practicehacker

The buggy-whip, stable, leather, tanning, and a hundred other industries became virtually obsolete the day Henry Ford’s first horseless carriages rumbled off the assembly-line. Of course, it was some time before the last industry participants passed away, but the die had been cast. It just took a few years for the news to sink in.

That’s why this piece in the ABA Journal is the most important read of 2011: not because it reveals anything new – God knows we’ve all been told for years that the ship is headed over the falls – but because the authors dispassionately and convincingly document how screwed lawyers are, how we compare to other industries, and why the reckoning that we now face was inevitable.

Turns out the legal industry did not die recently – that happened in the 50′s or 60′s. But its corpse has been carrying on since then like nothing was wrong. That is, until it began to collapse under its own weight. The good news? There’s a fix. The bad news? Law grads for the next 10 years will have to suck it up just like participants in the real estate, mortgage, and financial industries. And most of those new lawyers will never see another boom. Even more ironic is that fact that, for once, they’re not responsible for the fallout. It’s just bad timing.

By the way, anybody know where I can buy a new buggy-whip?

Posted via email from practice (redux)

I started using the Web the minute it graduated from monochromatic bulletin boards to HTML pages. Of course I was unemployed like 70% of my law school class, so I had time to experiment. Now I’ve got an office, family, demanding clients, and employees to oversee. You might say I’ve grown up a little. But has the Web grown up with me? Almost every website still wants to monopolize my time as if I had nothing better to do but chat, tweet, poke, or whatever. Sure, today’s distractions are Facebook and Twitter instead of Chatrooms and Message Boards, but it’s not that different is it? So when does “.com” turned “Web 2.0″ need to produce something relevant to my life instead of one more way to waste time? Or is the Internet in perpetual adolescence? As unlikely as it sounds, I was hopeful when I spotted this article on Techcrunch – a blog that I really respect (started by an attorney, BTW). But it turns out the piece is mostly about the oncoming wave of information in our future and how Web Apps might deliver the information in a slightly different form.  In short, there is no reason to believe that the Web, or anyone making things for the Web, will deliver anything relevant to real life. So I guess I’m still desperately seeking relevance to come pouring out my browser. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon either.

Posted via email from practice (redux)

Via abajournal.com

It seems the editor-in-chief of the Chicago-Kent Law Review, one David Freedman, was unable to find work. According to a piece in Above the Law sourced by the ABA Journal, interviewing, volunteering, applying for clerkships, and surfing the Internet had all failed to land him an entry-level legal job. So Mr. Freedman wrote to the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law, Attorney Mark Herrmann, who sent him a copy of his book. Freedman wrote back to complain that the book had gotten him excited about working, making him even more bummed out about being unemployed. Apparently Mr. Herrmann agreed to meet Mr. Freedman, gave him some job-search advice, and they all lived happily ever after. [Read the full piece].

Having interviewed law-school grads for the past few years (including just yesterday), I’ve found nearly all of them to be wildly unrealistic about what they are worth. I can only wonder who is more responsible for the current market cluster-fu@$: gullible students, arrogant practitioners, ambitious law school deans, or lying placement office personnel. It’s got to be some kind of toss up; but any way you look at it graduating law students have been screwed for decades.

All I can say to Mr. Freedman and the other graduating law students is “Welcome to the party, pal.” It’s a rough, tough profession and nobody will pay you for your charming company. If you cnanot produce, consider yourself a liability (hint: recent law grads are almost pathalogically incapable of producing anything but hot air). If you are a recent law school graduate in need of work feel free to call my office and prove me wrong.

AgentAnything.com is the latest iteration of the trend that started with Kozmo.com in 1998 on the cusp of the first dot.com bubble. Such virtual assistant startups combined the economics of crowdsourcing, the virtually frictionless business environment of the Web, and the fact that we’re too busy for our own good.

Contenders in the space also include FancyHands. Of course this kind of service has existed for years without fanfare or the promise of Internet fame, and are now cropping up all over – not just to provide general services but in some cases to serve vertical markets. Could a legal-industry version of AgentAnything be far behind?

Posted via email from practice (redux)