Paralegal Perspective

November 20th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt

Lydia Bailey, who writes for a site devoted to online paralegal degrees, sent me an infographic about changes in the legal profession. I don’t agree with every detail of the graphic, but it raises several interesting points.

Closed Markets

First, the graphic recognizes the closed market that lawyers enjoyed during the third quarter of the twentieth century. During those golden years, lawyers were the only source of legal assistance on most matters. Minimum fee schedules, advertising bans, in-state residency requirements, and other “ethical” rules bolstered prices within this market. Competition for clients was restrained, and technological advances benefited lawyers rather than clients.

The graphic portrays the closed market as persisting through the first decade of the 21st century. I differ on the timing; I think the walls protecting lawyers began to crumble in the 1980’s and 90’s, especially for solo and small-firm practitioners. The concept, however, is sound. When evaluating the current market for legal services, legal educators often forget the trade restraints that buoyed prices in earlier times. I agree with the graphic, moreover, that lawyers began to feel the loss of their closed market most strongly after 2005.

Deregulation and Competition

The graphic then details some of the many consequences of more vigorous competition in the legal services market. Clients are turning to outsourcing companies and nonlawyers. Technology is making lawyers more productive, but clients are reaping most of the gain as lawyers harness that productivity to lower prices. Market forces are pressing lawyers to provide services more efficiently and economically. Responding to those pressures, many services have become commoditized.

Richard Susskind and others have made these points for years, but this infographic lays them out in a easy-to-grasp manner. The graphic also acknowledges that some lawyers will continue to receive hefty salaries for high-stakes, sophisticated work. No one who studies the legal market doubts that proposition. The circle of highly compensated lawyers, however, will tighten as the market shifts as much work as possible to lower-paid workers.

The New Normal

The infographic closes with the especially sobering findings of a recent Altman Weil survey. The managing partners surveyed by Altman Weil overwhelmingly agreed that pressures for efficiency, price competition, commoditized work, and other markers of an open market are here to stay. This is a point that many legal educators miss: To the extent recent changes in the legal market stem from deregulation and increased competition, those changes are very unlikely to reverse themselves.

Why Do Future Paralegals Care?

The most notable point about this infographic is that it appears on a site devoted to recruiting future paralegals. Why do potential paralegals care about shifts in the market for licensed lawyers? Do they care that firms are making fewer equity partners and hiring more contract lawyers?

The sponsors of the site obviously think that potential paralegals will care, and I agree. As the infographic suggests, many law-related tasks are moving into uncharted employment territory. Licensed lawyers currently perform most document review, but will that remain true? Could experienced paralegals perform this work just as effectively, but at lower cost? Could paralegals with somewhat more education do the work? Could college graduates with minimal legal training compete in this field?

And what about the growing field of compliance? Currently, college graduates dominate that field. They possess experience (and sometimes degrees) in the regulated field, but no formal training in law. Could a paralegal with a BA in biology handle compliance work in health care or environmental science? Would a JD perform any better than the biologist-paraleegal?

The Lesson for Law Schools

Law schools need to think more about the law-related jobs created by the deregulation of the legal profession, unbundling of legal tasks, and commoditization of legal services. JDs still command a premium for some of these jobs, but that advantage is waning. As the market increasingly embraces non-JDs for law-related tasks, who will provide the education for those workers? Do law schools want a piece of that pie, or are we willing to cede those educational opportunities to colleges, paralegal programs, and other organizations?

Educating paralegals, document reviewers, and compliance officers may seem shockingly lowbrow to law schools, but remember that these are tasks that entry-level lawyers used to perform. These are also jobs that some of our current graduates take under the “JD advantage” label. As employers unbundle tasks in the workplace, perhaps we should unbundle our education to match workplace opportunities.

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