A small number of lawyers would create a monopoly on the profession and may increase legal costs.
I did not say that
a small number of lawyers would decrease costs.
Research indicates that it is very difficult for people to find a lawyer offering limited scope assistance, in part because of
the small number of lawyers offering such services and in part because lawyers who are offering such services do not always advertise it.
In complex injury litigation, federal judges often select
a small number of lawyers to conduct the national investigation on behalf of the thousands of people injured.
Many other asbestos firms have
a small number of lawyers who handle a large number of cases that they can not possibly be personally involved in due to time constraints.
A small number of our lawyers are regulated by other professional legal bodies including The Bar Standards Board, the Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys, and in the case of lawyers admitted in other jurisdictions, the relevant regulatory body of their place of admission.
Our hope is that all small firms will benchmark themselves using our Small Firm Scorecard even though we will only choose to work directly with
a small number of lawyers each year.
For instance, if a person has been involved in a minor car accident and is looking to get an attorney involved, he or she will likely reach out to
a small number of lawyers for quotes.
All of the accused seemed to be represented by
a small number of lawyers from what was then the criminal bar.
Martindale has invited
a small number of lawyers to register for the site as beta testers.
Both these areas and a few others at the top of the tables represent the more specialized areas populated by
smaller numbers of lawyers.
Not exact matches
In New England the first group consisted
of a
small number of people such as the magistrates and other political officers, the ministers, the merchants, and the slowly increasing
number of professional people such as doctors,
lawyers, and teachers.
Bogin and Eig represent a relatively
small but growing
number of private
lawyers specializing in special - education law.
For clients that produce a large
number of documents with only
small variations — such as employment contracts or non-disclosure agreements — providing technology to automate their production can save in - house
lawyers a significant amount
of time.
Because personal recommendations and referrals just happen to be the way most consumers and
small businesses (and a
number of large companies too, I'll wager) choose a
lawyer.
Most
lawyers and paralegals are increasingly able to focus on a
smaller number of legal niches.
But if you are a solo or
small - firm
lawyer who collaborates on documents often, has a
number of files, and relies on Microsoft Office, Box could be the solution.
The mainstream
lawyers and others would probably have use
of just components
of it as, in fact, it was more
of an academic, scholarly or theoretical tool; the market might have ended up as a very
small number of law faculties and specialist researchers.
Hopefully a
smaller number of applicants will sufficiently impact the
number of practitioners in the coming years to help restore the balance between the
number of practicing
lawyers and the legal work available (if such a thing ever existed).
In other words, the traditional law firm operating under the traditional law firm business model is an inhospitable place for many, many
lawyers — a place where their success depends not upon their skills as a
lawyer but upon their abilities in areas in which they have no training, interest or aptitude, as well as upon their gender and the color
of their skin; a place that requires them to sacrifice their personal lives; a place where they do not feel valued or fulfilled in their work; a place and where opportunities are denied to them and only a very
small number can reach positions
of success.
Where
small firm
lawyers who are overwhelmed by administrative tasks would not need to do them: They could join a franchise, which, benefitting from external investment, would have the resources to develop and offer to a large
number of small firms streamlined IT infrastructure, billing, marketing and file management, advertising, and a branded name and logo, freeing the
lawyers to practice law.
Yet the system does not provide them with the
lawyers they need to navigate it, treating representation as a privilege for the wealthy or as charity for a
small number of the very poor.
But,
of course, law firm attrition
numbers aren't just explained by job trends in other fields but by the fact that few
lawyers find the career satisfaction they crave working 60 - hour weeks on
small bites
of large cases.
Total Attorneys Inc., a Chicago - based company that provides services like office management and business development for solo and
small firm
lawyers, runs a
number of practice - specific blogs — from lemon law to DUI.
The result
of these two trends is a dwindling
number of lawyers practicing in
small communities and rural areas
of Canada and a looming access to justice crisis if large
numbers of lawyers decide to retire without replacements in place.
Mary Juetten, founder
of Traklight.com and author
of Small Law Firm KPIs: How to Measure Your Way to Greater Profits, discussed how to use KPIs, their benefits and exposed the
number lawyers in the room who don't use this tool to help with understanding and predicting their earnings, during her presentation called «Being profitable: Measuring what matters to your bottom line,» given at the
Small Law Firms and the Business
of Success event at Thomson Reuters in Toronto Nov. 2.
The fourth is at the post-call stage when squads
of less well - trained new
lawyers, unable to find jobs and saddled with debts that would make US Congresspeople chew their nails to the knuckles, open their own firms and resort to churning, roiling and boiling their mostly family and civil litigation files to make whatever money they can however they can from a
small, sliced and diced
number of clients per
lawyer — ethics, wisdom, logic, and good sense be damned.
With the advent
of full legal aid the workload on that
small number of criminal
lawyers increased, and in response they took on associates or started new firms.
I suspect that a large
number of small and large office
lawyers were intellectually slighted in some way and went into the practice
of law as a way to get social redemption.
In a very short period
of time, I've developed a
small following
of other
lawyers, interested non-
lawyers, and a sizeable
number of law students who follow the feed.
As with
lawyers, priests, doctors, soldiers, professional athletes, or people in a great many occupations there are a relatively
small number of bad apples who can have a very - outsized impact on the general reputation
of those who work in the occupation.
Friedrich Blase, Legal X @ MaRS Discovery District executive in residence and the Un-Firm
of the Future managing director, recommends stoking innovation by having
lawyers find a
small number of «meaningful, sizeable» client relationships.
I've written a
number of times here about the findings
of a Thomson Reuters survey, The State
of the U.S.
Small Law Firms Study, in which solo and small firm lawyers were asked about how they define success, the challenges they face and what firms are doing to achieve suc
Small Law Firms Study, in which solo and
small firm lawyers were asked about how they define success, the challenges they face and what firms are doing to achieve suc
small firm
lawyers were asked about how they define success, the challenges they face and what firms are doing to achieve success.
Yes, worse than hugely increasing the
number of small firm solicitors would be to allow the decimation
of them by the proven and consistent predatory practices
of a handful
of giant corporations who, having gotten rid
of the multi-thousands
of lawyer competitors, would then have the public at their rapacious mercy.
Go into litigation,
of course, further diluting the
number of clients per
lawyer and further forcing up the cost
of each file in order to make a decent living off a
smaller number of clients.
Now the ABS supporters want to add yet another layer, and more likely two more layers,
of overhead to cover: (1) the return to the
lawyers running the
smaller number of big or franchised law firms, and (2) the return on capital investment to the venturers.
You are wrong if you think that Walmart law for personal injury or any litigation is going to be cheaper than going to any one
of the large
number of independent
small firm litigation
lawyers.
There is no question that many
small Canadian cities and towns are doing without a sufficient
number of lawyers.
There is part
of me that suspects (without having the quantitative analysis to back it up) that this is why we can see the seemingly conflicting scenarios
of a glut
of young
lawyers contrasted with an apparent shortage in rural /
small urban settings — that is we now have a lot
of students / young
lawyers targeting a
small geographical area with a
small number open to practice outside
of the major centres.
(i) BMO reducing its roster
of firms from about 800 to 200 with further reductions planned; (ii) the clients
of seven sister firms hiring me to help them get control over their legal spend and forge stronger and more value based relationships with their firms; (iii) the many
small and mid-sized businesses who hire accountants to do all
of their tax and structuring work because it is cheaper than dealing with
lawyers; (iv) firms hiring me to help them figure out how to budget, set and meet client expectations without losing money; (v) «clients» who never become clients at all as they do their own legal work based on precedents that friends share with them; (vi) the various forms
of outsourcing that are now prevalent (from offices in India to Tory's office in Halifax); (vii) clients hiring me to figure out how to increase internal capacity without increasing headcount in order to reduce external spend; (viii) the success
of firms like Conduit, SkyLaw and Cognition (to name a few) who are taking new approaches to «big» and «medium law» work; (ix) the introduction
of full time project managers in many firms; and (x) the
number of lawyers throughout the profession who regularly don't docket chunks
of their time in order to avoid unpleasant fee conversations with their clients.
The Firm's
lawyers accept only a
small number of high - stakes cases at any given time so that they can dedicate their full attention to every client.
However, it's important to note that actual
lawyer salaries vary massively depending on a
number of factors: the area
of law they work in (for example, corporate
lawyers are known to earn a little more than criminal), where in the world you work and the type
of law firm you work in — whether it be a bigger, City firm or a
smaller, local firm.
This tool (under development, expected release: December 2017) generates a
small number of forms that a tenant without a
lawyer can use in court: Answer and Counterclaims; Request for Discovery; Notice
of Interpreter; Transfer to Housing Court; and a limited Motion to Dismiss.
«Solos and
small - firm attorneys make up 70 percent or more
of all
lawyers in America and, therefore, by sheer
numbers alone rack up more discipline cases.
«Government
lawyers are relatively
small in
number and they work in obscurity,» says Laval Dallaire, a partner in the Quebec City firm
of Gagné Letarte avocats and a specialist in the negotiation
of collective agreements.
Surveys show that in Canada, a very
small number of legal problems — as little as 1 in 7 — are addressed by a
lawyer.
Exclusing Heenan Blaikie again, we see a
small decrease in total
number of lawyers at the big firms in Toronto and Ottawa (53 fewer
lawyers in total).
A
number of lawyers feel alienated by the size and types
of practice
of large firms, and choose to practice in
small firms or as sole practitioners.
The
number of lawyers at the big firms is a relatively
small percentage
of the
number of lawyers practising across the country, so I wouldn't read too much into what these
numbers might mean.
For example, many Partnerships have a
small segment
of good rainmakers, a majority
of decent rainmakers, and a
small subset who are good
lawyers but can not make rain under the easiest
of circumstances (for any
number of valid reasons; these are not necessarily «bad» or «lazy» Partners).