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Imagine if in the 1970s, the former head of a huge law firm came out against the rise of word processors and their challenge to typewriters and carbon paper. Imagine that he scoffed at this notion of "a better mousetrap," groused that people had been trying to come up with new systems for years without much success, and made a throwaway crack about "young people." People probably would have ridiculed him as a Luddite defending the status quo merely because that was what he was used to. Even if the "better mousetrap" did a better job than the old system.
Sure enough, the former head of a huge law firm recently came out against the anti–billable hour revolution. Richard Gary, former chair of Thelen Reid, was quoted in a California Bar Journal article, "Will a bad economy force more changes in the profession?" Here are Gary's thoughts on typewriters billable hours:
Still, he said, he doesn’t think the billable hour is going to disappear. “We’ve been talking about going to a different model for 20 years and it’s never happened. Maybe young people will come up with a different mousetrap.” However, he added, “I still think it’s the best way to measure value because it is a mechanism of measuring the amount of work that a lawyer did for a client on a particular matter.”
Let's read that again: The billable hour is "the best way to measure value ...."
I don't have too much to add here, other than to point out that Gary now runs his own law-firm consulting shop offering "strategic solutions for law firms."
And the 600-lawyer firm he ran for 11 years, Thelen Reid? Above the Law has the 411 here: "Thelen Officially Dissolves." (Ouch.)
I'm not saying that the idea of billable hours being any measure of client value — let alone the best measure — is what's causing firms like Thelen to fold. But it can't be helping.
Hat tip to Melody Kramer, who wrote about the CBJ article and the Gary quote in her excellent post, "Quality vs. Quantity - the billable hour mousetrap" at the Freelance Legal Professionals blog. Also, the required-reading Greatest American Lawyer had a nice summary post a few weeks back on the CBJ article.