Mitchell Lecture panel looks at a changing profession

Nothing less than the fate of the legal profession – and the future of legal education – was at issue in the first of two Mitchell Lecture presentations at SUNY Buffalo Law School.

The Law School’s signature annual lecture, the Mitchell Lecture this year comes in two parts and addresses the topic “Legal Education for a Changing Legal Profession.” The first event took place on Feb. 12, when a distinguished panel of speakers and practitioners took up the question of where the legal profession is today, and where it is likely to go in the future. In Part 2, to be held April 8, speakers will address the implications for law schools of these changes in the profession.

Professor James A. Wooten, chair of the Mitchell Lecture Committee, introduced the speakers for Part 1 and moderated the discussion.

The first presenter, Professor David B. Wilkins of Harvard Law School, noted that such developments as the globalization of economic activity, the rise of information technology and the “blurring of boundaries of traditional categories of organization and thought” are “reframing our entire economy.” These changes may have come late to the legal field, he said, but their effects will be unavoidable.

What Wilkins calls “disruptive innovation” is reshaping the practice of law. “The high profit margins in law are attracting very important competition,” he said, citing for example the deregulation of legal practice in the United Kingdom and competition in the United States from such legal services providers as LegalZoom and Avvo.

“The real question for us to think about is, what is value in law anymore?” Wilkins said. “What are we providing, and how are we going to measure, evaluate and price it?” In addition, he said, “Lawyers are the only people in the world who divide the world into lawyers and non-lawyers. Here’s a hint: There are a lot more of them than there are of us, and if we’re going to be effective in this world, we have to learn how to work collaboratively.”

Professor Gillian Hadfield, of the USC Gould School of Law, spoke to the breadth of the unmet need for legal services – not just among the poor, but for people of nearly all economic situations who wrestle with housing issues, child visitation disputes, even foreclosure cases without the help of a lawyer. “The problem of access to justice affects virtually everyone,” she said. “There’s a lot of legal work that needs to be done, if someone can figure out how to provide that legal work in an affordable way to all those folks.”

She observed that legal services are going the way that medical care already has, to a “pyramid” model in which simpler cases are addressed with software or by lesser-educated professionals, with only difficult or complex cases rising to the level of a lawyer’s attention. “It’s going to be data-driven problem analysis,” she said. “Eighty percent of the market will be perfectly happy with a standardized solution.

“The future looks like a world of nationally branded legal services companies,” she said. “You can find and access them online. Why? Because that’s how you do everything.”

The final presenter, Professor Bryant Garth of the UC Irvine School of Law, brought a sociology-of-law perspective to the issue, reminding the audience that lawyers have since the late 19^th century served as strategic “institutional players” in society. “They were brokers among big business, they connected as public servants, they connected their clients, they helped establish and run the foundations, they were connected to their educational institutions,” Garth said, “and that set of connections meant that lawyers and the law provided the language for the solution of social and political problems.”

That influence led “the best and the brightest” to enter the legal profession, ensuring its continued dominance. But, he says, as talented students began to gravitate to MBA degrees in the 1980s, and investment banks gained prestige in making multimillion-dollar deals, law is in danger of losing its elite status.

However, Garth argued, “this proximity to power, which is key to recruiting and replenishing the stocks of the elite law firms, is what allows lawyers to take advantage of things like globalization, things like business competition, things like deals.

“It makes the case for interdisciplinary learning as practical learning,” he said. “Because if lawyers are going to play an important role as brokers responsive to the market, to social and economic problems, building networks, then they also need to have credibility as they deal with the disciplines.” The profession’s guiding principle “can’t just be faster, better, cheaper. That turns everybody into a vacuum cleaner salesman. What has to save the profession is this other role which redounds to the benefit of all who are attracted to the profession. All lawyers bask in the glory of the elites being the key brokers in solving problems.”

Three longtime practitioners in Western New York made brief comments in response, reflecting their own perspectives from the realities of practice.

“Thinking about my typical week,” said Michael A. Battle ’81, of the New York City firm Schlam Stone & Dolan, “every week these two things happen to me: Somebody calls me who wants to retain my services but they can’t afford me; and I get an email from someone outside my firm pitching their services to me. Often these are people with law degrees who are not working in firms.”

In terms of meeting a wide variety of legal needs, Battle said, “I think there’s a big window of opportunity for training and direction. There are still a whole lot of people out there who are not being served.”

Ann E. Evanko ’79, president and managing member of Hurwitz & Fine, said that the increasing emphasis on “unbundling” legal services means that work previously done in-house, such as reviewing medical records in personal injury cases, is often done now by outside experts. Sometimes, she said, that choice is driven by insurance company cost-cutting.

She also spoke of the changing regulatory field for attorneys, saying disciplinary actions are being made public, and lawyers are being invited – not yet mandated – to disclose their tally of pro bono hours. “We need to change the way we are regulated in order to do business with other providers like LegalZoom,” Evanko said.

“There’s always been disruption” in the profession, noted Douglas W. Dimitroff ’89, a partner in the Buffalo firm Phillips Lytle. “What lawyers bring to the table, those who are really enthusiastic about practicing law, is solving problems. That’s what lawyers do.

“But lawyers aren’t the only ones who solve problems. There’s not a day in my profession where I’m not working as part of a team. Sometimes it’s an internal team, but increasingly it’s outside the law firm and it’s not lawyers. That interdisciplinary aspect is so important.”