glitched wrote:sadsituationJD wrote:I think that, if the biglaw model survived (survives?) the recent crash, it's safe to say it's not going anywhere anytime soon. If there was going to be a massive restructuring, it would have happened already. There have been some structural shifts, but not a total tear-down-and-rebuild. Market SA's are harder and more competitive, not nonexistent.
It won't survive the next crash, which is coming (and coming fast, BTW). The very fact that you aspire and "dream" of being a "drone" pusher of bales of makework cut n' paste legalese pigslop shows how utterly out of touch with the coming reality you are:
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this guy has to be a troll. either that or he's just not an intellectual powerhouse.
It will probably take years for the big law model to unravel. A lot crashed in 2008, and some took a few years to crash. Most survived the acute stresses. In spite of the fact that we've been in "recovery" for three years, lot of firms are financially stressed right now, but we just haven't reached a tipping point yet. Maybe the next recession, or two recessions down, will provide that tipping point after the next period of growth lays the foundation for even more outsourcing and gives some of the more entrepreneurial losers the opportunity to find a cheaper way of doing the same thing (like the Axiom model). Big law just ain't what it used to be, and it's much easier to see it slowly getting worse, as opposed to better, since it's a business model that isn't completely rational. Business models based on tradition, rather than on the efficiency advice of management consultants, are usually forced to change or die. So far, law has proven to be pretty inflexible. I like to think of the way the legal profession does things today as comparable to the Samurai in Japan during the late 1800's. Law Review, I have found, is a classic example of the inefficient, anachronistic, senselessness based on tradition that stubbornly prevails in the legal profession. The emphasis on this--and other--meaningless proxies for "prestige"--grades, clerkships, etc.--seem more rooted in the traditions of the French nobility than they do in sound business practices.
In Singapore, most court transactions take place via email and software, so there is much less need for lawyers, and law pays about as well as journalism. That's the future of law everywhere.