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There is something of the [[labour theory of value]] to hours clocked up. Native private practitioners actually ''like'' the feeling of accomplishment and self-worth that comes from spending 2,500 hours a year slogging away at meaningless textual rockfaces. Those who argue against them are talking their own book: mainly technologists and other refugees from “big law” — [[Lazy|lazy people]] like yours truly with no stomach for the paper-war pantomime — but in any case you will not find senior partners of white-shoe law firms — or, really, those who ''aspire'' to being partners of white-shoe firms — railing against charge-out rates. | There is something of the [[labour theory of value]] to hours clocked up. Native private practitioners actually ''like'' the feeling of accomplishment and self-worth that comes from spending 2,500 hours a year slogging away at meaningless textual rockfaces. Those who argue against them are talking their own book: mainly technologists and other refugees from “big law” — [[Lazy|lazy people]] like yours truly with no stomach for the paper-war pantomime — but in any case you will not find senior partners of white-shoe law firms — or, really, those who ''aspire'' to being partners of white-shoe firms — railing against charge-out rates. | ||
The time-and-attendance model is embedded deep in the [[Pace layering|cultural | The time-and-attendance model is embedded deep in the [[Pace layering|cultural layer of legal commerce]]. It will, we predict, long outlive trendy types who predict its demise. | ||
=== | ===Whither the great revolution in legal services?=== | ||
And if, as we suspect, the charge-out rate is a bellwether, those trendy doom-sayers have even more post-fact rationalisation to do. | |||
Now, it is a truism that one should judge a market by what it does, not what its [[Thought leader|thought leaders]] say, and here the irrepressible rise of the charge-out rate presents quite the conundrum for legal futurologists. | |||
For, if it is really true that legal practice is on the brink of revolution<ref>[https://www.allenovery.com/en-gb/global/news-and-insights/legal-innovation/the-future-of-the-in-house-legal-function The future of the in-house legal function], [[Allen & Overy]] thought leadership.</ref> — that [[alternative legal provider]]s are progressively eating big law’s lunch and that, generally, [[we will all have more leisure time in the future]] — then we should expect the overall vector of elite law firm performance to point ''downward''. | |||
But, if the charge-out rate is any indication — and there is surely none clearer — it does not. It yearns to the unending Cosmos. The elite law firms are in the rudest of health. Banker bonuses may have long since been crimped, the two-and-twenty model consigned to history’s dumpster, but the white shoe of international legal practice has steadfastly neglected to drop. We hear tell of mid-Atlantic boutiques paying graduates six figures just to sign onto a training contract. [[Magic circle law firm|Magic circle]] partners complain bitterly how hard it is to attract staff with any kind of work ethic. | |||
So what is going on? | |||
Readers, deeper forces are at play. The crumbling superficial logic of our thought leaders has no hope against the fundamental [[laws of worker entropy]] that frame the [[space-tedium continuum]]. We would respectfully draw the reader’s attention to the ninth, tenth and eleventh laws of worker entropy: | |||
{{Quote|{{ninth law of worker entropy}} | |||
{{tenth law of worker entropy}} | |||
{{thirteenth law of worker entropy}}}} | |||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||