Originally published on September 15, 2008 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.
As any observer of our profession can tell you, the model for aspiring law firms is the pyramid. Rainmakers push work down to the base — the associates, paralegals, and staff. In the end everyone but rainmakers are fungible. Unless crippled by dissention or debilitated by crisis, firms will continue growing their base indefinitely.
You might think this obvious bloat would hurt the profession, but you'd be wrong. Law firms are never punished where it counts (in the wallet) for being over-staffed. Having scores of people running around makes clients feel secure, law schools swoon, and embeds the pattern so deep in our collective consciousness that we cannot conceive of an alternative.
Nonetheless, the result of all this inefficiency is ideological stagnation. In the end, law firms are too timid to change. The billable hour punishes efficiency. Better to obsess over cheaper inputs than look for lasting solutions (Hyderabad anyone?).
Ironically, the people that want to change the system are buried at the bottom of the pyramid, seemingly powerless. And so the story ends. Or does it?
Increasingly, the best and brightest are shunning big firms, giving small firms and sole practitioners another bite at the apple.
Why? Because no matter how well equipped the competition, a lawyer who is not weighed down by the restraints of biglaw is free to opt for something better and more nimble. Let's call it the un-law firm, the army of one, the Ronin approach to practice. And it stacks up to the classic law firm like so:
- Less rigid and more dynamic.
- Less hierarchical and more egalitarian.
- Less partner-driven and more client-driven.
- Less opaque and more transparent.
- Less centralized and more entrepreneurial.
- Less isolationist and more collaborative.
- Less labor intensive and more knowledge-driven.
In a decade, some small firms will look wildly different then they do now, and the movement towards flatter, more egalitarian, collaborative un-law firms will be led by refugees from today's pyramid firms.
Are you un or out? Will you become part of the movement or part of the reaction? Part of the solution or part of the problem? I guess it depends on where you are on the pyramid when the winds of change knock on your door. Knock, knock.
Written by Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.
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