Category: George Bellas

COVID-19 is affecting the Practice

This is an unsettling and chaotic period of no longer business-as-usual for every industry, and the legal practice is no exception.  While we are all trying to stay safe and relatively production, a tsunami of change is overwhelming us.

The Future is Now

Clio, one of the largest law firm management systems, published a survey of law firms to assess the impact of the Pandemic on the practice.

Generally, the report confirms what we have been experiencing first hand – that the practice has been significantly affected by social restrictions and we are seeing reduced client demands.  This is notwithstanding the ongoing need for legal services.  Here are some of the findings:

  • Law firms have seen a drastic deceleration in new matter creation. Since the start of 2020, the number of new legal matters being opened each week has decreased by more than 30% compared to a baseline average of weekly matters opened during the first five weeks of 2020. When compared to the brief increase at the end of February, the number of new weekly matters dropped a total of 40%.
  • 77% of law firms agree that their day-to-day operations have been significantly impacted by the pandemic.
  • Lawyers expressed widespread concern over the future success of their businesses and their ability to make ends meet. Much of this concern is likely due to the majority of firms having seen a drastic decrease in the number of people reaching out for legal services.
  • Legal professionals take the novel coronavirus outbreak seriously. Only 11% of legal professionals agree that social restrictions are an overreaction to the virus.  Additionally, 75% of legal professionals report higher levels of stress and anxiety.
  • 50% of legal professionals are more concerned for their financial future than for their personal health.
  • Lawyers are still essential but will need to adapt to client needs. Overall, public perception of lawyers remains significantly positive for lawyers among the general population.  77% see lawyers as an essential service.  However, many consumers also perceive barriers in terms of cost and the accessibility of legal services.
  • 38% of consumers agree that a remote hearing would negatively impact their case outcome.

The pandemic has exacerbated the issues that lawyers have been facing over the past two decades.  We can no longer play the ostrich and stick our heads in the sand.  We need to become proactive in adapting to the changes we are facing.   We must – in order to survive – re-imagine how we meet clients wherever they are located to deliver services that are professional and affordable.   Technology will only advance our goal of servicing our clients.

For a summary of the report go to: https://www.clio.com/resources/legal-trends/covid-impact/

For a full copy of the report go to: https://www.clio.com/resources/legal-trends/

 

‘Legal Innovations’ Can No Longer Be an Oxymoron

THIS IS ANOTHER POST IN THE FUTURE OF THE PRACTICE SERIES.

We live in an age when lawyers are underemployed and yet many consumers lack access to legal services. Law firms are losing business as companies “in-source” their legal work, while the incomes of some solo practitioners are plummeting. Many lawyers would like to make better use of technology to work more efficiently and have simpler legal processes—but they feel challenged by advances in technology and continue to face difficulties remaining profitable.

The Illinois Supreme Court’s Commission on Professionalism sought to square this set of circles with a presentation titled “Legal Innovations: Why Still an Oxymoron?” by Jayne Reardon, the commission’s executive director, who is also chair of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Professionalism.   Reardon noted that at least 80 percent of consumers lack basic access to legal resources, and yet practicing attorneys cannot find enough work and new law school graduates cannot find work, period. An Altman Weil survey found that 68 percent of law firm attorneys said corporate law departments are “in-sourcing” work and another 24 percent saw this possibility as a potential threat. Only 5 percent said it was not a threat.

The presentation cited statistics from 2013, which one imagines may have improved somewhat with the growing economy since then but probably not that dramatically, that showed solo practitioner income had fallen 30 percent in the previous 25 years, from slightly over $70,000 annually to under $50,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars.

While cause and effect can be sketchy, Reardon cited numbers from the ABA and the Betty Ford Foundation establishing that 1 in 5 attorneys described themselves as problem drinkers, compared with just 11 percent of the “highly educated workforce” overall. Of the 20 percent of attorneys who acknowledged drinking to excess, 27 percent said their problem began in law school and 44 percent said it was in the first 15 years of their practices.

Asked what they would change about how they deliver legal services, one survey of attorneys conducted by the Illinois Commision on Professionalism showed that the top answer was “greater use of technology and electronic resources,” followed by “work more efficiently and have simplified legal processes,” two dots that it’s hard not to connect in your mind.

That same survey asked what attorneys expected would be their greatest challenges for their practices over the next decade. The top answer was “cost of software programs/keeping abreast of technology,” followed by “overcoming decreasing levels of demand and maintaining profitability and financial security.” Again, easily connectable dots.

In finding their needed innovations, attorneys and law firms need to be mindful that they are regulated by state supreme courts, Reardon noted. For those in Illinois, some specific edicts to keep in mind are Rule 5.4 governing “Professional Independence of a Lawyer,” which prohibits sharing of legal fees with non-lawyers and partnerships with non-lawyers that in any way consist of the practice of law; as well as Rule 5.5 governing “Unauthorized Practice,” which says that lawyers can neither practice law nor assist others in doing so in jurisdictions where they are not authorized to do so.

With these cautions in mind, attorneys and law firms will need to be nimbler than they have in the past to keep abreast of technology, meet the needs of a broad cross-section of clients, and stay fully employed—and thus profitable.

Will Robots take over the Practice of Law?

Robots in the Practice of Law?

Nearly half of all jobs in the United States could be performed by robot employees within the next two decades, according to report by PwC, with the effects varying by industry and job category.  Artificial intelligence provides a rapid way to analyze data and identify trends, but AI currently offers little of the creative thinking or originality required in most areas of the law.

The use of AI in the law dates to 1999, when Jay Leib and Dan Roth created “Discovery Cracker,” a tool that helped lawyers manage electronic documents for litigation in an age when they increasingly were sifting through terabytes of data instead of mountains of paper. The pair later in 2013 created NexLP, which uses predictive coding—in which a computer searches documents for conceptual information (not just keyboards) to determine which ones are and are not useful to a case—to substantially reduce the time necessary for e-discovery.

Today, computers are processing information at about 10 times faster than the human brain and it is only a matter of time before computers are programmed to assess all of the other factors that go into a legal analysis.

Artificial intelligence in the legal realm has taken another step forward with the advent of IBM’s “ROSS,” touted as “the world’s first artificially intelligent attorney,” blending the voice technology of Apple’s Siri with the cognitive computer of its IBM sibling, Watson. ROSS can perform the preliminary document research needed for some cases in as little as 30 seconds.

“You ask your questions in plain English, as you would a colleague, and ROSS then reads through the entire body of law and returns a cited answer and topical readings for legislation, case law and secondary sources to get you up-to-speed quickly,” according to the website of Baker and Hostetler, which recently announced that ROSS has been “hired” to work alongside its 50 bankruptcy attorneys.

This has a number of both promising and cautionary implications for law firms and their small business clients:

  • Nearly 80 percent of Americans who currently need a lawyer cannot afford one, despite the massive number of attorneys in the U.S., but using ROSS should be able to lower costs since there will not be humans who bill hourly handling some preliminary research for cases and matters.
  • Attorneys who are currently out of work or under-employed could use AI to create a lower barrier of entry into the market by being able to offer more affordable options to their clients.
  • For now, ROSS is available only for bankruptcy and intellectual property law, and the price may be prohibitive for smaller to midsized firms.
  • The volume of work performed by AI could lead to job loss for some attorneys.
  • ROSS could level the playing field between firms of different sizes because it won’t matter as much whether a firm has one or 30 associates available to research a case.
  • Instead of leafing through dusty textbooks or clicking on hundreds of links looking for precedent or an obscure court ruling, human attorneys will be freed to focus specifically on a client’s needs and creative solutions to them as AI handles the grunt work.
  • ROSS keeps updating court rulings so that as a case is being worked on, attorneys will know about up-to-the-minute developments in the relevant area of law.
  • The technology not only narrows down results to the most relevant answers, but it translates those answers from legalese into something closer to plain English, making them more understandable for clients.

Given that artificial intelligence cannot at the present moment compete with humans in terms of creative thinking or originality, the effectiveness of a technology like ROSS in simply taking over an entire section of a law firm remains doubtful for now.

“We believe that emerging technologies like cognitive computing and other forms of machine learning can help enhance the services we deliver to our clients,” says the Chief Information Officer of the firm employing ROSS in its bankruptcy practice. “We have been using ROSS since the first days of its deployment, and we are proud to partner with a true leader in the industry as we continue to develop additional AI legal assistants.”

Artificial intelligence will continue to move forward in the legal world, although further implications going into the future remain unclear—including the impacts of robots on revelry and merriment at office holiday parties.

How should we plan to network or go to a Cubs game with ROSS?  Will ROSS ask to attend our office parties?

Is the Future of the Practice of Law in Jeopardy?

Is the Future of the Practice of Law in Jeopardy?

Technology is affecting every part of our lives and the legal world is not immune to the changing world.  The practice of law as we know it will be unrecognizable in the next decade.  Technology is the biggest threat to the legal paradigm as it currently exists.  The legal establishment is complacent and unwilling to accept its ebbing grip on the legal market.

The recent ISBA report regarding the future legal practice[1] world severely underestimates the cataclysmic, exponential changes technology will have on the paradigm of legal practice.  The legal community has turned a blind eye to technological tsunami hitting our society and affecting inside and outside the legal profession for years, even now disregarding its most potent threat staring it in the face.  In their current state, the framework of law firms and schools are sorely underprepared to deal with the tsunami of technological changes and the non-legal alternatives it has created.

Within the lifetime of this year’s newly sworn attorneys, automation will radically change the legal profession. This may sound extreme, but once the dots are connected, anyone can see the domino effect on the legal structure.  For instance, self-driving cars are a not-so-distant reality. The idea of not having to drive yourself to the office seems like a dream, but in reality it will dramatically change the practice.  If vehicles are completely controlled by a computer, human error will be removed from driving, resulting in near eradication of accidents.  Of course, accidents will occur, even with autonomous cars.  However, when these accidents occur, will lawyers have the technological competence to interpret the computers that drive the vehicles?  Accidents involving autonomous cars will create a plethora of new legal issues and standards lawyers must be prepared to address.

In 2005 alone, 35% of the 26,950 civil cases that reached disposition stemmed from motor vehicle collisions across the nation.[2]  This seems insignificant, until compared to the 7.4 million civil cases filed around the nation in the same year.[3]  If the claims filed are representative of the cases that reached disposition, roughly 2.5 million claims caused by motor vehicles reached an out of court resolution, settlement or otherwise.  The harsh reality is that accidents create work for attorneys. Although the shift to autonomous cars will be gradual, it is obvious the lawsuits arising from accidents will decrease towards non-existence.

Autonomous cars will cripple the existence of solo-practitioners and big law firms alike.  With lack of accidents, the need for auto insurance will become  obsolete. The purpose of auto insurance is to cover the driver from any damages they may cause while operating a vehicle. If vehicles are operated by computers, the driver has no liability, and no reason to purchase auto insurance. If auto insurance is no longer needed, auto insurance companies’ revenue will plummet.  These companies will either adapt to the change, providing coverage for self-driving vehicles at a highly-reduced rate, or cease to exist.  Regardless, there is one clear outcome for attorneys employed by insurance companies: their jobs are in jeopardy. With less income, insurance companies will be less willing to employ big law firms for representation. Insurance companies may not be able to afford in-house counsel, eliminating the position entirely.

A decrease in accidents will also cause a decrease of injuries requiring hospitalization. When there are less patients in the hospital, one can assume a proportional reduction of medical malpractice claims will occur. Just like the insurance industry, attorneys on either side of medical malpractice claims will suffer from technological advances.

The effect of automation is not limited to the civil arena.  Cars that are self-driving cannot violate traffic laws, notwithstanding maintenance issues such as a dead brake light.  A computer cannot be inebriated, which will virtually eliminate DUIs.  Additionally, if there are no traffic violations, there will be less arrest resulting from routine traffic stops, lowering the case load of public defenders, and in turn, reducing the amount of employed public defenders. Fewer accidents means less work for au
to body shops and a change in the auto insurance business.

Is technology really a threat?

Non-legal for-profit companies like LegalZoom and Avvo have been around for decades.  These businesses provide do-it-yourself guides for a variety of legal actions, easily accessible and competitively priced.  By paying a small fee, LegalZoom provides its customers with questionnaires, using the answer to fill out and file the required legal forms for the requested service.  Additionally, it provides a year of unlimited attorney consultations, with an option to keep these services for a monthly fee.  Recognizing consumers desire convenience and price transparency, LegalZoom assisted 1 million customers in the first 10 years of its creation in 2001.  Since then, LegalZoom has assisted another 2.5 million customers in 7 years, and that number will only continue to grow in the state of the current legal paradigm.  This flat-fee pricing is arguably the biggest draw to these types of technological services.

Unfortunately, these for-profit companies are not the only threat to the legal community.  In New York and London, DoNotPay.co.uk assists users with a “robot-lawyer” chatbot.  Through a series of questions, the chatbot determines if an appeal is possible, and if so, guides users through the appeal process.  In the 21 months from it’s creation, DoNotPay has taken on 250,000 cases, winning 160,000, giving the program a 64% success rate.  This sophisticated program, which provides a simple process for appeals, was created by 19-year-old college student.   An individual with no legal training created a simple step-by-step online guide to traffic tickets.  This traffic ticket “robot” gives a clear warning to the legal field:  Adapt or Die.  The reason these services are such a threat to the legal community is their pricing.  These easily accessible sites provide flat fees and a well-defined service.  Customers know the exact price for what they are paying.

The opposite is known for the legal field where the adage “a lawyer’s stock in trade is his time” has governed our fee structure since Abraham Lincoln rode the circuit in the 1850’s.  Lawyers need to bill hours to make money, and thus strive to have more hours at the expense of efficiency. This common knowledge, combined with a general public lawyer stigma, causes consumers to be uncomfortable not knowing the actual price of legal counsel until a matter is resolved.   The billable-hour mentality prevents law firms from adapting to the changes of technology.  Sacrificing efficiency for profit is hurting the legal field.  Lawyers have known that technology can threaten the practice since the early 2000’s.  It was possible for a firm to automate a 65 page lease template, which generated leases in a mere 15 minutes, as opposed to the 4 hours it would take to generate manually.  The project was scrapped because based on the billable-hour model, the revenue expectations would be cut in half.[4]  By refusing to incorporate this technology, lawyers are willingly losing clients to non-legal companies.

Technology is leading to the downfall of the billable hours framework and is establishing a flat-fee structure.  Technology will automate or replace many of the traditional, billable functions performed by lawyers.  Some technology has become accepted within the legal field, particularly with document review and e-discovery.  With globalization of work, work usually done by junior associate and paralegals is being outsourced to companies in different countries for a fraction of the cost.

Is the legal job market still stagnant?

The legal field has yet to recover from the Great Recession in 2008, nearly a decade later.  Due to the escalating need for sophisticated legal representation prior to 2008, legal firms structured themselves to handle prodigious amounts of work while simultaneously training sophisticate business lawyers.  Post 2008, the need for representation plummeted, and firms have attempted to adapt, “reducing the number or entry-level lawyers, turning the traditional pyramid structure into a diamond with many senior associates and nonequity partners composing the broad middle.”  Unfortunately, “the short-term needs of established law firms to generate higher revenue and profits to retain the firms’ biggest rainmakers are at odds with long-term needs to invest in a more sustainable business model tied to the changing demands of its clients.” [5]While the industry attempts to shed the training costs of entry-level lawyers, it will eventually produce as shortage of mid level attorneys and higher labor costs to stave off unwanted attrition.

Despite law school enrollment and graduate numbers falling, the available jobs for new attorneys has decreased.  Law school enrollment in 2016 has decreased from 5% from the class of 2015.  The graduating class of 2016 dropped 9.2% from the previous years numbers.  In addition, so did the number of entry level legal jobs, dropping 8.6%.  Although the ABA reports a climbing employment rate of 86.7% for the classes of 2014 and 2015, only 62.4% of 2015 graduates and 64.1% of 2014 graduates obtained employment that required Bar passage.[6] [7] For those 83,816 graduates, only 53,000 were employed in positions that requires passage of a bar exam.

The 2014 OOH predicted 74,800 new lawyer jobs through 2022. Between 2014 and 2024, the agency now estimates, the number of lawyer positions will grow from 778,700 to 822,500, adding just 43,800 jobs—a plunge of 41 percent.  [8]

Although the disproportionate number of entry level jobs to recent graduates has been known for years, the disproportionality will only increase with incorporation of technology into the legal practice.  New legal technology will equivalently decimate the work load of entry level associate positions, document drafting and reviewing used to hone their skills will be outsourced to third parties or technology.  Although this will bring down the cost to consumers and increase efficiency, it will lower total billable hours available and drive down profits.

Are law schools preparing lawyers for the future?

In addition to the radically changing legal field caused by technology, law schools are stifling the job market.  Law schools have become cash cows, churning out inexperienced lawyers with crippling student loans who are as effective as a paralegal after graduation.

Foremost is the weight of the student debt most law school graduates incur.  Ten years ago, law school cost half the amount it does now.[9]  Historically, law school tuition has doubled every 10 years, roughly three times the rate of inflation.  But this is not limited to law school, because newly admitted law school students are most likely carrying over debt from undergraduate colleges which are facing the same problem.  It is not unheard of for a law school student to graduate with $250,000 of debt, a great place to start in a struggling job market.

Further, law schools do not adequately train their students in a variety of aspects that are necessary to provide effective legal representation.  Law students are not required to take courses that teach marketing or business, nor are students required to learn about practical legal practice.  Most law students don’t know how to properly fill out and file motions in court, some have never even stepped foot in a court room.  In order to gain this legal experience through law school, a student must take specific courses, sacrificing opportunities to study other areas of law.  Unfortunately, most students don’t even realize they need this practical knowledge until they have graduated.  Additionally, courses on how to market yourself or run a business, which is essentially what an attorney does, are almost non-existent.

Of course, law students may be able to gain some practical knowledge through legal externships, but many times the work is limited to drafting, document review, and research.    However, many an externship can consist of busy work, filing papers in an office.  Although these externships can help students gain practical experience, they must seek out these positions themselves.  Law schools do little more than provide information on where these externships may be sought.  Compare this placement to other professional education.  Medical students must participate in residencies where they hone their skills before beginning practice on their own.  Speech-language pathologists, or SLP, are required to participate in at least 9 months of medical “placements,” working with patients under the supervision of licensed therapists.  Specifically, in the SLP field, the schools assign each each student placement facilities.  In these fields, this practical training is required before you can receive a license to practice.  Although relatively inexperienced, this practical knowledge allows these students to have a level of competency before receiving licensure.  In the legal field there is no such requirement, many young attorneys learn on a trial-by-fire basis.  These student’s laughable experience, combined with a dismal job market, does not bode well for those who seek to practice in the legal field.

Technology is changing the legal paradigm and there is nothing that can be done to stop it.  Throughout history, technology has been adapted to innumerable industries, changing them entirely.  In the not so distant past, vehicle manufacturing was entirely changed by automation.  Technology decreased the labor costs by replacing humans with technology, making cars more affordable to consumers.  Today, technology is threating threatening the legal market in the same way.  This is not speculation; todays business giants are warning of the effect of technology.  Bill Gates, Mark Cuban and Elon Musk have recently warned of the impending displacement of human jobs from automation.  But don’t take their word for it, just ask your travel agent how their business survived technological advances.

In Summary:

The ISBA Report recognizes some of these issues, but instead of helping lawyers deal with the changing landscape, the report focuses on providing legal services to the mass of people who do not have access to legal services.   We need to start taking care of our own.  We are a trade association with selfish interests. Lawyers must showcase the value of legal expertise, differentiating ourselves from do-it-yourself websites. As as the legal paradigm shifts towards speed and efficiency, we must address the inherent clash of the billable-hour framework with the forced efficiency of technology.  To insure the existence and profitability of the legal practice, we must adapt to survive.

~ George S. Bellas (www.attorneyscreativeroundtable.com)

 

[1] https://www.isba.org/ibj/2017/01/seeingandshapingthefuture

[2] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/cbjtsc05.txt

[3] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/cbjtsc05.txt

[4] http://www.americanbar.org/publications/gp_solo/2014/may_june/how_technology_changing_­practice_law.html

[5] http://www.americanbar.org/publications/gp_solo/2014/may_june/how_technology_changing_ practice_law.html

[6]http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/reports/2015_law_graduate_employment_data.authcheckdam.pdf

[7] http://www.nalp.org/1216research#table1

[8] http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/01/government-cuts-projection-of-2014-2024-lawyer-jobs-by-41-16k-lawyer-jobs-for-37k-law-grads-each-yea.html

[9] http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/statistics/ls_tuition.authcheckdam.pdf

 

 

Are You Amazon or Mastodon?

A famous Chinese curse threatens: “May you live in interesting times.” Whether the result of a blessing or a curse, there is little doubt that the times we live in are interesting.  Even in the context of 5,000 or so years of constantly rising and collapsing civilizations, colossal change has never taken place as fast as it is happening now.  To a large degree, this roller coaster of upheaval and progress has been driven by major scientific and technological innovations. But in the 21st century, we have put the pedal to the metal.  Today, technology is evolving at such a breakneck pace that artificial intelligence seems to be developing more quickly than its human counterpart.

Every aspect of business and commerce is changing overnight, and then changing again.  If you wonder how fast things can move, consider the rise of online selling.  Amazon was founded just over 20 years ago and since that time the brick and mortar retail business has never been the same. Sears and JC Penny’s still don’t know what hit them.

An entire generation now does business using tablets and smartphones, while basing their social lives around the cool devices held in their hands.  On a daily basis, new apps are released that perform tasks that humans used to handle ourselves and some that had not been conceived of a year ago. Is there some reason to believe that the practice of law is somehow immune from this mobile revolution? Hint: the answer is “no.”

Large law firms in particular are under pressure to change their business models. Indeed, few professions suffered as greatly during the financial meltdown of 2008 – 2009. Many have dissolved, gone bankrupt, or laid off significant portions of their staff as corporations turn to other legal services such as e-discovery vendors. Some clients are outsourcing legal reviews to services in India. The pressures on these leading firms will ultimately have deeper impacts in legal education and lawmaking, and will affect the perception of lawyers’ place in our culture.

But large or small, every aspect of the legal practice is or soon will be affected by internet driven technological change and off-shoring. Global competition is hitting the law industry just as hard as it has hit other professions. The difference is that lawyers, understood by default to be among the more intelligent members of the workforce, are unaccountably slow to get the message.

But once you get the message, what do you do?

One credible voice sounding the alarm is Professor Richard Susskind, an Oxford professor and author who advises international law firms as well as national governments. Susskind has been a pioneer in legal information technology for over three decades and originated “The Grid”, a matrix that defines four general categories that map out potential IT applications for law businesses. In the proper context, the Grid can be employed as a rubric to move forward.

The good news is that Susskind believes that for those who are ready to adapt, this legal paradigm shift represents nothing but opportunity. But the upfront challenge will be for lawyers to pinpoint their special skills. In order to thrive, legal professionals will have to leverage their unique attributes, ideally those that can’t be replaced by an algorithm, sourced overseas or provided by non-professional personnel using advanced search systems.

In his most recent book, Susskind identifies four businesses models he believes law firms will need to embrace in the near future.  If you agree with his general approach to the future, I suggest you check out his suggested tools in The End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the nature of legal services.

Recommended Reading for the 21st Century Lawyer

If you love the legal profession as I do, nothing beats the actual practice of law, to the point that one can forget sometimes that a law practice is also a business. But there is no getting around the fact that law is simultaneously a business and a profession. If you run your own law practice, it’s essential to stay on top of the rapidly evolving business landscape of the 21st century.

Over the years, I’ve discovered a lot of valuable business guidance between the pages of books, particularly concerning how to anticipate and benefit from change. Here are some of the publications we recommend to lawyers who are committed to staying on top of the game as the century races onward to tomorrow.

“The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services” by Richard Susskind. This is the book that catalyzed my thinking about the future of the practice and how lawyers need to adapt to evolving technologies, the internet and a sometimes tumultuous economy. In fact, this is the book that led me to start the Attorneys Creative Roundtable. I think “The End of Lawyers” should be required reading for every law school student. And, don’t forget Susskind’s follow up book, “Tomorrows Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future” which describes a new legal world of virtual courts, Internet-based global legal businesses, online document production, commoditized service, legal process outsourcing, and web-based simulated practice. Both books are must reads and should serve as guides for lawyers looking to build a business for the future.

“The E-Myth Attorney: Why Most Legal Practices Don’t Work and What to Do About It” by Michael E. Gerber. In this book, “the World’s #1 Small Business Guru” applies his E-Myth theory to lawyers, stressing the importance of systems in a law practice. There are any number of components in a practice that can be systematized, which not only reduces costs, but also creates a better client (read “customer”) experience. As a follow up, we also recommend Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited.

“StrengthsFinder 2.0” by Tom Rath. Many solo practitioners are forced to open their own practice just to survive and often have no sense of strengths and weaknesses. An old lawyer once told me that a solo practitioner is an unemployed lawyer. This books helps you identify the areas in which you excel and improve those in which you are weak.

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. Two visionaries discuss how technology is increasingly affecting our economy and the way we do business. As a result, we need to closely examine our business paradigms and adapt new rules that will keep every person economically viable in a time of increased automation.

“Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think” by Peter Diamandis. You won’t find this book on any other lawyer reading list. Diamandis’ book talks about the exponential escalation in computer speeds and how this technology explosion is creating new opportunities.

“Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means” by Albert-László Barabási. An expert in the emerging science of networks, Barabási takes us on a compelling voyage to show that social networks, corporations, and living organisms are more similar than one would initially think. He then argues that this knowledge can help us improve our business structures, as well as improve the lot of humanity in general.

“The Cluetrain Manifesto” is a compendium of blogs by several authors that examines how the Internet is a new marketplace that offers a unprecedented freedom of expression. This disruptive cyber forum forces businesses to listen and converse with customers on a real level or face business extinction.

“Outliers: The Story of Success” by Malcolm Gladwell. A popular best-seller, “Outliers” may also be one of the best business books ever written. From his unique point of view, Gladwell explores why some business owners succeed, but others never reach their potential. What is it about their background and families that allows them to thrive? Gladwell believes some people have hidden advantages that propel them to high achievement.

“Traction” by Gino Wickman. Zooming in on the most common bad habits of entrepreneurs – such as piling on too many tasks – Wickman offers six key components for running your business more efficiently. This book provides a framework that can help a lawyer quickly get to a better place as a manager.

“The Goal” by Eliyah Goldratt. The late Mr. Goldratt is well known as the originator of the theory of constraints. In a departure from the self-help format, the former physicist lays out his relatively complex topic in the form of a thriller. Goldratt’s “bottlenecks” principle applies to virtually type of business and the novel is a fun-ish read.