Does the Inter-Firm Collaboration Model potentially provide a higher quality of service than the Traditional Law Firm Model? In certain respects, this is an unfair question, because whether or not a client receives an excellent quality of service depends, first and foremost, on the quality of the attorney (or attorneys) involved, but in terms of which model may be better positioned to attract new talent, to exploit experience, and be more efficient and cost effective, the momentum may be shifting more in favor of the IFC Model.

Historically, there has been a quality control bias against solo and small firm practices that has originated from the idea that in the trial by ordeal experience that exists at the large law firms, where many of the best law school graduates get their start, those who survive are probably better lawyers than those who have opted to practice on their own or for smaller firms.

But the truth of the matter is that many excellent lawyers have opted out of big firm practice for many reasons, including because they were disatisfied with their quality of life. Since the advent of technology that has made it even easier to maintain a solo-practice, the opt out option has become even more viable.  Indeed, that traditonal law firms are likely to face an increased risk of losing talent to smaller firm models is likely to become even more pronounced as traditional firm profit margins fade and the prospects of equity partnership become more remote.

All the same, the problem with assessing quality is that it overlooks the complicated needs of clients who may benefit from a large firm, under one set of circumstances, and a solo-practice, under another.  For example,  the IFC Model of law practice has the potential to represent clients in large scale litigations, but is largely untested in this area, while large traditional law firms are capable of staffing cases with  scores of attorneys. But is the ability to commit large amounts of labor a measure of quality– maybe not– but, administratively speaking, the hierarchical organization of large firms is probably better suited to fight the legal equivalent of World War III, financial resources permitting.   

For most businesses, however, where the issue is one of minimizing litigation risks, or fighting the small to medium sized pitched battle, solo and small firm practices are potentially as effective, and definitely cheaper, than traditional law firms.  In particular, while the IFC Model emphasizes exploiting the talents of experienced counsel at every level of the representation, traditional law firms emphazise a division of labor under which junior, more inexperienced attorneys, dominate certain areas like performing research, managing the litigation discovery process, and developing initial document drafts. In terms of evaluating the quality control question, this difference is potentially significant, as the following anectode demonstrates: 

Goodman Law was involved with representing a Bangladeshi Commercial Bank in an arbitration in New York filed by another Bangladeshi entity.  The bank was sued along with a co-defendant, who retained,  as litigation counsel, a midsized Manhattan law firm. Employing the IFC Model, Goodman Law established a collaboration with two other solo-law practices with litigation and international law experience. Each co-defendant was confronted with the same set of facts, and the same question: how to have a court dismiss the arbitration, which was governed by the Federal Arbitration Act.  In the case of Goodman Law and its collaborators, counsel, with at least a decade of litigation experienced, engaged in the preliminary research and concluded that the best course was to file an emergency stay motion in the State Court. By contrast, the traditional law firm, which probably assigned the procedural question  to a junior attorney, ended up missing the 20 day limitation period for filing any such state court action and thus would have had to litigate the case on the merits. As it turned out, Goodman Law and its collaborating firms were able to have the arbitration dismissed as against both defendants.  The useful lesson one can draw from the experience was that the IFC Model can potentially produce a legal service of even higher quality than the Traditonal Law Firm Model, assuming that the talents of experienced and competent  counsel can be efficiently exploited.  As we will see in future posts, the IFC Model may be in the better position to capitalize on, and marshall, legal talent through a collegial form of practice that is able to bring the best out of both attorneys and their clients.

Tags: inter-firm collaboration, traditional law firm

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 11:13 pm and is filed under New Law Firm Business Model. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.