What do you say to a recent law school graduate?

[Martinus]

In fact, the high end stuff is increasingly subdivided. On a M&A deal, the strategic stuff may still be chargeable at £500/hour by an experienced partners and senior associates but a lot of the grunt work - the due diligence etc - is now being outsourced. Ditto where the litigation requires trawling through vast wauntities of paperwork. Clients are just too sophesticated to pay £250 an hour for a junior lawyer in NY or London to do this work when it can be subcontracted to South Africa or India where they will do a better job for a fraction of the price.

That's true but this not only fucks up the business model, but also the training-on-the-job. If the only work performed locally is high-end expert work, then where will the juniors learn to do it, if they are not needed to perform the low-end work?

Plus it is yet another proof that the myth of globalisation and outsourcing ("we outsource menial/no-education-needed jobs so that we can focus on white collar jobs") is full of crap. I wonder for how long is the model sustainable before the West collapses due to massive drop in demand, resulting from lack of money.

[Admiral Yi]

Hang out your own shingle, and get into collections and foreclosures.  They're making big bucks these days.

I met a dude at the boozer, a shyster, who was doing collections.  First time I was made aware of the possibility of shysters being involved in the process.  I thought creditors just sold off the debt for pennies on the dollar to collection agencies who hired middle aged black women to call you 40 times a day.  What exactly do lawyer/collectors do?

[CountDeMoney]

What exactly do lawyer/collectors do?

They represent the plaintiff when you, as the defendant, are sued in civil court when the middle aged black women stop calling you 40 times a day. 
It's the lawyer that files petitions for judgements, liens, foreclosures and wage garnishments.   It's low overhead, high profit.

[Caliga]

Hang out your own shingle, and get into collections and foreclosures.  They're making big bucks these days.

Got a friend who is a bankruptcy attorney in Ocala or Gainesville (I always forget which... he lives in one and commutes to the other), Florida.  He works basically around the clock these days.

[Malthus]

The billable hour is already dead for low end legal work (entry level litigation, conveyancing, wills etc) where anyone who wants to compete has to commodotise and make their profits by cutting costs through IT and concentrating on bulk.

At the high end, the billable hour won't die because clients are prepared to pay for quality and specialists won't do work on a fixed fee basis where the risk is all with the lawyer. Legal fees on M&As, corporate structure and big litigation are miniscule compared to the size of the sums at stake. In house Counsel are not going to risk their jobs by sacrificing quality for fee certainty.

2-3 years ago, it became possible in the UK for law firms to become limited companies rather than partnerships. One or two small firms have done so, but rather to my surprise nobody significant has. I think this is a shame beacuse the partnership model is terrible, lawyers being generally pretty poor managers and businessmen.

Most of the folks I know at big firms basically work as consultants to in-house counsel. They are still earning on the billable model. I agree that the entry-level stuff seems to be falling off, which will I think cause problems in the future - where will in-house counsel come from? How will high-end consultants get training? Basically, what Martinus said. The model relies on an intake of lawyers into the firms, many of whom go in-house.

[Ideologue]

I'll be fine.

You'll make a fine barrista.

Oh, I get it.  It's a pun.

[Barrister]

I'll be fine.

You'll make a fine barrista.

Oh, I get it.  It's a pun.

It's merely repeating the joke from the Economist article.

Gee, if you couldn't get that, maybe you won't make a very good barrista...

[Faeelin]

This seems like as good a place as any to quote from an student response I'm reading. No comment:

Moving away from the first prong, I believe that part 3 of the Lemon Test is also wrong. It mandates that the government action in question must not result in excessive government entanglement with religion. [3] I believe this prong focuses too much on the level of government action and ignores the key problem of government actively supporting a religious viewpoint. For example, under the third prong, a bankruptcy court involved in a billion dollar restructuring of a church is excessively entangled in the church's affairs

[Barrister]

I thought the Lemon Test had something to di with litmus paper?   

[ulmont]

I thought the Lemon Test had something to di with litmus paper?   

That would be a "No."

First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion . . . ; finally, the statute must not foster 'an excessive government entanglement with religion.'

(internal citations omitted.)
http://supreme.justia.com/us/403/602/case.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_Test#Lemon_test