All Business' Moving Parts - The Lawyer Has to Become Business Partner



 “We need to deeply understand our clients’ business goals, professional culture, key stakeholders and risk tolerance.” – Brad Karp, Chairman of law firm Paul Weiss, in interview with Leaders, April 2022

FORGET THAT OLD JOKE

At one time there had been the old joke: The law firm won the case but then the client’s business collapsed. That kind of humor has become as verboten as workplace banter about sex in the UK (yes, both employees and employers there are being sued for that). Such a track record – having clients’ whose business interests go poof – currently would damage the law firm brand.

CLIENT ACCOUNTS NO LONGER “STICKY”

The whole law firm – client relationship is being reimagined. With the client having the upper hand.


Evidence of that is this: It is rare for client accounts to be considered “owned” by any one law firm or a partner or team of partners in it. As Karp puts it, the “sticky” part is over. In the ungluing, the new normal is for clients to shop around, kicking the tires about how a legal situation will be managed, by what players in the firm, and at what cost. The macro issue has become: What overall value is the law firm creating for the client?

BEING A BUSINESS PARTNER

BradkarpA major chunk of the reconfiguration, Karp hammers, is that the client expects more than stand-alone legal services. Actually, the language has shifted to “solutions.” And that pertains to the business as a whole. The legal situation is simply one moving part in those complex dynamics. Since they are occurring in real time, the legal strategy part itself may change as the conditions of the business evolve. Karp sizes up that role as being a “business partner.”

NOT UNTHINKABLE

It is not unthinkable that there eventually will be the demand by the business that it emerges from a legal entanglement – litigation or transactional – better positioned than when it entered. Lawyers will be required to have in-depth knowledge of business.

Yes, that could disrupt how lawyers approach and practice law. Already that kind of shift is occurring in how in-house legal departments are managing ESG issues. In Corporate Counsel, Paul Weiss outlines how the “playbook” is being reinvented for the chaotic ESG era, when corporations fear being the “Next Disney.”

IMPLICATIONS FOR LEGAL EDUCATION

Law schools will have to prepare this current generation and future ones in very different ways about what is the role of the lawyer.

Connect with Editor-in-Chief Jane Genova at janegenova374@gmail.com. Now and then she does freelance assignments for professional services firms such as Paul Weiss.

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