Better Law Firms for Better Business

Adaptations made by individual businesses in the face of an economic crisis are no surprise. That is what entrepreneurs do. The severity of the current crisis, however, is pressuring entire industries and professions to change. Such fundamental changes even when necessary are still surprising to watch. And because one of those professions is mine--the practice of law--I am both surprised and pleased.

Starting salaries for lawyers at the nation’s largest, most prestigious law firms have been headline material for years. Paying increasingly bigger bucks to inexperienced lawyers requires those lawyers to work longer hours while learning their craft on the job, most often at client expense. This model creates dissatisfaction among both lawyers and clients and has done so for some time.

While some in the profession have been wondering how that law firm model can continue to make economic sense, those of us in smaller firms have had to grapple with the trickle-down impact of those salaries on our recruiting.

We keep hearing “Never waste a good crisis,” and it seems some lawyers are listening. The Law Firms Working Group, a project of the American Bar Foundation and the Indiana University Maurer School of Law Association, recently concluded FutureFirm 101, a competition to devise a new business model for a hypothetical large law firm.

Plans came back focused on drastic cuts in starting pay balanced by meaningful training, opportunities to interact with clients, and other human benefits, which describes the model my firm and other small firms have used for years as our only viable way of competing with the big boys. This “FutureFirm” solution is moving beyond academia. Drinker Biddle, one of the country’s top firms, recently announced that instead of deferring its new hires as its competitors are doing, it will pay its newbies less and train them more.

So while our competitive advantage is at risk, this move is good news for small law firms because it is good news for the legal profession. It is entrepreneurial and it is human, just like our clients.