We all enter law school with high aspirations. Dreaming of a career filled with meaning, money, and sympathetic clients. But how many of us truly achieve this vision? To what extent are lawyers today happy with their jobs and, more specifically, with the demands put on their free time by their jobs? Why are lawyers today some of the most statistically depressed professionals on the planet? At its core lawyering is supposed to be about helping people. Does providing this help have to involve lawyers sacrificing their own well-being? Isn’t there another way of providing legal services, one that is not a drain on the practitioner’s soul?
All these questions are more important now than ever before given the current instability of the legal profession caused by the many catalysts of change that are applying pressure on the profession to change its archaic norms. More than ever before lawyers and future lawyers are looking for new ways to avoid living a life of 70-hour work weeks that leave no time for themselves. This millennial generation is more cognizant than any before it of the importance of personal fulfillment. The pressure to change being applied to the legal profession is not only coming from the inside. Clients are becoming less deferential to the billable hour and more conscious of its weaknesses. Technology is evolving in ways that can facilitate new forms of lawyer-client interaction and more efficient means of conducting legal research. The outsourcing of legal research and document review, which in the past were duties of junior associates, is more common now than it has ever been before. Change is coming whether we like it or not. The only question is how the profession is going to respond to it.
One response to the inevitable wave of incoming change and the calls for a healthier and more balanced way to practice law is a business model called nomadic lawyering. This novel form of legal service is hugely appealing to the large population of lawyers who are unhappy with the unreasonable demands put on them by their employers. The few firms that operate under this business model offer the lawyers in their employ the ultimate job flexibility regarding both scheduling and location. As unbelievable as it sounds, the lawyers working for these firms actually choose when and where they want to work. Compared to the traditional business model in which lawyers are often obliged to work sixty to eighty hours every week, this liberating alternative seems almost too good to be true!
But it is true!
Companies like Axiom Law have revolutionized the circumstances in which legal services can be provided. An Axiom lawyer is free to accept, refuse, or request a file at any time and therefore can work as much, or as little as he or she pleases. They are also free to work remotely, on-site with clients, or at times in any of the Axiom offices. This serves the lawyer by granting them an unparalleled amount of freedom to travel while they work and it serves the firm by greatly reducing their overhead because they have no need to invest in the fancy offices commonly used by traditional big city law firms.
So, if companies like Axiom have made the switch from the old model and have had so much success in doing so, why haven’t more traditionally-oriented law firms followed suit? The answer lies in the interests of the guys in charge. Partners of large law firms have worked decades to reap the ample rewards offered during their brief tenure atop the pyramid and they have no incentive to give this up for the purpose of making way for innovation.
The solution to the hurdle created by this conflict of interest is that younger, newer lawyers have to branch out, take a leap of faith, and liberate themselves from the old system in order to improve not only the quality of the legal service they are able to provide, but also their overall quality of life.
I wish I could leap out right from the outset, instead of having to get indoctrinated in the old ways of doing things through the traditional articling process. It feels so backwards after learning about the need to make changes and all the innovation that is starting to take place.
Anita, maybe we need a BC LPP 🙂 But since we don’t have that – articling is an excellent opportunity to learn a lot about not only substantive law but the way law firms are run. Your deeper knowledge will no doubt inspire a lot of ideas about what can be improved. When you “leap out,” you’ll be all the better equipped to do great things.
Thank you Robert for your article.
As someone who came from a non-law family, I knew very little about the realities of the legal world before coming to law school. With that being said I find law school prepares you for and pushes you towards the big traditional law firms. Law school teaches you everything you need to know to understand the law but very little about how it is practiced. I summered at a boutique litigation firm over the summer and thought that they were quite forward thinking. The firm was designed as an open concept with a lot of windows instead of walls, you could wear casual clothes to work (as long as you kept a suit at work for client meetings or court), and lawyers were allowed to bring their dogs into their offices. Now that I’ve taken L21C I’ve learnt that they are still a very traditional firm, simply a bit more modernized than most. Since learning about firms such as Axiom it has definitely changed my understanding of how law can be done differently. Learning about Axiom, has inspired me to strive for more, and I only I wish that more law students were made aware that other alternatives to the traditional firms are out there.
Thank you for your post Robert!
How great would it be if more law firms followed Axiom Law’s approach to providing legal services? As someone who values the idea of having a work-life balance (like most people…) and constantly thinks about whether I will have to put my career on hold once I have a family, I believe that working for a company that gives unparalleled freedom and flexibility to work as much or as little as I want sounds quite appealing.
I agree with you that one of the reasons that the more traditional law firms have not shifted to this newer model is partly due to the mindsets of Partners and lawyers at large and small law firms. They have worked very hard to get their firms to where they are today, and for those firms that are successful and thriving, lawyers may see no reason to change or implement innovative ways of providing services. This approach is clearly working for them, and any change to their model may threaten their business models.
I also agree that younger, and newer lawyers will be the ones to lead this change from traditional modes of legal practice to a newer, more innovative provision of legal services. However, I still struggle with seeing how newer lawyers will be able to affect this change. We will likely be completing our articles within these traditional law firms, and as articled students or newly called lawyers, it would be difficult to go to the partners of a law firm and pitch these new and innovative ideas, hoping that they listen or understand.
Thanks for your feedback guys. Emma, I agree with you that law school really pushes us towards the big firms, however, I think more of us are waking up to the reality that maybe we can live better lives in other settings. Its not that I think we value money any less than previous generations, I just think we value our free time more. Karen, in response to your point that we, as prospective young lawyers may have some difficulties affecting the change we are talking about, I think in reality it will be the market that forces the large well-established firms to change their ways and become more efficient. Smaller and more innovative firms will start eating away at their bases of clients until they will be forced to implement some of the innovations we have discussed in class.
Great post, Rob.
I find this post refreshing. There are many that come to law school with the dream of working downtown at a large city firm, where the end goal is making partner and achieving a larger-than-life salary. However, this requires many years of long hours and long weeks. But for some of us, including myself, somethings are more important than this. I’ll take nights on the ocean and Sundays on the golf course over a highrise office downtown Vancouver any day.