In this week's Law Firm Disrupted, we look at how Bartlit Beck combines its prestigious reputation with evidence to back up its performance.

I'm Roy Strom, the author of this weekly briefing on the changing legal market, and you can reach me here or sign up to receive this newsletter here.

 

 

Metrics Plus Prestige: A Powerful Combo

I have written quite a bit in recent weeks about the role of prestige in the Big Law market. We looked at how prestige leads to pricing power for the best Big Law brands and, in turn, boosts the salaries for young lawyers at those firms (and others that seek to emulate them).

I want to settle any confusion: I am not against prestige. I don't think it's bad. I applaud the firms who have cultivated well-known brands and benefit from their place in the market.

But I am also interested in a question: Are there ways other than prestige that could help determine who the best lawyers are? Are there better ways to judge performance in the legal market?

That's a topic I wrote about last week, when we looked at a LexisNexis product that might, one day, be able to provide metrics such as how frequently arguments from a given lawyer's briefs are picked up in a judge's opinion.

The options for tracking lawyer performance today are pretty limited. As I said last week, most firms don't even list the number of times they have represented clients on certain types of matters. Some firms probably don't know.

But there are some areas of law that are more prone to performance-like statistics than others. Such as trials.

Today, I profiled the litigation boutique Bartlit Beck, which celebrated the 25th anniversary of its split from Kirkland & Ellis last month. The firm is interesting for a number of reasons: It bills clients on a contingent-fee basis, earning more when it wins. It has a reverse-pyramid structure of 80 percent partners and 20 percent associates. And it tracks metrics such as how often its younger lawyers are doing material work on big cases.

Partially as a result of Bartlit Beck's billing style (it needs to know when it wins, and how), the firm also has tracked metrics about how often it wins at trial. The number is about 80 percent, the firm's managing partner, Jason Peltz, told me. Another firm that tracks that number is Quinn Emanuel, which says it wins 88 percent of the time.

Both firms illustrate a key point about the transition from a prestige-based market to a performance-based market: The two are not mutually exclusive. It's likely that firms that have garnered reputations for excellence would excel in a market that tracks performance.

For instance, Bartlit Beck is lauded for its willingness to take cases to trial. That is why clients turn to them in many cases. It's probably no big surprise, then, that the Chicago-based firm does in fact go to trial more often than its peers.

Data from Lex Machina show that from 2009 through late 2018, the firm had gone to trial in nearly 20 percent of its completed cases in five major types of litigation. That compares to a range of 7 to 9 percent for four of the nation's best-known Big Law trial firms: Kirkland & Ellis, Quinn Emanuel, Gibson Dunn and Skadden. Those were four firms BTI Consulting ranked this year as the four “most feared” brands for litigation. Bartlit Beck was ranked in the second tier, along with four other firms to round out a top-nine of sorts.

I spoke with Peltz about the potential for a legal market where purchasing decisions are more frequently based on data—like how often a firm wins at trial or how frequently its lawyers persuade judges to their side of the case. He said he welcomes the development.

“As additional data becomes available, it will allow clients to make more informed decisions and know more information about the record of the people they're hiring,” Peltz said. “And from Bartlit Beck's perspective, we look forward to that, because we're literally off the charts.”

Peltz said clients would likely use that additional data to buttress the more traditional metrics clients consider today. That includes, importantly, a lawyer's relationship with their clients.

Practicing law will probably always be a relationship business, based in a large part on trust. But firms that have a performance edge from a statistical standpoint should do more to tell that story, too. Metrics plus prestige will prove a hard combination to beat.

 

Roy's Reading Corner

On Anniversaries: This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Annual Law Department Operations Survey by the Blickstein Group, which provides a good measuring stick for how far legal operations has come. Brad Blickstein writes about the survey for The American Lawyer and finds that there is a widening gap between the use of technology and its effectiveness: More people are using technology, but the number who say it is effective has stagnated. Technologies were ranked as a 6.4 out of 10 when asked how effective they were.

Still, the survey shows other ways that legal department operations has changed the legal market. From the story: “In 2008, only 4 percent of LDOs selected outside counsel for individual matters. Today it is 28 percent—a 700 percent increase. In 2008 only 16 percent of LDOs directly negotiated rates with outside counsel. Now it is 45 percent—almost a 300 percent increase. LDOs are also much more likely to directly handle billing issues (52 percent vs. 40 percent a decade ago), negotiate discounts (41 percent vs. 20 percent), select outside counsel for a panel (24 percent vs. 8 percent) and negotiate alternative fee arrangements (39 percent vs. 16 percent).”

On Innovation North of the Border: My colleague Meghan Tribe ventures to Canada for The American Lawyer to survey the innovation scene. It is a story worth reading for a landscape of changes happening at a number of firms. I was particularly interested in the story told by Fasken. Peter Feldberg, Fasken's managing partner, said the firm was pushed into pursuing new technologies by its young lawyers. It has since launched online tools to help Canadian startups and to price fixed fees for clients.

Fasken also has a good general reflection on innovation: “The biggest struggle is the 'how,' because it's not just a question of going out and buying the latest tool or gizmo or tech or something and then waving a wand and saying, 'Poof, you're innovative,'” Feldberg says. “It's really a fundamental look at how you're going to change the way you do your practice.”

Poof, that's it for this week! Thanks again for reading, and please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]. Sign up here to receive The Law Firm Disrupted as a weekly email.