Legal Commentary

Leading Legal Innovation, The Change Agenda and Legal On Ramp

By Patrick J. Lamb

I began my legal career before I went to law school.  In 1978, after graduating from college, I joined Kirkland & Ellis.  I was a "project assistant" and was paid by the hour.  One of my first assignments was to the "Plywood Antitrust Litigation" team headed up by Fred Bartlit.  The case went to trial, Fred was instrumental in my getting a key recommendation from our expert witness, and the rest is history.  After a storied career at Kirkland, Fred and some colleagues founded Bartlit Beck, perhaps the top litigation boutique in the country.  Maybe it's a case of unrequited hero worship, but I have always admired Fred Bartlit and I found the Bartlit Beck model intriguing.  When I was organizing a conference for American Lawyer some years ago, I arranged for Fred to be the keynote speaker.  He spoke about  Bartlit Beck's diamond structure, contrasting it to the pyramid model most firms favored.

Flash forward to a year or so ago, when my Valorem colleagues and I were getting ourselves organized.  We drew inspiration from two firms (along with many other sources).  One firm was--you guessed it--Bartlit Beck.

With that as prologue, this might be of interest only to me, but Fred Bartlit just joined Legal On Ramp, an organization I've written about before that has as members some of the leading thinkers on the law profession.  As with most things he does, Fred is already making an impact.  There is a fascinating discussion thread, started by Paul Lippe, entitled "The Change Agenda--Whom Are You Callin' Irrelevant?"    Amongst the contributors to the discussion are Professor William Henderson, and Fred, both of whom refer to a just concluded conference, Leading Legal Innovation.  Fred shares his notes from the entire conference.  Here's a couple (and remember, these are notes of the conference and not necessarily Fred's views);

The litigation “market’ is likely the most inefficient large, non-oligopolistic (fragmented) market that exists
Have heard this concept expressed again and again in many different ways at this conference. For example, GC’s, consultants, law firm participants made the following points:
Law firms are: “Expensive, complex, slow, risk averse, fragmented, static“
“Company management is at end of their ropes. They have become arbitrary and WILL tell law depts.” “you MUST budget. We can budge on 300mm drilling project and you CAN do this on litigation.” “there is no choice and there will be change”
“we do better job for customers than our law firms do for us”

This discussion thread is so good, so insightful, that it makes Legal On Ramp a bargain at any price (and it's free!).

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on December 22, 2008 (boomark / email).