The auditors are now marketing their services to national banks and large institutional consumers of legal service. Whether we like it or not, we will all soon have to ask some hard questions. Even the die-hard purchasers of the Shark s legal services are going to step back, ask what they re buying and decide this is nuts. This is the classic myth still hobbling our profession the myth of the productive lawyer. Every firm billing by the hour lives by this myth.
Young associates are in many cases no longer taught how to practice professionally there s no time.
You get bonuses and early partnership. You may get fired as unproductive. Many more clients are deciding they won t tolerate this approach from their lawyers, any more than they would tolerate it from their office-supply vendor or the guy who fills the candy machine in the lunchroom. We re entitled to get paid fairly but not to take advantage. When we choose to milk a case to get our billables up to quota rather than identifying our client s problem and quickly solving it, we invite the arbitrary hack of an auditor s red pen.