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Legal Profession Trends

Solos Don’t Need A Separate Education

November 21, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

By now, you’ve probably seen the New York Times article, What They Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering which like some digital version of Helen of Troy, launched a thousand (well, maybe several dozen) blogs — though as Scott Greenfield points out here, there’s lots of fire but no heat; for all of the complaints about [...]

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Please, No More Solo Stereotypes

October 31, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

It’s bad enough that Clifford Winston and Robert Crandall are receiving so much press for their book, Let’s Deregulate All the Lawyers . which I debunked in part in this last post. What’s even worse is that this crock of half-truths is now being used to revive the myths about solos as the untouchables of [...]

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No Need to Deregulate Lawyers if We Debunk An Economist

October 25, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Clifford Winston, an economist at Brookings continues to gain mainstream media coverage for his new book, First Thing We Do, Let’s Deregulate All the Lawyers in which Winston and his co-authors argue that non-lawyers can do the same job as lawyers only faster, cheaper and – in many instances better.  In that respect, Winston may [...]

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Do Successful People Give or Sell?

June 28, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Over at his My Law License blog, my friend and co-defendant Brian Tannebaum adeptly summarized a thought to which I’ve devoted far too many words without ever getting to the point. Specifically, Brian asserts: Successful people give away advice on success, unsuccessful people sell it. Initially, I thought that I could refute Brian’s comment by [...]

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How to Get a Piece of Ken Adams, Without Paying An Arm or a Leg

May 16, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

As a solo, I can’t afford Ken Adams, ABA Legal Rebel and contract drafter extraordinaire.  I know this because Ken himself has told me so when I’ve inquired about his services.  Not arrogantly or bluntly, but matter-of-factly.  After all, when you’ve written the definitive guide on contract drafting, you can pretty much command any price [...]

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Preparing for a Life in the Law Unimagined and Uninvented

April 21, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Next week, I’ll be speaking about the starting a law firm option at Georgetown Law School here in Washington D.C.  This is my fourth law school presentation this year.  Yet the more I improve on, and deliver this talk, the more I wonder myself: how can we prepare students for a life in the law [...]

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The Future of Law from the NYSBA

April 18, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

I was pleasantly surprised to read the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA)Task Force Report on The Future of Law. For starters, the report characterized solo and small firm lawyers very even-handedly; pointing out the ways in which solos have leveraged technology to their advantage. From the report: Solo and small firm practitioners are not [...]

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Bespoke or Be-Gone: Lessons from the E-discovery trenches

March 7, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Make way for John Henry, Round 2 . Just as the steam-engine rolled over John Henry, recent advancements in e-discovery technology similarly enable machines to accomplish the work formerly performed by a team of 500 lawyers, reports the New York Times. Moreover, not only do computers perform e-discovery less expensively, but also with a precision [...]

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DLAPiper’s $200k Cover Charge Part II: Ethics Issues

February 8, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

This morning, I posted about DLAPiper’s $200k minimum annual billing cover charge for clients. But after a couple of conversations, I’ve gotten to wondering how DLAPiper can enforce this minimum charge without running afoul of ethics requirements. For example, what happens if DLAPiper estimates that defending Company X in a major lawsuit will cost $250,000, [...]

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Not Much to Say About Women Speaking Up

February 7, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

There’s a post by Staci Zaretsky up at Lawyerist asking why Women Lawyers Are Silencing Themselves Staci concludes that irrespective of what most women do, she’d rather be labeled a bitch than be silent. Jessie Kornberg, the executive director of Ms. JD also suggests that women are caught between a rock and a hard place: [...]

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