
"The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift" - grellas
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/paradigm_shift/
======
noonespecial
_“The biggest problem,” says Ury, “is that ordinary citizens cannot afford to
hire a lawyer. The bread and butter of small firm practices are criminal
defense work, wills and trusts, leases, closings and divorces. Yet in
Connecticut, 80 to 85 percent of divorces have a self-represented party
because most families can’t afford to hire one lawyer, let alone two. Nearly
90 percent of criminal cases are self-represented or by a public defender
because families can’t scrape together a retainer.”_

I'd call that a 100%, red-line, sirens-blaring, system failure. "Less people
are hiring us for $500/hour! What shall we do?" might not be the right
question. "Why did anyone ever do so in the first place?" might be closer.

~~~
swampthing
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.

~~~
sunchild
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 sort this out eventually: right now clients are making pricing
demands on big law firms that are cutting their margins significantly. As a
result, firms are ditching costs in a kind of emergency sale. My own opinion
is that many firms are gutting their best assets (their new, young lawyers) in
order to preserve the partner profits, and that will be their downfall.
Meanwhile, the next generation of lawyers will be free to charge much less,
and will actually make more money.

~~~
Vivtek
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.

~~~
Confusion
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.

~~~
Vivtek
Ha! I guess that could go either way, yeah!

------
wooUK
I've spent the past 10 years working in global corporate law firms as a
software developer and have witnessed this change first hand. The legal
profession is based around chargeable hours. This is not a good deal for the
consumer of legal services. Billing by the hour does not encourage lawyers to
work more efficiently or effectively, in fact it rewards the opposite.
Recently larger clients have started to stand up to the legal firms and demand
that work should be done on a fixed fee basis or a shared risk/reward basis.
Suddenly lawyers are beginning to to act like business people and are looking
at improving their own internal efficiencies now that their fees are capped.
One example of this are lawyers trying to empathise more with their fixed fee
clients' business strategy and point out legal pitfalls before they happen -
wow a proactive lawyer! Observing how much money law firms are currently
investing on improving their efficiencies then I think what we are witnessing
is a shift to a new model and not just a blip.

~~~
sunchild
Based on your experience, I'd love to chat with you offline. My law firm
(together with another firm in London) is building software for deal lawyers.
If you're interested in meeting, you can reach me via the email address on my
firm's page: <http://yusonirvine.com/>

If nothing else, I'd like to introduce you to my UK counterparts.

~~~
VanL
Interesting - I would be interested in chatting with you too. I am a lawyer at
a Big law firm. One of the things that I have been doing (which clients love)
is writing software to automate or enhance parts of what I do.

~~~
sunchild
I used to do this, too. It drove me crazy that my firm owned my work, though.
Perhaps you have a more favorable arrangement with your employer?

~~~
VanL
I made an arrangement immediately when I started. I told them I do code on the
side, and that I had other people that I worked with on that code.

They agreed that they pay me for legal work, not for code. Thus, the tools I
build are mine, but the analysis and output of those tools may be theirs if I
am using the tools for their benefit.

~~~
ajtaylor
That is an incredible deal! I would imagine any employee outside the legal
profession would be hard pressed to win this sort of concession.

------
grellas
Having been in Big Law myself, I have previously set forth my thoughts at some
length on this topic (see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1648342>).

Fundamentally, law remains a guild system, with the governing licensing
restrictions severely limiting the ability to innovate. Only licensed persons
can be owners of firms and only licensed persons can provide the key services.
No fee-splitting or profit sharing is permitted with any person who is not
licensed. Even one who is licensed is limited is performing services other
than in the locale for which he is licensed. All of this may be well and good
for "maintaining standards," as the bar associations say, but it means this is
and will remain a closed profession that remains remote and removed from
average people.

This is not a knock on professionalism. A really good lawyer is well worth the
price, even at high rates, for many business transactions. But making services
broadly affordable remains a challenge. Technology can help as long as the
laws bend enough to allow firms to adopt innovative business models taking
advantage of it - how far this can go will ultimately depend on the rules of
the guild.

~~~
sunchild
This is a great comment, but one nitpick: "No fee-splitting or profit sharing
is permitted with any person who is not licensed."

I believe this is no longer the case the UK and some other places.

~~~
lhnn
Fair enough, and perhaps your comment is a sign of change. However, though
this is a global forum, the source article is from the American Bar
Association.

------
swampthing
This article is spot-on (I'm one of the few on HN that have worked as an
attorney in biglaw).

One theme it barely touched is that, like any other technology, legal
innovations inevitably get commoditized. Fundamentally, law firms have been
unable to properly adjust to this commoditization due to a lack of technology
(outsourcing is a short term solution). The only solutions they come up with
are to cut overhead costs, which only gets you so far.

The big picture for the legal industry, is that you have extremely bright
young people fleeing the industry because this lack of technology forces them
to do this mundane commoditized work. And like any commoditized product, the
basis for competition ends up on price, which ends up just forcing these
people to handle intense amounts of mundane commoditized work. This is
obviously not sustainable, if you want to maintain a law firm with the best
and brightest legal minds. It's my observation though, that most partners in a
position to do anything either do not see this or do not care (because they'll
be gone by the time things fall apart anyways).

~~~
sunchild
Exactly! What I've learned, though, is that there is always a need for a human
being at the end of the process. That's where lawyers will always be needed:
to exercise nuanced judgment that just cannot be systematized (yet). The trick
is to be a lawyer who can work as part of a bigger process that includes smart
technologies and less expensive (and perhaps, less skilled) labor.

~~~
VanL
This is right - there is always a need for humans at the end of the process.
The problem is, though, that in traditional law firms many things that _can_
be done by computers are done by humans. This has a couple of effects:

1\. Soul-sucking work. Want to know why so many lawyers hate what they do?
Because they are doing stuff that computers can do better and faster. It kills
initiative, creativity, and any sense of joy.

2\. Higher bills for clients. This is all done by the billable hour, so having
humans do lots of soul-sucking work _is extremely lucrative._ We recently had
a massive all-hands-on doc review that needed to be done over the course of
about three days. For those three days with everyone (and I do mean _everyone_
) doing it, the firm billed $MM/hour in aggregate.

------
sunchild
I live and breathe this topic. After 12 years at big law firms in NYC, myself
and a collection of our best and brightest broke off and founded our own firms
(mine in NYC, another in London).

This is actually very relevant to the HN community, because it's all about how
to run a business. The problem with legal services begins and ends with poor
business practices.

Law firms are addicted to covering their own lack of spending discipline by
raising their hourly rates and pushing attorneys to bill clients more for less
value. The "solutions" that they're undertaking now (cutting associate
salaries, etc.) are equally wrong-headed.

Four years ago, I was making $400K+ at a top law firm. When I became eligible
for partnership at my firm, I decided to leave instead. Why? Because I did not
want to own a tiny amount of equity in a poorly-run business. Down the hall
from me were several men in their mid-eighties who were drawing $1MM+ pensions
and turning up for work two days a week. They had teams of secretaries who
printed off their email and read them a digest each morning. I watched the
firm spend, spend, spend to recruit "the best and the brightest" from Ivy
League schools. After those new lawyers were hired, they would be put to work
doing tasks that any decent temp worker could do. Young attorneys were being
billed out at $500+ per hour and pressured to make their minimum hourly quotas
every year. Our offices were expensive. Our parties were expensive. The I.T.
support was expensive because it had painted itself into vendor lock-in and a
huge (and useless) support staff. I flew first class everywhere. I stayed in
the Four Seasons for months on end.

Sounds great, right? Nope – not when you're considering becoming an owner of
that company. I saw the writing on the wall. Clients were bailing. They were
getting better at doing my job with in house people. They were pressuring firm
management to write off big bills and compete in RFPs.

So I got out, and I've never looked back. I did it because I think I can run a
business better than they do. I did it because I actually care about whether
my clients feel like they've gotten their money's worth. Also, I did it
because I wanted to build an IT platform for lawyers that wasn't hampered by
incompetent IT staff and poorly-chosen, expensive solutions.

Today, I have many of the same clients that I had back then. My clients are
some of the biggest names in their field, and they stuck with me instead of
sticking with the big name law firms. When my clients ask me to quote a fixed
price for my work on a project, I give them a reasonable fixed price because I
can afford to do that. I have low overhead (ridiculously low, actually). I can
provide better service than ever before, because I have better tools at my
disposal. I don't waste time fighting my way through clumsy solutions like
Sharepoint, Deltaview, Worksite, or whatever other POS is in vogue at big law
firms today.

I could go on about this forever, but suffice it to say that this article and
the phenomenon behind it is extremely interesting to me. I also think it's a
great case study for entrepreneurs. Think of it this way: what if your target
market was dominated by companies that charge way too much, are extremely
inefficient, and are carrying a huge, ever-growing cost basis? Sounds like a
good opportunity, right? Well, it is!

~~~
ronp
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 tools to run my practice, if I can't
get what I need at a reasonable price I build it and make it available to my
colleagues at a reasonable price.

~~~
sunchild
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.

~~~
DrManhattan
Another lawyer here who feels the same way. Cheers.

------
gamble
The 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?

~~~
chopsueyar
Would allowing non-JD degree holders to take the bar help?

~~~
lionhearted
Yes, but the legal profession has incredible sway and power, so that won't
happen.

It would absolutely be possible for someone to specialize in just a single
specific kind of law, become very knowledgeable about it, and make normal
skilled professional money in the $25 to $75 per hour range. This is
prohibited by regulation and licensing which amounts to a huge windfall for
the legal profession.

But it's unlikely to change, because the last thing any legislator wants is to
be on unfavorable terms with the legal profession.

~~~
a3camero
The thing you're talking about is actually done already by embedding non-
lawyers in legal groups or having non-lawyers on payroll at law firms.

------
praptak
Shrinking market for legal services is good news to me. People becoming less
litigious? It is actually possible to do anything without a highly paid expert
to tell you whether you're not breaking some complicated law? Does not sound
like something to worry about.

~~~
Robin_Message
The market is not shrinking; the problem is access to justice for ordinary
people who cannot afford $500 an hour. Also, perverse incentives like "No win,
no fee" encourage settlements and litigation without helping those who have
been genuinely wronged or have an actual case that needs to go to trial.

~~~
gjm11
How does no-win-no-fee do that? If you haven't been genuinely wronged and
don't have an actual case that needs to go to trial, you can't realistically
expect to win, so NWNF doesn't make much difference.

What NWNF is supposed to do is to make it possible for the not-rich to afford
to defend themselves when wronged (either by taking legal action, or by
declining to settle unfavourably when threatened with legal action). That
doesn't seem terribly perverse, it's the opposite of "encouraging
settlements", and it does help those who have been genuinely wronged.

The downside is that lawyers operating on a NWNF basis may be unwilling to
take on any case whose prospects for success are poor. I suppose that might
count as "encouraging settlements" -- in cases where you're not very likely to
win and can't afford to pay the legal fees. I have trouble seeing why _that_
is a bad thing.

What am I missing?

~~~
rfrey
_If you haven't been genuinely wronged and don't have an actual case that
needs to go to trial, you can't realistically expect to win_

The premise that only deserving cases win isn't self-evident to me. With
increasing awards and settlements, the expected value of a spurious case might
be quite high.

------
asr
This article correctly points out that pricing for legal services is
undergoing a shift toward the true marginal cost for the service. So the law
firm business model where much of partners’ profits are markups on simple,
repetitive work done by junior associates is on its way out.

That said, the doom and gloom of this article (and much of the profession) is
overblown. Maybe it’s because law is such a conservative profession, but any
change is greeted as if it were the coming of the Four Horsemen. It’s as if
the entire software industry spent its time worrying about how the internet
was going to put Windows programmers out of business, instead of being excited
about the opportunities it presented.

Major law firms are filled with smart and experienced lawyers who actually
provide a lot of value to their clients. That value is still worthwhile--as
the article points out, the rule of law is not going away.

As a law school student, I'm not (unduly) worried about this. Sure, there will
be some winners and losers, but that’s what happens in business--and basically
what this is about is that law firms are looking more like businesses. Why
should I expect anyone to feel sorry for me because of that?

------
ahi
JACK CADE. Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows reformation.
There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny: the three-
hoop'd pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small
beer: all the realm shall be in common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go
to grass: and when I am king,- as king I will be,-

ALL. God save your majesty!

JACK CADE. I thank you, good people:- there shall be no money; all shall eat
and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they
may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.

DICK. The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

JACK CADE. Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the
skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being
scribbled o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings: but I say, 'tis
the bee's wax; for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own
man since.- How now! who's there?

<http://www.spectacle.org/797/finkel.html>

~~~
ahi
I wonder, not relevant enough or is the liberal arts education of hackernews
so lacking we don't know Shakespeare when we see it?

------
ph0rque
What would be really nice is if law was machine-readable (and interpretable).
But that would probably require computers being able to _understand_ language.

~~~
etherael
What's an interesting segue to this is that fundamentally the "language
understanding" issues are mostly red herrings. The gold standard within the
legal profession we are constantly led to believe is to pursue a standard of
objective fairness and justice which would be better defined by deterministic,
logical languages like programming languages rather than fuzzy, broad
languages like English.

It is far, far easier to have laws written in code and execute test cases
based on those laws before even investing any capital into a venture which may
require edge cases of a given law, rather than the current scenario of hemming
and hawing around a fundamentally subjective and fuzzy area and eventually
subjecting your endeavour to the rigors of being a legal "test case"
consisting of much ado about nothing and the outcome is as close to random as
anything else.

When you reduce the legal profession to coding and writing test cases though,
hell will freeze over the next day. Such a politically powerful faction will
_never_ allow themselves to be marginalised in this way, even if they claim to
desperately be striving for exactly the kind of scenarios that this would
allow; universal access to a completely objective justice system with etc etc
etc. The extent to which this is actually impossible is somewhat depressing
because it's something of an expose on the hypocrisy implicit in the claims of
the legal system to actually serve the public, rather than itself.

But hey, that's life. If it ever _does_ happen my wager is it will be because
it is forced on them through market forces, the public at large simply uses
alternatives venues for mediation and the legal system is forced to compete
with it. I predict much artificial legal protection to prevent this from
happening before it actually comes to pass, though.

~~~
jgfoot
Although there are some laws that can kind of be represented as computer code
(for example, TurboTax captures a good portion of the tax code, and
programming a 55 mph speed limit into a car shouldn't be hard) for the most
part the law acts as a system for delegating to judges limited authority to
exercise discretion. Ultimately, the decisions are made through that
discretion, and they aren't entirely predictable. If you haven't already, take
30 minutes and read Oliver Wendell Holmes' "The Path of the Law" and see if
you still think the only obstacle to mechanizing the law is the political
power of the legal profession. <http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2373>

~~~
etherael
I'll give it a look in, but yes, my general opinion is that discretion leads
to subjectivity and unfairness. Unfortunately the attempts to _reduce_
discretion have historically resulted in malicious arbitrariness, sentencing
teenagers to sex offender status for sexting, silly three strikes laws ad et
al. At the same time it seems to me that a more richly detailed granular
objective system with oversight into the actual code to any interested parties
with a clear and concise method for changing that code would be a far superior
approach than either of the previously mentioned extremes.

~~~
a3camero
You might want to look into the civil code system of law. It might appeal to
you more than the English-derived system that I suspect you live under. Check
out the Quebec Civil Code:
[http://www2.publicationsduquebec.gouv.qc.ca/dynamicSearch/te...](http://www2.publicationsduquebec.gouv.qc.ca/dynamicSearch/telecharge.php?type=2&file=/CCQ/CCQ_A.html)
(ignore the bizarre English translations of some concepts...).

~~~
etherael
You are correct, I currently live under a common law derived system, and my
research into actually translating a legal system to code has led me to
believe that the best place to start would be a civil law based system, though
I had been mostly looking into scandinavian countries prior to this link.
Thanks for that, just to be clear though, is civil code specific to Quebec or
is it all of Canada on a civil law derived system? If it's Quebec only I'm
guessing my grasp of English isn't much going to help me but if it's all of
Canada I'm thinking this could be a much better starting point than the
Scandinavian systems as I don't speak any of those languages fluently.

~~~
a3camero
The Civil Code is just in Quebec. That's because that region of the country
was originally owned by France and centuries later it's still French-speaking
and uses a France-derived legal system for all but criminal matters.

There are many English speakers in Quebec (one of Canada's top law schools is
located in the largest city in Quebec, which is known for being English-
speaking...) and so you should be able to find a lot more materials in English
than Scandinavian countries but I wouldn't know.

You're likely already aware of it but Louisiana also has the historical France
link and civil code connection but I know much less about how that system
works.

------
RMZahorsky
We'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

------
JoeAltmaier
A model of circuitous legal babbling. It took until the 34th paragraph to spit
out the crux of the argument. Save you time, here it is:

1) More sophisticated clients armed with more information and greater market
power to rein in costs.

2) A globalized economy, which increases the complexity of legal work while
exposing U.S. lawyers to greater competition.

3) Powerful information technology that can automate or replace many of the
traditional, billable functions performed by lawyers.

------
tomjen3
I hope so - lawyers are way, way too expensive.

~~~
guelo
Tell me about it, I just had an associate at a big SF law firm quote me
$510/hr.

------
maxxxxx
I am waiting for the day when there are laywers in single practice who charge
rates of less than $100/hr like many other professionals do. I know some
laywers who are complaining about tough times but they still think they are
worth $250/hr.

~~~
a3camero
To play devil's lawyer: lawyers have very high fixed costs due to insurance +
bar fees. In Ontario they're about $6k a year. Database subscriptions are also
very pricey. The expenses are considerably higher than that associated with
programming.

~~~
maxxxxx
Somehow I doubt that these fixed costs justify $250/hr vs $100/hr. But I am
not 100% sure.

~~~
a3camero
True, but there are a number of other costs associated with being a lawyer.
Various professional courses you're required to do in some jurisdictions and
clothes that make you look like a lawyer instead of a programmer. Carrying
costs of your $125k + living expenses education on top of undergrad @ $X...

I'm with you, but it is an expensive profession.

------
chopsueyar
Khan Academy Law School?

~~~
sunchild
Law School doesn't really teach what lawyers need to practice law. I've been
tempted to do some videos on open source compliance, basics of contract
negotiations, etc. but I just don't have enough time to do everything I want
to! Maybe if someone else wants to collaborate, I would make it more of a
priority.

~~~
ovi256
Those would be extremely useful, thanks for thinking about them.

------
arihersh
This is an absolutely fascinating thread-- thanks to Rachel Zahorsky for the
original article, and to sunchild and other commenters for thoughts and
inspiration. Am very interested in contacting others on this list with an
interest in both law and code.

I recently wrote about version control and law on quora:
<http://b.qr.ae/kRgGyk>, and about 'open sourcing' access to the tax code
here: <http://blog.tabulaw.com/2011/06/open-source-tax-code.html>.

------
DrManhattan
Well I fucking hope so.

