Fred Bartlit’s Cross-Ex of the Am Law 200
You can tell a trial lawyer from a litigator in about 15 minutes. The trial lawyer defines what is going on, and creates the boundaries of the essential story that the judge or jury can grasp. Then a small number of critical facts are marshaled in a compelling sequence. A trial lawyer doesn’t persuade. A trial lawyer empowers the trier of fact to persuade herself.
Meanwhile, the litigator is thumbing though a mountainous binder of exhibits, asking one of the bag-carriers sitting behind him to help find something that sounds important, but is really inconsequential. Litigators extend, complicate, confuse. They don’t tell a story so much as they strive to fill a dictionary.
Fred Bartlit is a trial lawyer. And he just brought his formidable talents to bear on the BigLaw status quo in the ABA Journal yesterday here. You have to read it. And then read it again.
It’s a guest column in the “New Normal” series written by Paul Lippe and Patrick Lamb.
Mr. Bartlit’s firm, Bartlit Beck, is not new, and it’s not normal, either. Although the model and approach seem highly logical, eminently practical, and apparently quite profitable.
I started to prepare some excerpts, but it really doesn’t work in this case. You have to read Mr. Barlit’s work intact and in one sitting. He’s advancing an argument, not just offering an idea. The conclusion is particularly brilliant, and relies more on Thomas Kuhn than Thomas Jefferson.
It may be a coincidence, but Mr. Bartlit’s article went live the same day that the 2012 AmLaw 200 results were released.
There will certainly be some shifting around in this annual pecking order, and some percentages will be offered up to show progress for some, and perhaps a bit of optimism for many others.
But make no mistake about it, it’s beginning to appear to be somewhat of an illusion. The other 199 want to think that Dewey was the outlier, not an early warning signal. “They had too much debt; too many high-priced and high-maintenance laterals. We are different, and our model is sound!”
We shall see; I recall how Leo Tolstoy started Anna Karenina:
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Fred Bartlit may not be Leo Tolstoy but he tells a mighty interesting story, and has created with his partners a very functional legal family.
(He’s the one on the left).
While I certainly applaud Fred and his firm as a a great boutique success story, is he really doing anything that novel any longer? Results-based billing (or whatever synonym you want to use) in the litigation context is a fancy of way of saying we work on contingency. Yeah, there can be ornate formulas to determine the ultimate fee, but at its base, that’s what it is. A number of litigation boutiques and some bigger shops like Boies and Quinn Emmanual have been doing this for quite some time. And he hires and trains the best raw talent he can find? What top litigation shop, large or small, doesn’t seek to hire federal courts clerks?
Bruce McEwen pointed this out some time ago on Adam Smith Esq. High-end litigation as a practice area lends itself very well to the boutique business model. The work really can be done by small teams of well-trained, tech-savvy lawyers and staff. And more importantly, the case flow rarely varies with the economic conditions.
Andrew:
Thanks for the comment, you make some very good points.
The thing about change in the corporate legal market is that so little has been done for so long, that even small efforts can seem big. Barlit Beck is no small effort, given it’s current size and longevity.
For some reason, many have known what is “wrong” with the very large law firms for years; yet real change lags…
Bruce MacEwen is on target (as always). Barlit Beck also has a focused corporate practice that seems to borrow from and work well with its core litigation practice.
I have a few more thoughts on this in a related post today.
~ John