ACYL Side Bar
The Disruptive Force
By J. Wickliffe Cauthorn
Cauthorn Nohr & Owen
[email protected]
T
he term disruptive has been used to describe companies like Uber or Airbnb. Typically these companies
“disrupt” the marketplace by providing a product or
service that is so revolutionary that it turns the market on its
head. Disruptive ideas tend to be unscalable because their
economic impact defies current market wisdom. Ordinarily,
the disruptive idea comes from outside of the box thinking
applied in an aggressively entrepreneurial way.
In the legal world, we don’t normally see market disruption
because we adhere to rigid rules about the way business is
done. We are members of the guild who have been trained
to act and think “like lawyers.” While totally necessary for
successfully navigating the actual practice of law, I believe
institutionalized thinking has stifled
our profession’s entrepreneurialism.
We tend to fight against new ideas,
i.e. early laws prohibiting attorney
advertising and, more recently,
proposed regulations to limit online
legal services like Legal Zoom.
Our profession is ripe for some
disruptive entrepreneurialism.
According to a study by Richard
Granat, we have a $20 billion per
year market for legal services that
is entirely unserved. These legal
services consumers are primarily
middle class people with legal needs
that are not addressed by our current system.
Luz Herrera, an assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson
School of Law, wrote and excellent law review article for
the Denver University Law Review, “Training LawyerEntrepreneurs.” Among other things, Herrera pointed out the
enormity of the unserved client population in the United States:
in 2011, the United States ranked last among the eleven
nations surveyed by the World Justice Project in “providing
access to justice to its citizens.”
There must be a better way to deliver legal services to the
enormous market. I am not pretending that I have the answer,
but I believe the time is right for a disruptive force to come
forward. We are seeing unprecedented un/under-employment
of young lawyers who are graduating law school without
any traditional prospects. Too many of these young minds
are immediately leaving the field out of necessity. They are
taking career path jobs for which they don’t need their legal
education. Meanwhile, as a profession, we are failing our
communities and our justice system by underserving the
average American.
Who better to be the disruptive force than one of these
young un/under-employed lawyers with fresh ideas and an
entrepreneurial spirit? As a bar, we should dedicate ourselves
“While totally necessary for successfully
navigating the actual practice of law, I believe
institutionalized thinking has stifled our
profession’s entrepreneurialism. We tend to
fight against new ideas.. Our profession is
ripe for some disruptive entrepreneurialism.”
The Official News Publication of the Atlanta Bar Association
to incubating and cultivating a spirit of entrepreneurialism in
our ranks. Perhaps the way to encourage our young talented
bar members is to give them the opportunity to grow.
Every member of the bar who has an empty office, an hour
to mentor, or a few words of encouragement can host a onelawyer incubator (we don’t need to rely on the state bar to
do it). This is an exciting time in our profession. Now is an
opportunity to find the young disruptive force who will figure
out the way to provide access to justice for thousands while
tapping into a multi-billion dollar market.
August/September 2015
THE ATLANTA LAWYER
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