A former law partner of mine was fond of saying “a lawyer spends half of his or her life worrying about not having enough to do and the other half worrying about having too much.” If the recent Thomson Reuters-Georgetown 2022 Report on the State of the Legal Market Report is any indication the profession is certain in the too much to do half on steroids. And that phenomenon may portend some fundamental and long-awaited changes.
In a nutshell, the Report demonstrates that to thrive post-pandemic and even survive, lawyers will need to better adopt technology, use better workflows, and make sure work is done by right mix and training, and experience. Otherwise, the work that is piling up during the great talent shortage just won’t get done.
According to the Thomson Reuters press release, the State of the Legal Market Report is issued jointly each year by the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law and the Thomson Reuters Institute. The Report relies on data collected by Thomson Reuters. The Report reviews the performance of U.S. law firms and attempts to identify what factors drive long-term change and strategy.
The pandemic has fundamentally changed and continues to change the practice of law.
At the risk of stating and quantifying the obvious: the pandemic has fundamentally changed and continues to change the practice of law. As James W. Jones, a senior fellow at the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law and the Report’s lead author puts it: “While firms are understandingly seeking a return to ‘normal’, the reality is that…the legal industry emerging from the pandemic is not the same that entered it.
The Report identifies 4 key issues facing law firms post-pandemic that I think will drive
