They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Matthew 23:4

Like so many things, whether you love or hate remote work depends on how you look at it. Do you look at the remote work phenomenon and see multiple problems? Do you pine for the days when everyone had to come to the office? Or so you see opportunity?

One person and one law firm that looks for the opportunities remote work holds is J.Y. Miller and Husch Blackwell. Miller described the firm’s approach to remote work and laid out these advantages in a recent LegalSpeak podcast.

He also discussed what Husch is doing to take maximum advantage of the virtual office concept. Miller, the co-managing partner of Husch Blackwell’s virtual office, was interviewed by Alaina Lancaster.

Husch Blackwell is a national law firm with 21 brick and mortar offices. It also has a formalized virtual office, which actually has a name: The Link. Launched in 2020, The Link now includes more lawyers than those who work in the firm’s physical offices. The Link has 200 lawyers and 400 legal professionals working from homes in 28 states and Washington, D.C.

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Want to be a successful lawyer? Think Jimmy Buffett. Wait…what???

Like many of you, I was saddened to learn of the passing of Jimmy Buffett last week. He was a phenomenal artist and a cultural icon. He was a singer, a writer, and an author, among other things. His music, in many ways, was the music of my life. He gave us more than 40 years of songs and stories of happiness, sadness, distant places, and, of course, adventure. Whenever I hear one of his songs, I am reminded of vacations, the beach, cruises, and good times.

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According to various reports, a recent survey from Wells Fargo’s Legal Specialty Group revealed some surprises. It’s been reported for the first six months of 2023, the legal headcount is up 3.9%, but billable hours are down. Significantly down. Wells Fargo surveyed over 130 law firms, including 68 AmLaw 100 firms. The Specialty Group frequently tracks and analyses law firm data and trends.

Every time I turn around, there’s another astounding and confounding assault on our rights. This time, it was the Fifth Circuit stepping in to ensure that our right against unreasonable search and seizure stops cold at the border.

On August 15, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a remarkable and scary decision limiting the rights of US citizens coming back into the country. Malik v. DHS. The upshot of the holding: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has an unrestricted ability to seize your phone. The DHS can also wipe your phone of all the data, and then keep both the phone and data. 

The effect will be to handicap DEI efforts, at the cost of business independence and even if sound business reasons exist for inclusion.

The American Alliance for Equal Rights last week sued two law firms, Perkins Coie and Morrison Foerster. Edward Blum heads the Alliance. Blum also headed one of the groups that brought the case against Harvard. That case resulted in the landmark Supreme Court decision which dealt what could be a death blow to affirmative action. In the suits aginst the law firms, the Alliance alleges that the firms’ diversity fellowship programs discriminates against white people. The programs are only open to people of color, those with disabilities, or who are LGBTQ.

The litigation comes shortly after letters from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and a Republican Equal Employment Opportunity Commission member threatening suits against numerous law firms with DEI programs. Apparently, Blum and the Republicans are not content to attack colleges and universities. They intend to stamp out any programs of businesses that do anything that smacks of favoring anybody but whites.

The ramifications of the onslaught are terrifying, frankly. The diversity numbers in law firms and the legal profession are already abysmal. Creating programs to alleviate that record is the right thing to do. Unless you want to perpetuate a system that systematically favors white men. 

As I previously posted, I spent last week at the ILTA conference in Orlando. Like just about every legal tech discussion and conference these days, talk about generative AI and its uses in the substantive end of law practice dominated. Lost in all this hype, though, a quiet revolution is going on with the use of AI and automation in the business end of the practice of law. Lots of developments to ease the burden of back office stuff like billing, collections, intake, and the like. All the administrative tasks that can’t be billed for but significantly impact the firm’s profitability.

While at ILTACon, I had the chance to talk to Doug Matthews, the Chief Product Officer of Aderant, a legal business management provider. Matthews was enthusiastic about some of these new administration use cases. As an example of the new, more sophisticated back office tools, Aderant launched an electronic automated billing platform called Onyx earlier this year. This platform takes such things as billing guidelines and automates their application into the pre-bill process.

So there I was in the massive Exhibit Hall at the ILTA conference on Wednesday. I was at the end of my last full day at the Conference. My feet hurt, and I was tired. As I previously mentioned, ILTA provided a start-up alley in the very back of the Hall. In addition to the booths, there was a stage and some chairs. Ahhh, it’s a good place to sit for a few.

As I was resting my feet, a young man took the stage for a brief pitch. He trumpeted a product that, on first blush, I thought would merely automate the drafting of demand letters for plaintiffs’ lawyers. My first reaction was that it’s not very innovative. All you need is a form and a number. But as he talked and when I met up with him later, just like removing layers of an onion, he revealed the true nature of what he was doing. The more I learned, the more I felt he was really on to something.

The man’s name was Raymond Mieszaniec, and the company he founded with two others is called EvenUp Law. In his pitch, he revealed that it wasn’t just about drafting a demand letter. What EvenUp does is use artificial intelligence along with a team of people to determine and justify the amount of plaintiff demands in personal injury cases.