Employment Law Firms of the Future
Employment law firms that represent management in New York, and around the country, are often large institutions with hundreds of lawyers. These firms often have other large practices areas. They live and die on increasing their scale and hourly rates. Efficiency is not the economic driver of these firms and now companies are beginning to take notice.
Mike Dillon is the General Counsel of Sun Microsystems and he prefers smaller efficient law firms. In his blog, The Legal Thing, he predicts that these large firms will soon go "the way of the Mastadon." Dillon says that law firms are aggregators of specialized legal expertise. It used to be that combining different areas of expertise in one large firm provided one stop shopping. Dillon says this used to be efficient, but now the Internet has changed things.
Dillon says that a company now can easily identify smaller more efficient law firms by emailing his colleagues or seeking referrals from organizations like the Association of Corporate Counsel. He argues that a company now looks for firms that focus on efficiency and expertise and results and that the large firms focus on size and billable hours can put them at odds with a companies interests.
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