Date: April 12, 2013 Topic: The Shrinking ... - Georgetown Law

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hard hit, particularly since an agent’s “revenue was derived almost exclusively from commissions.” 14 The airlines that previously had “outsourced the labor-intensive process of research and booking travel to travel agencies in the late-1970’s” turned to the Internet and travelers themselves for outsourcing, “let[ting] the travelers do the work without the help of any airline employees or intermediaries, thus significantly lowering the airlines’ costs once again.” 15 “By the mid-1990s, three important factors and gained momentum to drive the aggressive migration to and adoption of Internet-based travel: high distribution costs – and the obvious value-for-dollar question that was raised based on system bias; new technology that offered a cheaper alternative to … direct access to customers; and a consumer population receptive and eager to take control of their own destinies.” 16 Legal services, by comparison, went relatively unscathed through the 1990s and even into the early part of the 21 st century. The massive layoffs and un(der)employment for law did not hit full force until over a decade after travel. For example, according to the “LayoffTracker” from the blog Law Shucks, from January 2008 to December 2011 “over 15,435 people have been laid off by major law firms (5,872 lawyers/9,563 staff).” 17 It is worth noting, however, that this data does not include layoffs that occurred in small or mid-sized firms, solo practices, or government, nor does it include layoffs before 2008 or after December 2011, although according to Law Shucks the layoffs have now slowed significantly: “2011 has been even slower, with just 439 people let go, of which merely 12 were lawyers.” 18 From 2010 to 2012, over 130,000 new lawyers entered the legal job market, predicted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor to offer only 73,600 new lawyer jobs over ten years, 2010-2020. 19 Beyond the employment situation for lawyers is the “‘justice gap’: millions of people who need legal representation cannot afford or access a lawyer. The overwhelming majority of this country goes without much-needed legal help because they simply cannot afford to pay a lawyer three-figures-per-hour for multiple hours, but they also do not qualify for the limited legal aid programs available.” 20 Lawyers struggle to “develop sustainable models for delivering legal services that are affordable, accessible and, importantly, adopted by clients who utilize them on a regular basis.” 21 At the same time, we have a “surplus of lawyers,” 22 with thousands of lawyers seeking employment and law schools continuing to add new attorneys to the mix. It seems that “every state but Wisconsin and Nebraska (plus Washington, D.C.) is producing many more lawyers than it needs. … In fact, across the country, there were twice as many people who passed the bar in 2009 (53,508) as there were openings (26,239).” 23 One key to solving the delivery and matching problems is user-adoption. “The profession must offer personal legal services that are affordable, accessible, and—importantly—adopted by clients/users 14 Harrel Associates, The Internet Travel Industry: What Consumers Should Expect and Need to Know, and Options for a Better Marketplace, Consumer WebWatch (Jun. 5, 2002), http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/pdfs/internet-travel-industry.pdf at 21. 15 Id. at 24-25. 16 Id. at 24 17 Layoff Tracker, LAW SHUCKS: LIFE IN AND AFTER BIGLAW, http://lawshucks.com/layoff-tracker/ (last visited Mar. 20, 2013). 18 Id. 19 Elizabeth Lesly Stevens, Will Law Students Have Jobs After They Graduate?, WASH. POST (Oct. 31, 2012), http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-10-31/lifestyle/35498320_1_law-schools-law-jobs-legal-career-professionals. 20 Renee Newman Knake, Why Law Students Should Be Thinking About Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Legal Services, Bloomberg Law (Nov. 2012), http://about.bloomberglaw.com/practitioner-contributions/innovation/. 21 Id. 22 Catherine Rampell, The Lawyer Surplus State by State, N.Y. Times (June 27, 2011, 11:35 AM), http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/the-lawyer-surplus-state-by-state/). 23 Id. 4
on a consistent, sustained basis. The unmet need for legal services must be channeled into a demand for legal services.” 24 The travel industry has become adept at cultivating adoption in this way through technology, data-driven decision making, marketing, branding, and beyond. While legal services are increasingly offered via new technologies, the legal industry has yet to experience the wide-spread adoption that has occurred in the travel industry. Moreover, where the role of travel agent was in many ways destroyed by deregulation and technology, the travel industry is experiencing a rejuvenated demand for personalized rather than computerized service. The travel industry’s evolution in a digital, data-driven world offers lessons for lawyers at all levels from legal aid to Wall Street to not only avoid displacement but also capitalize on existing and emerging technology advancements. We suggest six lessons below. A. Online Can’t Be Ignored Consider that travel agents are no longer necessary to secure the lowest airfare or most desirable seat on the plane. Instead, the store-front travel agent has been largely replaced by intuitive, user-friendly search engines and strategically designed websites targeting travelers of every budget for any destination. As Internet access became more publicly available, rather than resist the movement, “the travel industry was one of the earliest to go online.” 25 Online search has made travel planning available to the masses, tapping latent markets and creating new standards through customer-based travel review sites. User adoption has been overwhelming—Orbitz.com alone facilitates 1.5 million flight searches and 1 million hotel searches daily. The travel industry channeled disruption into new models for personal service, outsourcing much of the travel planning work previously done by agents to the customers themselves. The travel industry knew early on that online service cannot be ignored, for both sharing information with customers and collecting information about customers. “One big advantage of the Internet is that it gives consumers access to better information about what is on offer. Conversely, as more people buy their tickets online, the airlines get to know more about their customers’ needs and preferences.” 26 This data has enhanced is what is known as “customer relationship marketing,” where the airline induces customer loyalty “by offering tailor-made deals reflecting his known preferences.” 27 Where once a travel provider might have simply offered information, through online tools, most airlines, for example, “offer customers reservations, electronic tickets, seat selection, inflight merchandise, reward points and sometimes discounted fares unavailable elsewhere. In addition, they may offer lodging, transportation-package deals and cruises through their alliance partners.” 28 Online also allowed for the removal of intermediaries through direct-access software, fundamentally altering the traditional players in the travel supply chain. 29 24 Renee Newman Knake, Democratizing Legal Education, forthcoming Connecticut Law Review (2013). 25 Harrel Associates, The Internet Travel Industry: What Consumers Should Expect and Need to Know, and Options for a Better Marketplace, Consumer WebWatch (Jun. 5, 2002), http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/pdfs/internet-travel-industry.pdf at 26. 26 The sky’s the limit, The Economist (Mar. 10, 2001), http://www.economist.com/node/525723/print. 27 Id. 28 Id. 29 Harrel Associates, The Internet Travel Industry: What Consumers Should Expect and Need to Know, and Options for a Better Marketplace, Consumer WebWatch (Jun. 5, 2002), http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/pdfs/internet-travel-industry.pdf at 26. 5
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1 DECONSTRUCTING BIG LAW The Future
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The Stanford Law School Research Pr
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2011 General Counsel with Power
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Executive Summary of Key Findin
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General Counsel with Power? 201
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Table 3. Panel data regression mode
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The Shrinking Pyramid: Implications
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Limiting the Damage of Lateral Part
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Date: April 12, 2013 Topic: The Shrinking ... - Georgetown Law

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