If you are just beginning your career as a lawyer, here is a fact about our profession you should consider: while you were busy studying, the world became flat.
Many of you may have entered law school with the intent of changing the world by arming yourself with a law degree and a license. While that outcome is yet to be determined for most of you, one thing is indeed certain: the world of business has transformed rapidly during the years that you were immersed in learning the process of practicing law.
In his New York Times bestseller The World is Flat, author Thomas Friedman outlines how the world became flat and what it means to us as we create the future in this newly flattened world. Trade and political barriers have been removed, and the technical advances of the digital revolution have made it possible to do business instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet.
What does this mean to you? You will be part of a global legal services industry in the years to come, where the name of the game will be accomplishing the legal task with the right person, at the right price, in the right place, within the right timeframe.
This can mean both new opportunities and obstacles for you. It may be in your best interest to focus on “non-fungible work” (work that cannot be easily digitized and transferred to lower-wage locations) as opposed to “fungible work,” which includes electronic discovery (subjective legal review), contract review, patent drafting, and legal research and writing.
Fungible work can easily go offshore. A shared British common law heritage, coupled with excellent law schools and an ample supply of attorneys, will make it practical and profitable to send work to India or even Sri Lanka, as digitization increases. Purchasers of legal services will unbundle fungible tasks and go to lower-wage countries to get such tasks performed. Corporations will continue to seek to close a perceived “price/value gap” in legal services, and pressures to reduce overall legal spend will drive the costs of legal services down. Law firms will look at reducing cost structures for fungible services that support the practice of law, and consolidation of larger firms will occur to achieve cost efficiencies.
All in all, the transformation of the profession of the law to the business of law, will accelerate.
What will you need to succeed in this changing environment? A sense of entrepreneurship will serve you well, whether or not you work for a law firm, a corporation, or for yourself.
Secondly, take the global view. You and your colleagues will be needed on the front lines, leading the team, and doing the higher value work. Unlike Indian lawyers, for instance, you are licensed to practice law here in the US. Offshore lawyers may perform document review and other tasks in the background, but their work must be coordinated and reviewed by a US attorney.
Most of all, be adaptable.
And one other thing: please don’t give up on that inspired notion that you can change the world for the better. It’s our charter as professionals, and as human beings.