The legal industry has a gigantic problem. A tidal wave in the supply of lawyers is outstripping demand for legal services. At the same time, as many as 50% to 80% of the need for legal services across the general population goes unmet, largely because those services are unaffordable. Access to justice is under threat, even as law schools continue to churn out more than 30,000 lawyers per year and underemployment in the industry is nearly epidemic. This state of affairs serves neither lawyers nor consumers of legal services.

The huge capacity in the attorney workforce is accompanied by very low productivity: an astonishingly meager 2.3-hour-per-day realization rate. That means we’ve got thousands of highly skilled and well-educated individuals whose talents aren’t being utilized in a productive and efficient way. Something has to give.