Courtesy of Thomas Otter, I came across this article by Daniel Solove on the US legal blog Concurring Opinions. Daniel puts a different slant on the topic, arguing that the pressure to put in ever more hours and the receding likelihood of making partner is turning new trainees into gadflies. Worse still, and here he quotes from Scott Turow:
But at the end of the day, my greatest concern is not merely that dollars times hours is bad for the lives of lawyers—even though it demonstrably is—but that it’s worse for clients, bad for the attorney-client relationship, and bad for the image of our profession.
I could say exactly the same about the accounting profession. When you can rack up hours and cost without being accountable for value delivered then it is always the client that suffers. But as Daniel points out, staff suffer as well and it becomes increasingly difficult to attract high quality candidates who might make partner. This is something I have seen time and again this last year as more recruits look to the big bucks offered by the Big Four and clamber aboard what they see as a gravy train but with little idea what they’re really letting themselves in for.
Scott does a thoroughly good job of defending what he sees as a fundamental disconnect between what happens in the legal profession and how it is played out in the public perception:
America is ambivalent about lawyers. People are impressed with our knowledge and the power that knowledge gives us, and jealous of it as well. They see us as too often self-seeking, manipulative and greedy. We all know that this is not a balanced picture. Every time I hear about a DNA exoneration on radio or TV, I wait vainly to hear what I know is the rest of the story—about the lawyers, usually an army of them, who worked for years, generally for free, to give that prisoner back his liberty. The story of the lawyer doing good because he or she is committed to doing good is not one of the narrative themes American media are fond of presenting because it’s not something the public wants to hear.
But recognizing how far behind the eight ball we remain in the eyes of the public, should we really continue to engage in billing practices that even our clients, who know us best, have been telling us inspire distrust?
Inspire distrust – what a dreadful condemnation. Our profession is no better and unless we collectively take steps to do something about it then things can only get worse. But we can do something. Here’s an example.
Over the last few days, I worked on a project where we negotiated a third party service fee. (Part of the reason for intermittent blogging last week.) We’re talking serious amounts of money, like mid-six figures. The value delivered to the client is considerable yet the time actually taken to work through the numbers and argue the rationale was relatively low. Part of that was to do with our using Google Docs and Spreadsheets while engaged on a Skype initiated conversation in one discussion session. We were able to change figures in real-time and see those changes reflected instantly.
If we’d conducted the negotiation through the usual method of exchanging spreadsheets and email, it would have taken at least three times as long. Now that we’ve achieved what we believe is a satisfactory resolution, we’ll bill based on value. It won’t be extortionate and it won’t reflect any hourly rate. But it will be fair.
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