1. Fixed fees are not about cost cutting; they are an arm wrestle about whether you “get” the pressures on the client’s business or not. The addressable market in regulation and compliance is growing faster than you are.
2. Academics and consultants have not yet done enough leg work to really uncover a road map for the way ahead for the partnerships. You are not entirely on your own, but it will feel like it. Sadly you still have to do it in the dark, but then so did Gates, Buffet, Dyson, Jobs – oh yes, and Farraday, Edison, Brunel, Turing, Berners-Lee...
3. If you are finding yourself forced into LPO and international outsourcing – you are in more trouble than you think. Lawyers making project management their core competence fits the white board matrices, but it is a real stretch. GCs are more likely to disintermediate you than not here sooner or later.
4. Lawyers in private practice are seen by the GC’s bosses boss as a cost of failure. Being good at dispute resolution, doesn’t mean people still basically hate disputes arising at all.
5. In commoditised legal services there’s more money in selling the shovels than panning for the gold. Latent markets are extremely rare, but solutions you don’t recognise are legion.
6. The speculative capital will not go to partnerships or anything essentially controlled by partners. They only want you for your know-how, not your clients or cash flow. And they won’t respect you in the morning.
