Over at law.com, David Curle writes about a different sort of transformation from my response to Prof Sander. Increasingly powerful IT is changing the entire landscape, from the provision of legal services themselves, to the tools which lawyers utilize to collaborate and craft advice. Two specific drivers are worth noting:

“Younger associates and their content-sharing mentality. Much legal work consists of paying young associates to reinvent wheels, and a younger generation of tech-savvy lawyers has no interest in reinvention…they’ll want to use technology to leverage existing technologies.”

“Technology will create the most change for people who have been shut out of legal information sources and services — small business and individuals. These clients don’t offer enough scale to be of interest to existing legal services providers, but technology-based information and service providers are in a position to begin serving that “long tail” of the legal market.”

In some sense, he’s taken the words right out of my mouth. Indeed, the foundation of NextLex is predicated on this trend. But I might take his observations a few steps farther, or at least state what he leaves implicit.

As more and more traditional infrastructure services become replaced by more mobile IT, more and more attorneys will shove off on their own. BigLaw branding should still exist, but the new environment promises to be highly competitive, even chaotic. The ability to adapt and innovate will be not a competitive advantage, but a necessity. (As an aside, solos and smaller firms, with their higher utilization of emerging technologies, are well positioned in this respect.)

To be self-serving for a moment, this is where NextLex steps in: to enable connections, to encourage knowledge transfer, and to help build trust between attorneys in a fragmenting industry.

In a recent article, UCLA Law Professor Richard Sander argues to little controversy that the legal industry is drastically different from the 1950’s; considerable consolidation has led to declining real income among solo practitioners. But he also argues that the marked increase in the number of law students graduating each year coupled with a decline in the overall population of lawyers indicates that many lawyers are exiting the profession in their prime.

While I agree that this dichotomy indicates a problem, I don’t believe the apparent exodus from the law can be attributed to lawyers in their prime. The actual culprit is more troublesome. Seasoned lawyers may indeed be leaving, but far more aren’t even making it out of the gates. Sadly, I’m fairly convinced (though statistics would be helpful to confirm) that this has less to do with an overabundance of attorneys than considerable slack in the system. Neither existing recruiting channels to smaller firms and solos nor the practical skills sets of recent graduates are sufficiently robust to address this challenge.

Nevertheless, I am optimistic; it seems the tide is turning. Seasoned partners and young attorneys alike have been starting smaller shops; much ink has been spilt online to educate and inspire new lawyers to start their own practices. The contract attorney market, birthed as a method of handling document review work, is maturing, moving into higher value added areas and even gaining some acceptance within stodgy big firms.

I am optimistic, as well, because part of the NextLex vision has been crafted to embody this change. We believe that by matching up recent graduates and law students with smaller firms and solo attorneys we can remove some of the slack in the system, providing meaningful formative employment experiences for recent graduates while meeting the recruiting needs of solos and small firms.

As always, if you would like more information about NextLex, or have comments on this post, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at jgoodwin@nextlex.net.

This may be superfluous. Maybe blogs might not need a stated intent circumscribing the conversation. Nevertheless, I started mulling over the possibilities for the NextLex blog space.

I’m inundated with blog fodder, confronted more and more by evidence of a paradigm shift in the practice of law. Topics that, while not always directly related to NextLex proper, could be seen as prerequisites for our very existence. And, like everyone, I’ve an opinion, perhaps even an agenda. But discussing such topics seemed somehow incongruent with our goals. On the other hand, merely providing a “how-to” guide for NextLex, expanding on our grand vision and the multitude of features we hope to bring to the table, wasn’t going to cut it.

Then I realized, to hold back wouldn’t be in the spirit of NextLex. We’re building a community, and communities aren’t built on feature sets that grease the wheels of collaboration. Grease is good, but passion is paramount. So, while we’ll continue to roll out updates and post on what we hope to build, we’re also taking aim at trends in the practice of law, analyzing the micro and macro, exposing the luddites, becoming the revolution that’s already here. We may at times incite controversy, but that’s part of the plan. Without debate, without argument, there’s no challenge and no movement forward, no innovation. And those are certainly goals within the purview of NextLex.

The impetus for NextLex comes from personal experience in the contract attorney trenches, reviewing documents for antitrust reviews and other corporate litigation. The experience was an eye opener – myriad inefficiencies and problems to be solved.

Most importantly, we realized there’s a whole cadre of newly minted attorneys caught in a circular loop – without legal experience with which to get legal experience. Many are willing to work on a contract basis to build substantive and practical skill sets.

Coincidentally, solo and small firm attorneys are in need of just this type of work. They recruit on an ad hoc basis if at all, but nevertheless need to partner with other attorneys or could benefit from outsourcing discreet projects from time to time.

Our goal at NextLex is to facilitate meaningful connections between these audiences and let the magic happen. We also aim to bring efficiency to the document review marketplace, the work you probably do to make ends meet while looking for something more permanent, or putting together a plan to shove off on your own.

To put it more succinctly: our goal at NextLex is to simplify your life and enable your success.

Please stay tuned or subscribe to our announcement list. In the coming days we’ll be adding posts, revealing in more detail what we hope to accomplish and the problems we hope to solve. We’ll also be adding links and content that we hope you’ll find useful and interesting.

Welcome to NextLex, the next step in the practice of law! We are a community aimed at simplifying your life. Whether you’re still in law school, recently graduated, or have been practicing for a number of years, NextLex can facilitate your success.

As a member of the NextLex community you will be able to search and network with other attoneys, seek and give advice, showcase and develop new skills sets.

We’re working diligently to deliver a beta version soon. In the meantime, we’re putting together information and resources we hope you’ll find helpful and/or interesting. We’ve also started a blog (which of course you know as you’re reading it), to keep you up to date on our progress and better articulate what we hope to build.

In the mean time, please don’t hesitate to contact me at jgoodwin@nextlex.net with any questions or comments.