willing insist on them. Continue reading

August 3, 2022

An Effective Corporate Law Function Uses the Right Tool for the Specific Task — Not Just In-House Counsel and Law Firms

by Joel A. Webber

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The Point

There’s a lot more to the corporate law function than what lawyers do.

But most of the legal profession doesn’t recognize that, and client companies suffer the resulting costs of Legal’s labor-intensive, technology-averse work methods. Continue reading

March 11, 2022

General Counsels’ Insecurities Can Lead Them to Choose Big Law Firms for Self-Protection. Ben Heineman, Jr.: “Big is bad — with very few exceptions”.

by Joel A. Webber

The Point

An earlier generation was raised on the saying: “Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM”.

It still holds sway among too many general counsels I’ve known in their strong prejudice favoring AmLaw 100 or AmLaw 200 law firms as a hedge against second-guessing if something goes wrong on their watch.

Ben Heineman, Jr., legendary general counsel of GE from 1987 to 2005, disagrees. While careful to avoid a simplistic, sweeping endorsement of boutique law firms and condemnation of BigLaw, Heineman cautions against the opposite error — a widespread prejudice among general counsels. Continue reading