Could You Be A Front for A Firm?

I’m getting ready for my upcoming conference, but couldn’t resist posting about this article that describes the trend of minority owned firms partnering up with larger firms to help meet diversity requirements.  It’s a trend that I mentioned in my book Solo by Choice, so I was interested to learn that the trend has since gained more traction.

Seems to me that this set up could work quite well for small minority or female owned firms.  They could serve as front-bidders on projects, then sub-contract the work out to larger firm partners (as an aside, I don’t mean to imply that a minority or woman owned firm isn’t capable of handling the substantive work.  But once in a while, why not get rich off of some one else’s labor and manage the project instead of toiling on it?  Sounds like a good idea to this woman-owned law firm!)

This kind of “partnering-up model” is very cutting edge indeed; how refreshing to see large firms thinking out of the box, even if it took cooperation with smaller, minority owned firms to get them there.  The partnering up concept is consistent with the lawyer-to-lawyer collaboration model that Jordan Furlong describes at Law21 and it requires the types of project management skills that Richard Susskind emphasizes in The End of Lawyers? In fact,  since the issuance of my book, I’ve been researching this subject and will be providing more information in a couple of weeks when I upgrade MyShingle.

In the meantime, do you have any experience serving as a woman or minority owned partner to another firm or business?  Share your experience below.