The Legal Industry of Tomorrow Arrived Yesterday: How Lawyers Must Respond
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Description
The world is changing, and with it the market for legal services, whether or not lawyers acknowledge the changes let alone address them. Information technology and global trade are disrupting how we've done business in ways and at a pace previously unknown. The scope of change in the next twenty-five years will be greater than in any 50-year period in our history. A response of insularity or denial threatens the profession's core values and impedes the long-professed (but largely unmet) goal of enabling people of modest means to get legal help. The traditional model for regulating lawyers—the “geocentric” model cannot survive. In fact, it has been fading for years. That model, which served us tolerably well until the last quarter of the twentieth century, posits that a lawyer's competence and authority are defined by geography. Lawyers are credentialed in the law of the state that tested and licensed them and where, for much of our history, they mostly did their work. State law defined a lawyer's expertise, and a license defined the radius of permissible practice. But the geocentric model had several incongruities that we managed to overlook and can no longer. Along with this oversight has been the misconception that only traditional law firms can offer legal services for profit. Although formal rules may say so, the reality today is different. Bar groups should lead in addressing the changes we face. We must bring our rules into responsible conformity with market events in a manner that protects the public interest and our core values and begins to fulfill the promise of affordable legal advice. I will suggest a few ways we might do that.
Source Publication
The Relevant Lawyer: Reimagining the Future of the Legal Profession
Source Editors/Authors
Paul A. Haskins
Publication Date
2015
Recommended Citation
Gillers, Stephen, "The Legal Industry of Tomorrow Arrived Yesterday: How Lawyers Must Respond" (2015). Faculty Chapters. 1250.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1250
