Too busy to read it all? Try these books, blogs, webcasts, websites and other info resources curated by CCBJ especially for corporate counsel and legal ops professionals.
Column: Unfiltered
Bloomberg Law columnist Vivia Chen can get a bit snarky, but when her snark barks, it can be a treat to read. Recently, she laid into her favorite target, Big Law, for the shabby treatment of their young talent as they dished out pink slips. “What’s startling is not that layoffs persist in Big Law,” Chen writes, “but the way some firms are discarding their talent like yesterday’s iPhones.” What really raised Chin’s ire were comments from firms such as Kirkland & Ellis, sugarcoating layoffs as routine “performance-based decisions” arising from attorney reviews “just like we do every year for all attorneys at all levels.” Twisting the shiv, Chen turns to a former K&E partner. “Big Law was eager to throw bodies at the burgeoning economy not long ago,” Steven Harper told Chen. “They were good enough to do the work once upon a time, but when the economy changed, they’re not.”
BLOG: My Shingle
Carolyn Elefant’s blog targets solos and small-firm practitioners. That does not, however, mean she has nothing to benefit Big Law. This piece is a good example. Using the plummeting stock of Chegg, which provides study aids to high school and college students, she asks a question on every timekeeper’s mind: Will AI kill the billable hour? “When a tool like Casetext Co-Counsel can summarize the 50 cases cited in an opposing brief in 10 minutes rather than the 10 hours it might have taken an attorney, how do you bill for that?” she asks. “When a lawyer can push a button to generate discovery requests that respond to a complaint that an associate supplements with two hours of review, rather than the two days the project might have taken, how do you bill for that? And if in-house counsel can use AI-powered tools, how much use will they continue to have for large outside firms?
REPORT: AALL State of the Profession
This is the third time AALL has conducted its exhaustive survey of U.S. law librarians, which digs into the work of librarians in law firms and corporate legal departments, academia, and government. You can find info about all aspects of law libraries and librarians, including budgets, staffing, skills, workplaces and much more. Bob Ambrogi, legal tech superstar whose LawSites blog is an indispensable resource, points to the finding related to legal tech, particularly the “instrumental role law librarians play in innovation and technology adoption within their organizations.” Asked whether the library is involved in purchase decisions for technology and research products, fully 95% respond with a resounding YES! “As might be expected,” Ambrogi writes, “100% of firm/corporate librarians are responsible for overseeing research databases. Some 36% oversee their organizations’ knowledge management systems. Forty percent say they oversee other technology.”
Published June 22, 2023.
