A high-voltage dispatch on the business of law and the future of legal careers. Read in 5 minutes.
░░ The Archive ░░
Past issues. Read in any order. Subscribe to get new ones first.
Most lawyers begin their careers wanting to make a difference. Defending the innocent. Holding power to account. Then they discover Cravath newly-qualified salaries. Suddenly they're restructuring Argentine debt (again) with the rectitude of a Renaissance tax collector.
Armed men seizing your gold mine is generally considered bad for business. Especially when the government stops answering the phone and local police discover an unexpected commitment to non-intervention. That's when Tim gets called.
Most junior lawyers add very little value. In the past, trainees carried documents to court, acting as highly overpaid couriers. Today, the tasks look different but the commercial impact is the same. And that's okay.
We don't often associate lawyers with the buccaneering spirit of the likes of Aubrey or Cochrane. If anything, they're trained to keep well clear of the lee shore, carefully noting the shoals and sandbanks that may spell trouble. Risk is treated as something to be quietly skirted. However, that’s precisely where opportunity sits.
Fancy spending your day cuddling a koala? To be clear, this is not a metaphor or part of a bring your pet to work wellbeing scheme. The general counsel in question works at a zoo. She does do legal work. But she also has the more serious task of defending her shoe laces from a determined waddle of penguins.