Category: Law Factory v. Bet the Farm

Law firms thinking about their business and operating models need to consider which practices and matters rise to the level of “bet the farm.” Clients willingly spend on such matters, tolerating generous staffing and high costs. Much legal work, however, is cost sensitive and might...

The law factory handles high volume, relatively routine legal tasks (blog posts, presentation). Like any factory, it needs automation. Whether law firms or vendors own the automation is an interesting question.  Law firms historically have not led automation efforts. Document assembly is three+ decades old...

I recently spoke with Ian Nelson of the Practical Law Company (PLC) about the role of professional support lawyers (PSL) in large US law firms.  Regular readers know that PSLs play a leading role in knowledge management (KM). They generate precedents, research new law, and,...

A Sunday post by Adam Smith, Esq. post provides good perspective on the theme of “law factory” versus bet the farm firms.  Who’s Signing Your Paycheck? opens with an anonymous letter from a BigLaw partner to Adam Smith, Esq. asking “why law firms seem to...

Three articles today give us a read on the BigLaw market  This morning AmLaw Daily (9:41 AM) reported The Am Law 100 2011: Back in Black. This afternoon (5:45 PM), they reported The Am Law 100 2011: Growth Returns. Both report growth of 4%. Take...

Lately I have wrestled with the question of whether large, high-end law firms (“bet-the-farm”) can offer more pedestrian, lower-end services (“Law Factory”). A New York Times article yesterday, Wreckage at the Intersection of Corporate and Consumer Markets, suggests doing so may be very hard.  Reporter...

Last month Toby Brown and I co-wrote “Bet the Farm” Versus “Law Factory”: Which One Works?. We explored how large law firms could segment their business. Toby discussed tiers of matters and I law firm sub-brands. Today I extend the brand analogy.  I asked whether...