Legal News

WaPo Weighs In On the Sorry State of BigLaw

By Nathan Koppel

Why is our stock-art lawyer so sad today? Seems he just read the latest article on law-firm woes, this one courtesy of the Washington Post. The article hits on several increasingly common themes: the inefficiency of the billable hour, inflated associate salaries, and increasing client pressures for cost savings, which is driving low-end legal work to India.

For our money, the most interesting component of the article was the story of Geoff Willard, a Virginia attorney who had been a partner at DLA Piper, before he decided to chuck it all, frustrated with having to increase his rates to "finance ballooning profits and overhead."

So, Willard decided to work out of his house, as a partner at Silicon Valley-based Virtual Law Partners.

According to its Web site, VLP was founded last year as a web-based firm that goes beyond the "constraints of 'brick and mortar' law firms to provide excellent legal service at rates lower than those of conventional law firms." The firm has grown from 8 partners in June to 33, and it expects to make it a profit once it hits 50 lawyers, WaPo reports.

Willard says he is now working at most 50 hours a week, as opposed to 60 to 85 at DLA, but he plan to make more, because he can keep 85% of what he generates, as opposed to 30 percent in the brick-and-mortar world.

"I can go to my daughters' piano lessons and tae kwon do practices," said Willard, who claimed to have kept 90 percent of his clients from DLA. "I have clawed back a significant part of my life."

Photo: iStockPhoto

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 09, 2009 (boomark / email).