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Now Isn't That Special
Size may still matter, but geography won't, in the digital future
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Business New Haven
11/15/1999
By: Ivan M. Katz
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It used to be said that if a 16th-century English barrister walked into a modern courtroom, he would find little to surprise him except for the electric lights. The courtroom looks the same, the people look the same, the arguments sound the same.
This observation is not likely to have any validity at all by the year 2100 &emdash or maybe even by 2010.
The technology of the courtroom has changed, and these changes will accelerate. From the use of video monitors to show images to a judge and jury to "real time" transcription, courtrooms are beginning to look more like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise than His Majesty's Law Courts.
The practice of law is itself changing. The major predictable changes can be summed up by one word: specialization.
The old image of the general-practice country lawyer has pretty much gone by the boards everywhere in America. The days when one man (or, more recently, one woman) could handle everything from motor-vehicle collisions to bankruptcies to divorces to Social Security disability claims to commercial real estate transactions are over.
Even the days of the general practice trial lawyer are drawing to a close. These mythical men, folks who could pick up a file &emdash any file &emdash two hours before jury selection was to start and try the case effectively, are a dying breed. The dictum these days is simple: Specialize, or find another line of work.
This is so, not because the skills needed to handle trial work have fallen on hard times; they haven't. It is so because clients have come increasingly to demand that lawyers be specialized. It is not enough that the lawyer know trial practice; the client demands that the lawyer know the substantive area of the law cold &emdash or at least better than the judge.
Within twenty years we shall never see the likes of the lawyer who can try a breach-of-contract claim on Tuesday, a personal injury case on Thursday, and pick a jury in a wrongful-termination claim the following Wednesday.
The answer given to this problem in the last half of the 20th century was for firms to develop particular practice areas: A large firm might have, say, a tax department, an employment law unit, an insurance defense unit and a small-business practice unit. This, too, is changing.
These days, the large firms might well concentrate on several discrete units of practice, but they are increasingly willing to refer out matters to "boutique" firms that handle one area and one area only. This trend toward specialization will continue, and will accelerate.
As our legislatures (state and federal) have become more active, it seems that everything is covered by at least one statute. It is now not enough that one know the "general area of the law" &emdash one must know the relevant statutes, regulations, administrative and judicial decisions. With seemingly everything becoming the subject of a statute, the trend toward specialization can only increase.
This is not in any way a bad thing. As lawyers come to know one area of the law (and often, one area only), clients can be referred to the people and firms which have developed expertise in a particular area of practice. What has driven this balkanization of practice, if you will, is the burgeoning bodies of law, bodies of law which have become so massive that it is simply impossible to gain expertise in more than one or two of them.
The trend from the 1950s to the 1990s of bringing these diverse areas of specialization under one roof into large firms has pretty much stopped. The idea that small businesses can have one law firm and one law firm only no longer has validity. A small-businessman these days has a tax lawyer, an employment-law specialist, a land-use specialist and a contracts expert (to say nothing of his or her estate planner and retirement specialist).
Within 20 years, the notion of the "white-shoe" law firm will be as anachronistic as the Age of the Dinosaur &emdash or white shoes themselves.
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