Practice of Law Archives - That's Not Market

White Shoe Law Firm Adopting Artificial Intelligence Platform as AI Now Infiltrates BigLaw

Law firms are beginning to adopt artificial intelligence. This could be great news for clients, but young lawyers are most at risk of losing jobs to AI.

Cravath Swaine & Moore has reportedly signed up with Luminance to use its AI technology for due diligence.

Cravath is generally considered one of the most prestigious law firms in the country. Their adoption of AI will be a big deal since other firms will feel obligated to follow. For those who don’t know, BigLaw firms tend to be trailblazers . . . when another BigLaw firm paves the trail.

Document review tends to be a big part of how junior associates spend their time and bill their hours. This applies in due diligence for transactions and discovery for litigation. For law firms, it serves a valuable purpose of generating fees while these associates learn how to read documents in the context of actual legal work and learn how to do their jobs. For clients, this feels like paying to train someone else’s employees at premium rates for non-premium work.

The practice of law is changing. It has the key aspects of any business ripe for disruption: rote work that can be replaced by automation.

When people think of automation, they think of factories and, increasingly, food service. However, poring over piles of similar documents is subject to machine learning and AI like assembling widgets.

What is Luminance? It

… is the market-leading artificial intelligence platform for the legal industry. Trained by legal experts, the revolutionary technology is founded on breakthroughs in machine learning at the University of Cambridge.

Luminance understands language the way humans do, in volumes and at speeds that humans will never achieve. It provides an immediate and global overview of any company, picking out warning signs without needing any instruction.

Whether used for due diligence, compliance, insurance or contract management, Luminance adds value to a legal team, freeing lawyers to focus on what matters.

Law students with BigLaw ambitions should take note. Unless BigLaw finds another way to finance their training, entry-level opportunities at BigLaw may be going away.

Cravath Swaine & Moore adopts Luminance for law firm artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning platform. — Luminance: Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the legal industry, adopted by white shoe law firm, Cravath Swaine & Moore

LSAT Scores Declining For New Students And The Choice To Go To Law School

BusinessWeek reports that low test scores are not the same barrier to law school then they were previously.

The LSATs are the SATs of the law school world, and they tend to figure highly into the admissions criteria for highly ranked law schools. Just ask the US News and World Report annual rankings. And the scores for new law school students are going down.

“…since 2010, 95 percent of the 196 U.S. law schools at least partially accredited by the American Bar Association for which the NCBE had data lowered their standards for students near the bottom of the pack.”

Is it just the lower tiered schools? Nope.

“In fact, 20 of the 22 U.S. News top-20 schools—there was a three-way tie for 20th place—were enrolling students with lower test scores. Across all schools, LSAT scores for the 25th percentile dropped an average of three points.”

It isn’t too surprising considering that law school application rates have been declining. As job prospects face across-the-board declines, people normally attracted to other things will try their hand at law school. It does seem to be the default choice for people who don’t know what else to do.

BusinessWeek claims this isn’t good, but only in the context of correlation to the bar exam.

“LSAT scores matter because they tend to correlate closely with scores on one section of the bar exam, so when schools admit lower-scoring students on the former test, they risk producing more graduates who have a hard time passing the bar. “

All things being equal, yes, but bar exams also tend to weighed and curved.

However, there is another reason. If the LSAT does its job and judges aptitude for the study and practice of law (a dubious proposition, but whatever), then more people are going to law school who should be doing other things regardless of what this means on yet another test. Plus, the bar exam can be taken multiple times, so flunking out once does not kill your budding legal career.

The fact is that the practice of law can be rewarding, but it can also be hard work, long hours and very stressful.

Few people engaged in it tend to be happy. Furthermore, people going as a fallback career are entering into some of the worst job markets for new graduates. There is still a glut of unemployed and underemployed lawyers and hiring does not seem to have recovered.

People entering law school should think carefully about the three-year, unpleasant and expensive choice they are about to make.

Law Grad Working In Retail Seems to Miss Some Opportunities

Law Grad Working Retail offers cautionary tale of bad decision and bad attitude.

Business Insider recently highlighted the “Law Grad Working Retail” blog about a hard luck law school graduate without a job forced to sell cologne in some kind of department store. He clearly feels the job is beneath him.

“I am too good for this job. You know who else is too good for this job? EVERY SINGLE OTHER PERSON THAT WORKS HERE. Retail jobs fucking suck. What’s up with all these idiots white knighting minimum wage retail jobs? If you don’t think this work is dehumanizing then you are insane.”

He says that he’s “liveblogging the loss of my last shred of dignity” and discussing his job and coworkers.

He claims that he went to a top 50 law school, was on law review and had a second year summer associate position, but he did not get a job offer.

It is both difficult and easy to feel sorry for anyone who went to law school in or after 2009. It is easy because they are entering the worst long-term job market for attorneys that many of us have known or will know. It is difficult because after the disastrous 2007 and 2008 economies, it should have been clear to anyone being honest with themselves that the market for new law school grads would be extremely difficult. Even now, there is still a huge glut of legal talent that will take years to balance.

If we assume that even part of his writing is honest, there is a personality issue at play. A combination of a bad job market and a personality case make for bad job prospects.

Here is something all law students should understand when interviewing. If your school is good enough, and especially if you got the summer associate position in the first place, it is assumed you have the intellectual ability to do the job. However, the interviews and summer associate position test your personality. If working with you is miserable because you are annoying, lazy, ethically questionable or otherwise unpleasant to be with, people will NOT want to spend hours upon hours with you in a conference room reviewing documents. People will NOT want to take the chance that they will get excuses instead of work product.

He said in his blog that he hasn’t taken the bar exam. However, he has co-workers asking legal questions. It seems he is missing an opportunity to rise above a job he feels is beneath him. Get a license and a laptop and you can be in business. You do not need the other trappings of an office in a high rise.

“This blog is not about complaining that I can’t get a legal job. Where in the fuck did I ever say that? I haven’t taken the bar so I’m not even trying to get a legal job. But up until the bar exam I applied for thousands of legal jobs and couldn’t get shit. Since the bar exam I’ve applied for hundreds of non-legal jobs and have come up empty. It’s not like I’m gonna pass the bar and suddenly everything is going to be fine. I have plenty of friends who did pass the July bar and don’t have jobs. Stop saying “he hasn’t even taken the bar!” like you found some kind of gotcha against me.”

Here is where is he so misguided. No, getting the license is not going to make everything “fine.” However, it is a prerequistite to the practice of law. Since he did not get hired out of law school, he needs to pass the bar to even be considered for any type of legal job. He had a probationary period with a law firm that may have carried him through the exam, but for some reason it did not work out. I seriously doubt anyone else will take the same chance. No one is going to hire him as an attorney without it.

My guess is, even if his stories are true, he is really an aspiring writer. Fine. However, there are a number of red flags here for anyone who would consider hiring him, and it makes his lack of job offer from the firm where he spent his second summer understandable.

That said, his writing is somewhat entertaining. His co-workers sound like interesting people, and their stories will make you continue reading through the various posts.

In any respect, I wish him the best of luck. For aspiring lawyers, use it as a cautionary tale. Credentials are just the beginning. Personality and attitude also matter.

Going Solo Unexpected Rules – Attorney Requirements for Maintaining a “Bona Fide” Office

Going solo in the Freelance Economy requires that you follow requirements for where, not just how, you do business.

: Going Solo Risk – Delaware attorney suspended for, among other things, not maintaining a “bona fide” office

The ABA Journal recently reported on a disciplinary case where the attorney received a two-year suspension for not maintaining an exclusive office space, among other things. Delaware requires attorneys to maintain a “bona fide” office for the practice of law in Delaware. The respondent did not, and being available by phone is simply not enough to comply with the rule.

“Barakat’s lease does not include any designated office space that is exclusively his. Rather, the employees of the landlord collect Barakat’s mail and greet any visitors Barakat may have. The building security guards direct visitors to the fourth floor, where a receptionist is stationed during normal business hours. Under this arrangement, Barakat is entitled, for additional fees, to rent a conference room or office space, and utilize secretarial, reproduction, facsimile, word processing, and shipping services. The landlord’s billing records (the “Occupant Ledger”), and the testimony of two employees who work on the fourth floor, evidence that Barakat’s presence at 901 North Market Street is “sporadic and unscheduled.””

For attorneys going solo, or anyone entering the Freelance Economy and working from their home, this case should be an eye opener. Licensing requirements for office space are just as important as practical realities in choosing where to set up shop.

In reading the case, we don’t want to get too hung up on the office requirement since the attorney at issue was deficient in this administration in other matters, such as safeguarding client funds (a very big ethical issue, as you non-attorneys may guess) and lying about these issues in response to prior inquiries.

However, for the purpose of setting up your business, make sure where you practice complies with licensing requirements and ethical obligations just as much as how you practice.