UNBOUND: How Entrepreneurship is Dramatically Transforming Legal Services Today - Hardcover

David Galbenski

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 097781517X ISBN 13: 9780977815173

Publisher: Self-published, 2009

Synopsis

This book was a two-year collaboration between two Davids. David Galbenski conceived the project, defined the trends, and edited many drafts, while David Barringer organized, wrote, and designed the book. The project changed as the global marketplace changed, especially during 2008 and early 2009. In the end, the intent of the authors was not to present an exhaustive portrait of a still landscape but to explore overarching trends in a fast-moving world. In the next few years, there will surely be remarkable developments to add to a revised edition. The purpose of this book is to inspire readers to think in new ways about law and business. As an entrepreneur, David Galbenski is excited by today's trends and what they promise for the future. The legal industry is becoming unbound from its limitations. It is flexing its muscles and expanding its vision. Those individuals who are currently highly successful in the legal industry might have cause to be ambivalent about the pressures of the business model on their profession. But they also have good reason to become more alert to global as well as business trends and to seize the opportunity to adapt, innovate and thrive in the changing environment. Galbenski synthesized information about several trends affecting the legal industry. Journalists and industry researchers have been describing the current state of these trends for years now, but Galbenski wanted to encapsulate the importance of all these trends into a single book and especially to draw the reader's attention to where these trends might be going. In light of these trends and the current economic crisis facing the globe, those in the industry will need to revisit their three- to five-year business plans to remain relevant in the industry.

About this title

About the Author

Dave Galbenski founded Lumen Legal, a groundbreaking legal staffing and consulting company in 1993. As CEO, Dave has collaborated with corporations and law firms of all sizes to design strategies to create cost and process efficiencies in the legal-service delivery model. A pioneer in both the domestic and offshore outsourcing industries, Dave won the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2005, and Lumen Legal won the Inc. 500 award twice - in 2002 and 2003. From 2008 to 2009, he served as Chairman of the Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO), a global organization of 7,000 entrepreneurs in thirty-eight countries. Dave's industry and entrepreneurial insights have been gleaned from meetings with entrepreneurs, lawyers, and governmental officials around the world. Dave is proud of developing an employee-centric culture at Lumen that embraces innovation. As a result, Lumen has consistently been recognized as one of the best companies to work for in Michigan over the past several years. Dave and his company have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Business Week, Law Practice Today, Journal of Legal Marketing, Crain's Detroit Business, LPO Watch, National Law Journal, Legal Management, and Small Firm Business.

Review

The legal industry is facing unprecedented change, and law firms that don't modify the way they run their businesses face extinction. That's the conclusion in a new book that examines the enormous change sweeping the profession, Unbound: How Entrepreneurship is Dramatically Transforming Legal Services Today by American writer David Galbenski -- a must-read for lawyers and law students who want to build successful law business. Mr. Galbenski, CEO of Legal Lumen, a legal staffing firm, provides a book that is both topical and timely, coming only six months after the U. S. economy suffered its worst market decline since the Great Depression. It also comes at a time when U.S. law firms are rapidly downsizing and looking for ways to survive. The highlight of the book is a series of interviews with leading general counsel, who explain the changing global landscape their companies operate in and the pressures in-house lawyers face to rein in costs since the economic collapse. Their observations are stark and should raise the hairs on the arm of every managing partner, group practice leader and legal marketing expert in the business. Susan Flook, group general counsel at The Body Shop International in London, put it most succinctly when she said: "In my view, outside counsel have got to substantially change the way they charge for and deliver legal services. It is my opinion that the basic fee-earning structure in law firms is wrong. The whole thing needs a sea change." While his views aren't entirely novel, the book's strength is that it brings them together under one roof, and the timing-- especially the interviews with general counsel, which took place as recently as January -- is opportunistic. Unbound also follows on the heels The End of Lawyers? the book by noted legal futurist Richard Susskind, who predicts that general counsel will shape the future for external law firms. Mr. Galbenski warns lawyers who are "risk-averse" and fail to respond to the fires burning in the legal forest will suffer. "The longer you wait, the farther -- and faster -- you will have to go just to catch up. You will be left behind in the ashes." --Jim Middlemiss, Financial Post

Law firms may be coping with a downturn in business by trimming their costs, but the recession is moving the entire industry toward a range of new, entrepreneurial models that will eventually put the legal industry more in line with other types of businesses. So says author David Galbenski, whose new book Unbound: How Entrepreneurship is Dramatically Transforming Legal Services Today analyzes trends in the legal services industry and predicts the market will shift toward more project-oriented models. Nashville firms haven t seen the radical decline in demand that has hit other cities and sent some major firms out of business. Some New York and California firms in business for more than a century have closed during this recession, and layoffs of attorneys and other legal staff have become common in big city firms not to mention bonus reductions and raise freezes at some white-shoe firms. ...Over the past 18 months, major law firms have laid off nearly 13,000 people, including nearly 5,000 lawyers, according to the blog lawshucks.com. The largest firms are under the most pressure because they ve had the highest price point, Galbenski says. Nationally, they re operating under a wait-and-see methodology. Right now, large firms are moving incrementally to cut expenses, by laying off workers, freezing salaries, .....and deferring start dates for some new hires. When the crisis hit it exposed a lot of the price/value gap, Galbenski says. But I don t yet see that tipping point where people are making wholesale changes to their business model. Washington, D.C.-based Howrey Simon, a large global litigation firm, is implementing an apprenticeship model, whereby first- and second-year associates will enter a two-year training program, including taking classes on legal writing and research, trial tactics, cross examination and mediation and arbitration. They re also working on pro bono projects and working at a reduced rate of $150 to $200 per billable hour. That s the most dramatic change, Galbenski says. Frankly, the pay scale for one-year associates was out of whack. Galbenski predicts many of the large, global firms that tend to be headquartered in expensive downtown real estate and pay massive salaries in exchange for superhuman numbers of billable hours what he calls the National Legal Journal 250 and what others shorthand to Big Law will go away and only about 20 to 30 global firms will keep that model. He thinks the firm of the future will modify the current fixed-labor model, by supplementing fewer numbers of permanent employees with more contract work to reduce costs and retain more flexibility to hire as needed. Another scenario is a movie production model, where a lead attorney would be called on to assemble a legal team to handle a case akin to a project or production manager hiring a crew for a movie or a concert tour. It may not be the resources underneath them at the law firm, Galbenski says. ...Several factors point in this direction: technology that allows employees to work remotely; large numbers of women in law who have pushed for more flexible work arrangements; and a Millennial demographic accustomed to job-hopping and having expectations of proper work-life balance. Most younger workers also accept they will need to take responsibility for their own retirement and health benefits a trend that has only accelerated during the recession as pensions disappear, employers stop matching 401(k) contributions and health care reform gathers steam. Whatever industry you re in, you are being asked to provide services better, faster and cheaper, Galbenski says. Corporate purchasers are looking at legal services and asking them to do it more efficiently and at a lower price point....." --Jeannie Naujeck, Nashville Business Journal

Edition details

• Publisher: Self-published
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 097781517X
• ISBN 13: 9780977815173
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 255
• Editor: David Galbenski, David Barringer
• Illustrator: David Barringer