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Ma firme

By Dominic Jaar

Je lis ce matin que mon modèle d'affaires idéal se popularise. En effet, Law.com rapporte ce qu'écrit The Recorder à propos d'un nouveau cabinet virtuel. En voici un résumé:

"Craig Johnson, the Silicon Valley lawyer-entrepreneur who brought you the Venture Law Group, is on to his next big thing: a virtual law firm. Johnson and 14 other lawyers unveiled the new firm, called Virtual Law Partners, on Friday. The idea is to have more work-life balance, work from home, save on overhead, charge clients less, and forge a new model for the legal industry. They're also getting rid of minimum billable hour requirements and high-priced associates."

Détails: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202423014334

Voici le site web de la firme: http://www.virtuallawpartners.com/

Voici ce que Johnson, un homme de 61 ans, a dire quant au modèle actuel des grandes firmes:

"Billing rates at large law firms have just gone up and up -- it's not unusual to find partners in the Bay Area billing $600, $700 or $800 an hour ... They have to pay high salaries for associates, high profits per partner, and they feel they have to have prestigious offices -- it's just a situation that can't continue."

Rien de nouveau mais ça fait du bien de se le rappeler....

Contrairement à ce que l'on pourrait croire, la firme "aims to be like the other top firms in the country, with hundreds of lawyers, just without offices." En fait, grâce à la pratique sans bureau, VLP est à même de revoir les modèles de facturation et de rémunération. Au lieu d'appliquer la règle des 3 tiers (salaires, coûts fixes, profits), la firme offrira 85% des revenus à ses associés qui factureront en moyenne 400$/heure. Un maigre 1000 heures par année rapporterait donc 340000$!! Ils doivent avoir besoin de moi, non?

Comme le dit Alastair Short, conseiller juridique en chef de 3Par, une compagnie californienne d'entreposage d'ordinateurs: "It's very rare that you go to a law firm these days and have face-to-face meetings. [...] If what a virtual law firm means is that there's no central office and the lawyers work from home and that would save me money, I would be happy to use them." Je partage cet avis.

Que dire sinon qu'il s'agit inévitablement de l'avenir!

- En direct de mon BlackBerry

Full post as published by Wines and Information Management (WIM) on July 16, 2008 (boomark / email).