11. For Clients: Legal Industry Development

In this episode of SeedJura: Decoding Law, Geneve and Phyllis are joined Tony Alfonso, another co-founder of SeedJura. The three colleagues discuss past and present trends in the legal industry and share enlightening, 'behind-the-scenes' information about the industry with non-lawyers/clients.

The SeedJura trio explores the traditional structure and flow of the legal industry:

• Previously, lawyers would go to undergrad and then law school in hopes of getting into a large firm (only 1% of lawyers go on to start a solo practice). After years of work, lawyers could hope to be promoted to partner at their firms. And, partners could offload work onto younger associates. But none of this is universally the case anymore.

• In the past, potential clients would only have word-of-mouth information for evaluating the efficacy of lawyers, and were subjected to the fees and expenses of the currently available pool of lawyers.

• Law firms are more of an aggregate for individual businesses than they are a conglomerate of legal minds. Individual attorneys at firms are responsible for acquiring their own clients.

• Clients belong to attorneys, not the firms. If an attorney leaves a firm, their clients are more then likely to leave with them.

Geneve, Phyllis, and Tony reflect on the traditional way that attorneys were trained:

• Landing a job at a law firm can feel like a fish-out-of-water scenario for newer lawyers. Lawyers need an apprenticeship to learn how to apply their legal studies into the practical world.

• Even at a law firm, attorneys function as solo practitioners, trying to generate business and billable hours for themselves as opposed to working holistically for the firm.

• Often, attorneys work for years at firms and either get promoted to partner, or work for a company and become in-house council.

Traditional marketing in the legal world is complicated:

• Marketing has been all about personal connections and going out and meeting people.

• Lawyers have had to be salespeople, otherwise they wouldn't generate new business.

• There were historically no standards for providing services or marketing, it was all at the discretion of individual attorneys.

Next Week's Episode: Tony joins Phyllis and Geneve again to discuss the future of the legal industry.

 

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