A story in the ABA Journal says "Law Job Stagnation May Have Started Before the Recession—And It May Be a Sign of Lasting Change." Hope the golden age of lawyering will return? Think about a paradigm shift instead, the story says. In the fact of "an urgent need for better and cheaper legal services" in a rapidly globalizing world, lawyers need to "re-examine some long-standing assumptions about lawyers and the clients they serve." And the author's prescription for survival is one that is increasingly familiar in all fields -- innovate:
The biggest challenge for law firms will be transitioning away from internal firm metrics that reward billable hours and discourage or prohibit the crucial trial-and-error experimentation needed to create, refine and market more innovative work processes that do more with less.
