September 7, 2011 |
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Canadian legal journalist Jordan Furlong reported last month in his Law21 blog that multiple online law practice entities--can’t really call them firms, can we?--have gotten generous VC funding and are taking off! (Ominously, Furlong’s stimulating blog is sub-titled “Dispatches from a legal profession on the brink!”). Rocket Lawyer recently got $18.5M to develop its online practice suite that will offer individual and business clients legal checklists, forms, and even live lawyer advice for very modest fees. One of its secondary investors has a familiar name: GoogleVentures. Yes, that Google! LegalZoom just got $66M in VC funds to create a competing online legal service! See www.rocketlawyer.com and www.legalzoom.com. According to Jordan, “Tired of waiting for law firms to lead change, the market has itself developed tools and processes to provide the certainty, efficiency, transparency and cost-effectiveness that legal services have long needed. Clients love these innovations and are telling law firms to use them, even (and especially) where they conflict with firms’ traditional ways of working and making money. And firms are obeying, with the vague but dawning realization that they’re now being told how to do their jobs.” The Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom developments, combined with legal technology strides Furlong reports from the annual meeting of the International Legal Technology Association suggest, he argues, that lawyers have lost control of the practice and that future--near future--change will be driven by entrepreneurs and factors lawyers have never previously taken seriously. See Furlong’s trilogy of Law 21 postings at www.law21.ca “Here come the disrupters” August 17, “The rise of the super-boutique” August 19 and “Goodbye to all that” August 26. See also www.ilta.org for information and materials on their annual meeting. Editor's Comment: I suggest that you set aside at least an hour--now--to review these blog postings and websites. They're that important and stimulating! You'll be stunned at how far and how fast things are moving. How does this relate to the Summit Recommendations? Simply that the Recommendations are about preparing lawyers for 21st century futures, and those futures may have changed radically in the past year! If today's and tomorrow's legal educations--law school or career-wise--are to retain ANY relevance to the real world, they now need to adjust themselves to these new business realities. CCB
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Issue #15 of Equipping Our Lawyers eNewsletter
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| William Sullivan |
William Sullivan, lead author of the Carnegie Foundation report, is the Director of ETL. Rebecca Love Kourlis, former Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court and Executive Director of IAALS, together with Martin J. Katz, Dean of the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law, serve with Sullivan on the ETL Executive Committee.
For more information on ETL's programs and approaches, see http://educatingtomorrowslawyers.du.edu.
Editor's Comment: Just when we thought another urgent report on ways to improve the relevance/effectiveness of American legal education was consigned to dusty shelves forever, its authors have girded for action on implementation! And they've lined up a growing list of law school allies! The Equipping Our Lawyers Recommendations related to enhancing law school education parallel the Carnegie Foundation recommendations, and we support the work of ETL. CCB
Cultural Intelligence: Another Competency Lawyers Need?
When identifying competencies 21st century lawyers need, two active legal career counselors are arguing for the development of CQ: “cultural intelligence.”
Marni Goldstein Caputo of Harvard Law’s Office of Career Services and Lauren Rasmus, director of recruiting for Dewey & LeBoeuf, point out the importance of understanding different cultural contexts, behaviors and expectations as a requirement for successful practice in a global market.
“A professional with a high CQ,” they say, “can operate with agility and ease in foreign cultural settings. CQ guru David Livermore scientifically breaks CQ into four quadrants: CQ drive (motivation to become culturally competent), CQ knowledge (learning the micro and macro differences between cultures), CQ strategy (a plan to navigate these differences) and CQ action (the confidence to cross the cultural divide).”
See http://is.gd/14SnjW.
Editor's Comment: Summit Recommendations #2, #3 and #4 urge law schools to identify practice competencies around which curricula should be built. Perhaps CQ should be one of them. It might also be the subject of periodic CLE treatment for practitioners, particularly where international transactions may be involved. CCB
Equipping Our Lawyers Implementation Efforts on MCLE/CLE Standards Moving Ahead
ALI-ABA Continuing Professional Education and the Association for Continuing Legal Education, the organizers of the Equipping Our Lawyers Summit, have formed a national advisory group to reconsider standards for accreditation of distance and traditional CLE learning by MCLE regulators. The advisory group meets September 20 to review and discuss draft proposals for new rules in this area. We'll have more details after that meeting.
Two Legal Blogs EOL Readers Can Use
Great blogs abound on many legal subjects. Here are two that are particularly active and thoughtful regarding the law and legal education matters:
Best Practices for Legal Education edited by Prof. Mary Lynch at Albany Law School. Recent postings include "Addressing the Challenge of Teaching Skills in Today's Law Schools: How Medical Schools Used to Have the Same Problems We Do and What We Can Learn from Their Efforts to Solve Them" and An Inconvenient Truth: The Need to Educate Emotionally Competent Lawyers.
See bestpracticesforlegaled.albanylawblogs.org.
The Blog of the Legal Times. Coverage of many legal subjects, including legal education of all kinds. See http://legaltimes.typepad.com.
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