Well, the short answer is: Read William Henderson's ABA Journal article “What the Jobs Are.” It’s hard to improve on Bill’s excellent work. But I’ll offer some complementary thoughts here. By 2026, we should be coming to the end of an extraordinary period in the law: several years of a continuously shrinking legal profession. The overall number of lawyers is going to decline for two main reasons:

Alternative Business Structures (ABS) is the innocuous label given to one of the most important, yet ignored, issues facing the legal profession today. It is the debate whether or not to change our ethics rules to allow non-lawyer corporate investors and managerial professionals to invest in new forms of law firms and share in the profits — something that is currently prohibited in 49 states. Proponents — often from large firms and academia — want to allow ABSs to spur additional capital investment in firms. They want to close the so-called “justice gap” in the legal services market by attracting additional capital investment to firms to develop more robust systems and technology so more people can obtain affordable legal services. Much of this new capital would flow to existing big firms to help them expand into consumer services such as family law, personal injury and bankruptcy, among others. Opponents — mostly solo and small firm lawyers — are concerned the profit motive of these non-lawyers will negatively impact professionalism.

I was recently challenged to explore what client service will look like in 2026. The good news is the conversation has already started, but the bad news is law firms have a long way to go. It is great that the idea of “client service” is authentically being explored within law firms, but what many lawyers think of as client service is really just table stakes. What is lost is that client service creates greater client loyalty and greater client loyalty yields more work, higher realization and stronger promoters. But firms only earn that loyalty when they demonstrate a deep understanding of their clients’ needs and expectations.

The 2016 Futures Conference featured a crowd of wonderful speakers with provocative ideas. The theme, “What Will Law Look Like in 2026?” brought out some deeply interesting ideas. We asked four conference speakers to summarize their presentations: The Future of Client Service by Nathaniel Slavin, The Wicker Park Group Will Alternative Business Structures (ABS) Fly? by Reid Trautz, […]

I deal in "clouds and dirt." That's how Gary Vaynerchuk (entrepreneur, angel investor, four-time New York Times best seller, and digital marketing agency CEO) began the closing keynote to the capacity crowd at this week's Clio Cloud Conference in Chicago. And the metaphor of "clouds and dirt" is a pretty good way to describe the Silicon Valley inspired, high-energy ClioCon, which delivers sessions that motivate lawyers to reach far beyond the status quo in their businesses, alongside sessions that dig deep into using technology to actually work on big ideas. So, sticking with "clouds and dirt," here are five motivating things I (and the 800 other attendees) learned at the conference, along with a few tips to add to your action plan.

I'm just back from Content Marketing World — a weeklong conference featuring hundreds of leading experts in social media marketing. I was there to speak on social media law and to learn how to be more effective with my own marketing efforts. (I was pleased to see at least one of the 3,500 attendees was from a law firm marketing department.) By the end of the event, my head was buzzing with ideas to apply to how I write blog posts — as well as tactics I can use to make sure my existing content reaches a broader audience searching for legal information. Here are highlights from the sessions I attended.

If you spend time typing, you’ve very likely found "copy and paste" to be two of your best friends, on any computer system. But if having one copied item available is good, wouldn’t more be better? I've discovered that clipboard managers can be a great time-saving tool.

Enterprising Lawyer Q&A: Kimberley Motley, a practicing attorney since 2003, has worked in Afghanistan since 2008. She is the first foreigner to litigate cases in Afghanistan's criminal and commercial courts. Kimberley currently represents clients on every continent except Antarctica — including individuals from international corporations and NGOs, as well as embassies and ambassadors around the world. She has been featured in Vanity Fair, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, London Times, CNN, BBC and the Today Show to name a few. Learn more about her story here.

We know that free-play is important to the development of children. But it’s also really important in the life of an adult. You may think you don’t need to play, that you don’t have time to play, but there are good reasons to incorporate play into your life. But what is play?

“I over-exaggerated.” It was impossible to miss the world’s derision for Ryan Lochte’s poor word choice. The Olympian was trying to explain his lies about how he found himself at the wrong end of a gun after a night of partying in Brazil. Indeed, “over-“ is a prefix meaning excessive or excessively. But there is no such word as “over-exaggerate.” And yet, many words with this prefix seem as silly as Lochte’s grammar misstep. “Over-smooth” is an adjective, but it’s hard to imagine how a surface could be more smooth than just “smooth.” You could correctly call the witness who shoots off his mouth “over-talkative”, but doesn’t “talkative” make the point?