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Understanding Your Competition
August 20, 2016
In our last post, we focused on assessing a firm’s competitive position by reviewing planned work-life timelines, relative workload distributions, and capacity. Please see last week’s post to review that information. The next step is to compare your firm’s ability to perform to that of your competitors. Performing this analysis requires developing an understanding of the market and a willingness to accept the objective results. Practicing law is not war, but knowing that you are undermanned...
August 20, 2016
In our last post, we focused on assessing a firm’s competitive position by reviewing planned work-life timelines, relative workload distributions, and capacity. Please see last week’s post to review that information. The next step is to compare your firm’s ability to perform to that of your competitors. Performing this analysis requires developing an understanding of the market and a willingness to accept the objective results. Practicing law is not war, but knowing that you are undermanned...
ALM Shuts Down Smart Litigator, Its Web Resource for Litigators
August 20, 2016
Among my dubious claims to fame was having had my over-sized visage plastered on a full-page ad that ran in the New York Law Journal in 2011. The ad was for Smart Litigator, a product launched in 2010 by ALM as a multi-faceted resource for litigators. The reason I was in the ad was that I had just reviewed Smart Litigator and the ad quoted from my review. Now, ALM has shut down the Smart Litigator site, effective Aug. 10. When I asked ALM about the shut-down, I received this statement from...
August 20, 2016
Among my dubious claims to fame was having had my over-sized visage plastered on a full-page ad that ran in the New York Law Journal in 2011. The ad was for Smart Litigator, a product launched in 2010 by ALM as a multi-faceted resource for litigators. The reason I was in the ad was that I had just reviewed Smart Litigator and the ad quoted from my review. Now, ALM has shut down the Smart Litigator site, effective Aug. 10. When I asked ALM about the shut-down, I received this statement from...
Texas Firms See Greatest Drop in Demand in First Half of 2016
August 19, 2016
While demand at law firms grew by 0.3 percent at U.S. firms during the first half of 2016, the story was much darker in Texas,...
August 19, 2016
While demand at law firms grew by 0.3 percent at U.S. firms during the first half of 2016, the story was much darker in Texas,...
Revisiting Eisenberg and Plaintiff Success: State Court Civil Trial and Appellate Outcomes
August 16, 2016
Despite what Priest-Klein theory predicts, in earlier research on federal civil cases, Eisenberg found an association between plaintiff success in pretrial motions and at trial. Our extension of Eisenberg's analysis 20 years later into the state court context, however, does not uncover any statistically significant association between a plaintiff's success at trial and preserving that trial victory on appeal. Our results imply that a plaintiff's decision to pursue litigation to a trial court conclusion...
August 16, 2016
Despite what Priest-Klein theory predicts, in earlier research on federal civil cases, Eisenberg found an association between plaintiff success in pretrial motions and at trial. Our extension of Eisenberg's analysis 20 years later into the state court context, however, does not uncover any statistically significant association between a plaintiff's success at trial and preserving that trial victory on appeal. Our results imply that a plaintiff's decision to pursue litigation to a trial court conclusion...
Southwest Firms Defied Legal Demand Drop-Off in Second Quarter
August 14, 2016
Law firms struggled to cope with a drop in demand across nearly all practice areas during the second quarter, according to Thomson Reuters' Peer Monitor Index, but Texas and its neighbors in the southwest region fared better. Demand, measured by hours billed, declined overall and in four of five U.S. regions during the second quarter, the report found. The Southwest was the outlier, registering an uptick of 1.1 percent. Demand declined by 0.1 percent in the northeast, 0.2 percent in the midwest,...
August 14, 2016
Law firms struggled to cope with a drop in demand across nearly all practice areas during the second quarter, according to Thomson Reuters' Peer Monitor Index, but Texas and its neighbors in the southwest region fared better. Demand, measured by hours billed, declined overall and in four of five U.S. regions during the second quarter, the report found. The Southwest was the outlier, registering an uptick of 1.1 percent. Demand declined by 0.1 percent in the northeast, 0.2 percent in the midwest,...
Academic Tenure
August 12, 2016
In academia, a subset of faculty has tenure, which allows its beneficiaries to retain their professorships without mandatory retirement and with only limited grounds for revocation. Proponents of tenure argue it protects intellectual freedom and encourages investment in human capital. Detractors contend it discourages effort and distorts the academic labor market. This article develops a framework for examining academic tenure in the context of U.S. law schools. We construct a unique data set of tenured...
August 12, 2016
In academia, a subset of faculty has tenure, which allows its beneficiaries to retain their professorships without mandatory retirement and with only limited grounds for revocation. Proponents of tenure argue it protects intellectual freedom and encourages investment in human capital. Detractors contend it discourages effort and distorts the academic labor market. This article develops a framework for examining academic tenure in the context of U.S. law schools. We construct a unique data set of tenured...
ABA Future Panel Calls For Broad Changes In Legal Services
August 9, 2016
The Report on the Future of Legal Services in the United States provides a frank, thorough and frequently bleak assessment of the state of legal services and the legal profession’s complicity in inhibiting innovation, while also heralding the promise of emerging delivery models and technologies to bring about change. * * * At the same time, however, the commission hedges its recommendations on some of the key issues facing the profession, particularly nonlawyer ownership of law firms, nonlawyers...
August 9, 2016
The Report on the Future of Legal Services in the United States provides a frank, thorough and frequently bleak assessment of the state of legal services and the legal profession’s complicity in inhibiting innovation, while also heralding the promise of emerging delivery models and technologies to bring about change. * * * At the same time, however, the commission hedges its recommendations on some of the key issues facing the profession, particularly nonlawyer ownership of law firms, nonlawyers...
High-Tech Legal Startup Considered for Incentives After Austin-to-SA Move
August 8, 2016
Easy Expunctions uses a patented method to file requests to expunge criminal record on behalf of clients for less than a traditional...
August 8, 2016
Easy Expunctions uses a patented method to file requests to expunge criminal record on behalf of clients for less than a traditional...
The Big Business of Divorce
August 7, 2016
Divorce is big business. In fact, it's a $50-$175 billion business compared to the wedding industry which is estimated to generate just $40-$50 billion annually. Why is divorce big business? Just read the statistics: • There is a divorce every 13 seconds which equates to 46,000 divorces per week. • Almost 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. • 60 percent of second marriages end in divorce. • 73 percent of third marriages end in divorce. In Texas alone, divorce filings accounted for 89 percent...
August 7, 2016
Divorce is big business. In fact, it's a $50-$175 billion business compared to the wedding industry which is estimated to generate just $40-$50 billion annually. Why is divorce big business? Just read the statistics: • There is a divorce every 13 seconds which equates to 46,000 divorces per week. • Almost 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. • 60 percent of second marriages end in divorce. • 73 percent of third marriages end in divorce. In Texas alone, divorce filings accounted for 89 percent...
IBM to Partner With McMillan Law Firm for Analytics Platform
August 6, 2016
As law firms start to see the benefits of integrating analytics into business practices, McMillan and IBM look to collaborate on ways to expand analytics into the legal marketplace. Canadian law firm McMillan announced today a new partnership with IBM to develop an analytic insights platform for the firm to review internal data about cost and resource management. The platform will use fundamental structures drawn from IBM's statistical package SPSS, which allows manipulation and analysis of data,...
August 6, 2016
As law firms start to see the benefits of integrating analytics into business practices, McMillan and IBM look to collaborate on ways to expand analytics into the legal marketplace. Canadian law firm McMillan announced today a new partnership with IBM to develop an analytic insights platform for the firm to review internal data about cost and resource management. The platform will use fundamental structures drawn from IBM's statistical package SPSS, which allows manipulation and analysis of data,...
