A possible upside to the recent economic downturn is that numerous previously accepted business models are now being revealed as needing substantial reinvention as well as total elimination. The billable hour/leverage law firm model for legal services is one of these increasingly maligned business models, and is now appearing to stay danger of winding up in the dustbin of history. Specifically, even those that benefit handsomely from the billable hour, including the Cravath firm's many $800 each hour lawyers, now realize the fundamental irrationality of charging a client for time spent as opposed to value provided. This alone should signal that change is in the air.

Notwithstanding the growing conversation about the need for alternative client Law Firm Marketing service models, I fear that the majority of IP law firms will either try to ignore the desire for change or will respond by offering only incremental modifications with their existing ways of providing legal services to their clients. As someone with considerable experience dealing with IP lawyers, I genuinely believe that, unfortunately, the conservative nature of all IP attorneys implies that IP firms will likely lag behind in client service innovations. Thus, I am of the opinion that lots of prestigious and historically highly profitable IP law firms will in the foreseeable future cease to exist.

I reach this conclusion consequently of varied salient experiences. In one of these simple, several years back, I approached a managing partner of a well-known IP law firm with suggestions of just how to decrease the amount of attorney hours expended on client matters. During those times, the firm was beginning to see considerable push back from clients about the price of routine legal services. I noted to the managing partner he could lower the fee non-substantive e.g., administrative client IP matters, by assigning such tasks to lower billing paralegals. His response to this idea: "If paralegals did the work, what would the first and 2nd year associates do?"

Obviously, the central premise of the managing partner's response was that in order to keep carefully the gears of the firm's billable hour/leverage partner model turning smoothly, he needed to help keep the young associates busy billing by the hour. The present paradigm of his law firm required that it keep hiring associates to increase partner leverage and ensure they efficiently billed clients by the hour, with an important portion of each associate's billed time directly going into the partner's pockets. Left out of this enterprize model was if the clients' best interests were properly served by the model that best served what the law states firm's partnership.

Clearly, this law firm was not well managed, that might serve being an excuse for the managing partner's self-serving perspective on client IP legal services. However, my experience as a corporate buyer of IP legal services further revealed that that the billable hour/leverage partner business design was an arrangement that frequently ut the client--which was now me--after what the law states firm's interests.

Being an in-house counsel spending several $100K's each year for legal services at several respected IP firms, I consistently felt that after I called outside counsel for assistance the first believed that popped in to the lawyer's mind was "So glad she called--I wonder simply how much work this call will probably result in?" More regularly than not, I obtained the sense that my outside IP lawyers viewed my legal concerns as problems in order for them to solve on a per hour basis, much less issues that might affect the gains of the business for which I worked. The difference is subtle, but critical: the context of the former is lawyer as something provider, whereas the latter is lawyer as a business partner.

Against these experiences, I was not surprised at what I heard recently when discussing my feelings in regards to the billable hour/leverage model with someone Law Firm Marketing friend at one of the top IP specialty law firms in the US. This partner echoed my sentiments about the necessity for innovation in IP client services. However, she also indicated that most of her firm's partners don't recognize that there surely is a problem with the way they currently provide IP legal services for their clients. As she told it, a lot of her more senior partners have been living well on the billable hour/leverage model, so they currently see little need to change their behavior. My partner friend nonetheless realizes that her law firm is critically ill and probably will soon experience something akin to sudden cardiac arrest. Sadly, she's not just a member of her law firm's management and, since there is no upper level recognition that change becomes necessary, it would serve little purpose on her behalf to raise her concerns to those partners who could effect change (and would most likely not be politically expedient on her behalf to complete so).