About a month ago, law firm O'Melveny and Myers issued the equivalent of Martin Luther's treatises on the church door. As Elie Mystal reports in Abovethelaw.com [and it's unusual for Mystal to speak well of any BigLaw firm], O'Melveny and Myers announced, in a candid manner [an authentic game-changer for any BigLaw firm], a vision for its future and concrete plans to get there by 2012. Here you can click through to that amazing memo.
That manifesto makes concrete all the abstractions which have been piled onto the business of law. Among its major tenets are:
- Fixed fees. Clients want quantified the expense risk in litigation. Also, as we all know, General Counsels frequently have to submit their bills to Central Purchasing in the corporations. Their autonomy in selecting a legal vendor has become less and their accountability for reducing costs more.
- Continued and more outscourcing, particularly of document review. The other cost-cutting measure would be to use contract attorneys for this.
- Reduce associate-to-partner leverage to about 2-to-1. This has been discussed widely, as clients demand partners, not newbie JDs, on their accounts. As a result, manpower patterns will be reconfigured in the business of law. There will be many partners, a few star associates who have a shot at upward mobility in the firm, and many contract and staff attorneys.
- Manage cases in a holistic manner, that is, taking into consideration the cost elements and the business and reputational, not just the legal, outcomes. The adage about this is that the company might win the case but go bankrupt and/or lose its brand equity.
What this model does not bring out is that O'Melveny & Myers might really care about the human element in the business. Rare for a law firm. In a seminal article last week in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, reporters Bob Davis and Robert Frank cited the downward compensation trajectory of O'Melveny & Myers's counsel Darren Tucker.
Because of slowing business, his boss tipped Tucker off that he would not make partner and helped him land on his feet in a government job. Yes, the bad news is that Tucker went from $400,00 to $153,00 and he missed out on partner compensation of $1.5 million. But when he was forced to leave Paradise, he had plenty of support from O'Melveny & Myers to head to a new kind of Promised Land. This kind of employment tale will resonate throughout the legal, client, and media communities.
Prediction: O'Melveny & Myers could surpass Jones Day as the game-changer and the most solid business in the field. Caring might be the only way BigLaw can save its soul Download SavingSoulsJaneGenova.
I see nothing novel about this memo. OMM is essentially admitting that they've screwed clients for years by running up unnecessary fees and are now ceasing those practices.
"Manage cases in a holistic manner, that is, taking into consideration the cost elements and the business and reputational, not just the legal, outcomes. The adage about this is that the company might win the case but go bankrupt and/or lose its brand equity."
This is trailblazing!?!?!?
This sort of thinking should be a fundamental aspect of even competent lawyering.
Posted by: honest lawyer | September 18, 2009 at 12:03 PM