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Change or Die: Reflections on Richard Susskind's 'The End of Lawyers?'
The American Lawyer
July 23, 2009
Yes, things are bad out there. But this isn't just about the current economy, stupid. It's about the long-term survival of the Am Law 100 law firm as we know it. No matter how much we would like to dismiss the recession-fed clamor that the end -- of the billable hour, and the highly leveraged business model built upon that eroding foundation -- is nigh, we shouldn't do so. Things are going to get worse in the years ahead, not better. If we don't fundamentally change how we do business, we won't -- and don't deserve to -- survive. Don't just take my word for it, though. Pay attention to Richard Susskind's instead.
Susskind's "The End of Lawyers?" is a dry, sometimes boring, often infuriating, small-print book written by a supercilious academic who thinks "the law is not there to provide a livelihood for lawyers," but rather that our incomes are, at best, a byproduct that society must incur as the price of the rule of law. But you should still read it. Why? Because Susskind understands the dynamics of change, and how to manage rather than be blindsided by them.
The impact of disruptive Web 2.0 technologies -- the new means of instant, online communication and collaboration, from Wikipedia to Facebook -- on the legal profession is like the impact of carbon loading on the atmosphere. While its consequences are as yet largely unfelt, the tipping point inexorably approaches. Like global warming, the accelerating commoditization of legal work is here, is real, and won't go away. (In this context, "commoditization" means that legal services are seen as packages of relatively standard, generic components, which get treated more like widgets in the client's supply chain -- and hence are expected to be subject to the same predictability and cost-reduction imperatives that widget suppliers face -- than as unique, one-off, price-insensitive "black boxes" with mysterious innards.) "We" -- the denizens of The Am Law 100 -- need to understand its dynamics, separate out the fatuous from the feasible, and get on with either inventing a future we're part of or risking being left out of the alternative. Susskind provides a useful tool for doing so, because he substantiates anecdotes with facts, and opinions with economic and sociological evidence.
An Oxford Ph.D. in law and computer science, emeritus professor of law, IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England and consultant to the British Ministry of Justice, Susskind is also a longtime gadfly of the profession. What Susskind foresees is the end of certain kinds of lawyers and legal work -- "a future in which conventional legal advisers will be much less prominent in society than today, and, in some walks of life, will have no visibility at all."
The Am Law 100 firms are in the position of the great metropolitan newspapers a generation ago. When I started at The Washington Post in 1970, afternoon dailies around the country were folding under the impact of the TV evening news and changing commuting patterns in the suburbs. Circulation declines, already well under way from postwar highs, were accelerating as national and local TV news audiences grew. The big question was whether newspapers could remain "relevant" and survive as broadcast TV usurped their role of breaking the news and setting the daily agenda for the public sphere. Everyone worried but no one acted, given that newsroom margins were still running at 20 percent or better. Why not let the cash cow just keep mooing? Now, the Internet has finished what TV started. The tipping point for the demise of the urban daily has arrived, and papers are disappearing at a rate that is accelerating like a mudslide in a bad Los Angeles rainy season. A business model predicated on manufacturing a tangible product in urban factories staffed by union labor and delivering it via fossil fuel-burning trucks has failed in the era of costless electronic reproduction. The reporting and editorial judgment of newspapers remain unique and valuable, but they require new distribution channels and pricing models to survive.
