What in the World is the Future of the Legal Profession?

I am a sole practitioner in Clearwater, Florida, and have practiced here since 1967. I am Florida Bar board certified as a specialist in Elder Law. I have been hyperactive in the bar; local, state and ABA for many years. I love law practice but I believe the practice is in for some very significant changes and that the quality of bar leadership now and into the next century will determine our profession's future. I am concerned that my state bar and the American Bar Association leaders don't share my deep concern for the future. As time goes on, my worries about the profession continue to grow. Why can't our profession "get it?" In a previous article ("Stampede to Extinction") I predicted that 60% of today's lawyers would be out of business or in another line of work within 5 years. Non-lawyers I respect read the article and think I may be conservative in my projections. What will it take to get us lawyers to start looking to the future of the profession in a positive, proactive way so that my dire predictions don't come true?

What in the world is the future of the legal profession? What practice specialties are in the most serious danger? Will only the trial lawyers survive as the office practitioners are subsumed in a competitive war with those we call "non-lawyers?" Will litigation costs and delays, alternative dispute resolution methodologies, and the "Rambo" mentality seen too often in today's courtrooms end up delawyering even trial work now performed semi-exclusively by lawyers? Will our grandchildren wonder what we mean by the word "lawyer?" Will information technology do away with the need for information now provided by lawyers? Will we see an end to the one to one attorney client relationship? Will the public be better off or worse off without lawyers?

In 1994, the Barreau du Quebec (Quebec Bar Association) formed a committee on the future of the profession. The committee's mandate was to "determine the short, medium and long-term evolutionary trends in the practice of law, set the objectives to be obtained by the year 2000, and identify the actions which should be taken in order to achieve these objectives."

The committee issued its report October 1, 1996. The committee found change to be rampant in the population, the economy and the environment of the legal profession. The report wonders if lawyers will face up to the change and adjust their law practices accordingly. The committee came up with 14 "inescapable hypotheses." I will touch on only a few and add my own thoughts and comments.

Hypothesis 1 suggests that computerization will bring irreversible structural changes to the profession and that such changes occur every 50-60 years. (Many authors in the business community feel the changes going on now are more like the major upheavals we see every 500-600 years.)

Hypothesis 2 deals with globalization and the disappearance of distance brought about by information technologies. The Internet brings every person in the world six-tenths of a second away from everyone else. Hypothesis 6 emphasizes that the changes are not going away no matter how much we may try to wish them away.

Hypothesis 9 confirms that the number of lawyers is relatively high in our demographics and that competition is brisk, both within and outside the profession as we see ongoing erosion in our market.

Hypothesis 10 suggests that the need for legal services will continue to grow and that lawyers have a challenge to produce services that have a perceived value at or above the lawyer's price for services. Laws and regulations are more numerous and complex. Deregulation often results in more rather than less complexity. Lawyers have strong skills in dealing with highly complex information and translating complexity into understandable information. These translational skills may be the most valuable of the future lawyer's practice arsenal.

Hypothesis 13 suggests that the regulatory framework governing the profession will change as well because of nonlawyer competition, high number of lawyers, new technologies and public skepticism toward lawyers as major factors. I have participated in a number of trend-identifying meetings and the implications coming from those trends. Each group concluded that we would see the end of state bars and state bar regulations.

The California Bar meltdown is a great example of what the Quebecois were worried about. California has an integrated bar. Apparently, even though the Bar is dues funded, the legislature must pass enabling legislation for the California Bar to have access to its revenue. This spring, the legislature did its usual pro forma bar-enabling legislation. Governor Pete Wilson vetoed the legislation. In his veto message, Governor Wilson called the bar "bloated, arrogant, oblivious and unresponsive" to member or public needs.

Wilson said "The Bar has drifted, and become lost. It is now part magazine publisher, part real estate investor, part travel agent, part critic, commingling its responsibilities and revenues in a manner which creates an almost constant appearance of impropriety."

The California lawyers and the public met this grand announcement, not with anger or enthusiastic applause, but with apathy. Few openly disagreed with the governor's comments. Apparently, there is no driving movement to restore the California Bar to its former position.

I believe the California Bar situation is a call for relevance in all the bar associations. If the Florida Bar governors and officers don't worry at least a little bit about what happened to California and wonder if it could happen here, it will happen here. For now, the Florida Bar doesn't answer to the legislature, but it does answer to its members. If our members would be just as happy if the bar organization disappeared or became voluntary, there is a management problem in our bar. I believe the integrated bar in Florida must begin to treat members as if each member would join the Florida Bar given a choice. The Florida Bar must begin a serious look at the future of law practice and that look must begin sooner rather than later.

Scenario planning is a useful technique for trying to understand the future. The Barreau du Quebec decided to tangibilize their 14 Hypotheses by creating three scenarios for the future of the profession. They named the three scenarios "Albania," "Status Quo," and "Singapore."

The Albanian approach attempts to limit the supply side of services. In Florida the Albanian approach begins with aggressive Unlicensed Practice of Law (UPL) enforcement. The definition of law practice must be presented with the strictest possible meaning. We go on the attack and root out nonlawyer Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) advocates, CPA business and estate planning advisors, financial planners, title companies, and anyone getting in the way of our definition of law practice. I see the Albanian approach showing up to reduce passing numbers on the bar exam and to reduce admissions to law school so that those of us in practice will build a wall to new lawyers and nonlawyer competition, thus increasing our market share.

The second scenario is Status Quo. This scenario says "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Status Quo is the Scarlett O'Hara notion that we will deal with all problems tomorrow but let's not spoil today. As the world goes through meta change coming from so many sides at once, no one finds logical justification for Status Quo. However, we must remember that our training as lawyers requires that we look to the past to predict anything.

Frank Feather is a professional futurist. He addressed a program on the future of the practice called "The Ends of the Profession" at the 1998 ABA Annual Meeting in Toronto by stating the question as follows: "In a time of revolutionary change, the 'Big Question' is of course, 'What does unprecedented change imply for a precedent-oriented profession?'"

Dr. Feather, as a consultant for the panel at the program, identified four major trends that are changing law and law practice forever. Those trends include the info-globalization of the law, the commercialization of the law, the socio-culture of the law, and the politicization of the law. These trends and others changing our lives leave the Albania and Status Quo scenarios as pretty bleak and terrifying places to be.

The truth is that in a time of chaotic change, everything is broke and everything needs fixing. Unfortunately, our profession seems firmly camped between the Albanian approach and the Status Quo. If our profession follows the Albania/Status Quo combo, I have no doubt at all that our great profession will have a bit player's role in the future. The public will suffer most of all from our demise.

The third scenario, Singapore, pictures the profession taking a proactive attitude for change and earning its place in the future. Under the Singapore scenario, law firms embrace information technology rather than fighting it. The Singapore approach requires the profession to increase volume of high quality work and produce it more quickly and at lower cost. Lawyers will have to learn the skills required of us in the next century. We must adapt at the personal, organizational, and economic levels. We must recognize and embrace our abilities to compete in this new world. The Singapore scenario presents eight themes to illustrate the changing conceptions to which lawyers must adapt including culture, management, lawyers as human resources, impact of information on the provision of legal services, technology applied to legal services, globalization and its impact on law, and the profession as such.

What skills will we need to be successful lawyers in the 21st Century? What valuable new services can we add to make the future of our profession exciting and positive? After too much reading and perhaps not enough thinking about that question, I believe we must do the following.

1. Study trends, both global and legal profession trends. Flesh out the implications of those trends to our profession and to us personally from each of these trends. There are tools that help find implications and make implementation plans.

2. Start formally envisioning our future without relying on licensure exclusivity or stare decisis as our reason to exist. We should plan to flourish and do well in the future, not merely survive into the future. It would be extraordinarily valuable for the bar to lead the profession in the visioning process. However, if that leadership is not there for us, we must press forward individually and in our firms to examine our future roles.

3. Determine our core values individually and as a profession. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) has done an outstanding job of leading their profession with their vision project (www.cpavision.org). The AICPA identified five values in their vision project. They are continuing education and life-long learning, competence, integrity, attunement with broad business issues, and objectivity. What are our core values?

4. Identify core services. What skills do we have that are highly valuable to the public?

5. Determine our core competencies. CPAs identified communications skills, strategic and critical thinking skills, focus on client and market, interpretation of converging information, and technology.

6. Identify the top five issues for the profession. What must we change to improve the real and perceived value of our services in the future?

We are almost beyond our time to approach the profession's future proactively. If we follow the Albanian or Status Quo scenarios as our way to the future, our profession will abdicate its role in society and even disappear. We can create our future and we can enhance our real and perceived value with the public. We must begin.

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