Ethics

Jordan Furlong over at Law21 has posted a thought-provoking piece predicting that 2011 will be the year of the free-agent lawyer.  Some excerpts:

So we?ve just come off the year of law firm outsourcing: traditional firms contracting with distant corporate entities in lower-cost jurisdictions to carry out basic or routine work. I think 2011 will see the further development of a related but more important trend: the shift of lawyer work away from full-time associates and towards independent, unaffiliated, networked and mobile practitioners. The corporate outsourcing stream is branching out into an individual outsourcing stream. 2011 should be the year of the free-agent lawyer. ...

Free-agent lawyers might work for Axiom-style dispersed firms for as long as it suits them. They might ply their trade as independents with the assistance of Posse List-like organizations. They might come together to form emerging legal business networks of their own and use them to build brands and careers. They won?t be ?solos? in the traditional sense ? they ultimately work for other businesses, not their own ? but they will constitute a valuable option for clients who want legal work done quickly, cheaply and well. LPOs will have to keep an eye on free-agent lawyers, too: they could be each other?s primary competition. Equally, though, the two entities could form alliances and pose an even stronger challenge to law firms.

Make no mistake, free-agent lawyers have a steep hill ahead of them: it?s a legal career on the edge, providing little leverage or security and demanding an entrepreneurial spirit. They could use some organizational help. But it does seem like a career path custom-designed for millennial lawyers, who were raised to multi-task their way through numerous serial careers with maximum flexibility and personal fulfillment opportunities. They represent, if not the future of the legal profession, one of a growing number of available futures for a legal marketplace increasingly in flux.

The full post is available here.