Biglaw Attorney With Big Clients Goes Small

And yet another biglaw attorney downsizes, as reported in this article, Law Firm to Serve Smaller Businesses (Grand Rapids Press, 9/10/05).  According to the piece, Barry Kane, a large firm partner and Vince DeYoung, former attorney for Kentucky Fried Chicken and Harrahs’ have  launched a Michigan law firm that specializes in business counseling, intellectual property law and franchise law.  One of the firm’s goals is to keep rates affordable for smaller business clients.  Here’s Kane’s description of his firm’s business model and why he believes it will work:

“By reducing your overhead . . . you can reduce your hourly rate and still be a viable business. It’s pretty straightforward problem-solving to me,” said Kane, a former shareholder at Miller, Johnson, Snell and Cummiskey.  And the firm’s small size enables quick response to changes in the marketplace, Kane said. What stays the same, regardless of office size, is the quality of legal work, De Young said.  The practice charges $225 per hour for basic business counseling, a rate above industry norms but more than one-third less than what Kane said he has charged in the past at larger firms.

So even as law firms merge and go global, threatening to fold into four or five ginormous entities, stories like this one remind me that it’s still a small [firm] world after all.