The story is no longer BigLaw. Sure, some brilliant players like Jones Day will be providing breakthrough legal work as well as the model for how to operate the business of law. Overall, though, as Richard Susskind argues in "The End of Lawyers?" a paradigm shift has shifted the focus. Trend watchers now observe or should observe the game-changers such as legal services as a commodity vs. craft, ongoing impacts of technology, demands for more cost-control, reduction of manpower needs, regionalism of service provision, and end of lifetime employment.
Yet, media such as the mainstream THE NEW YORK TIMES and the alternative Abovethelaw.com still default into coverage of BigLaw. Attorney Lisa Solomon, who presented at Tuesday's New York City Bar's Career Event, points that out in her comment to THE NEW YORK TIMES regarding its coverage of the event. Her observations are getting a lot of attention, including pick up by WSJ.COM. She presents data such as 48% of lawyers are solo practitioners and only 18% work in firms with 51 or more lawyers [Source: ABA Foundation.]
Of course, this anachronistic perspective - that BigLaw is the center of the legal profession and business of law - is a disservice to readers. But, more to the business point, it reduces the credibility of those media which keep defaulting into it.
The story of law is now global, unfolds in diverse ways, and mutates faster than any novel bug. Media stuck in the mental model of BigLaw could find themselves on the block like the one-dimensional WEEKLY STANDARD, which Rupert Murdoch dumped yesterday.
Interesting statistics, but a clearly flawed conclusion.
The fact that 48% of all lawyers are solo practitioners is irrelevant to the question of media coverage.
Over 70% of businesses in this country are sole proprietorships, less than 20% are corporations, and I imagine that only a tiny minority are corporations that gross over $100 million annually.
I leave it up to the reader to finish my thought.
Posted by: Mark | June 18, 2009 at 10:38 PM