Ralph Baxter
Ralph Baxter wanted to be a lawyer “mainly because [he] loved Perry Mason.” This young Perry Mason worked hard and gained a tremendous reputation as an attorney, eventually assuming leadership of Orrick and heading the firm for an astonishing 23 years as chairman and CEO. Under his tenure, Ralph grew the California firm into a global powerhouse with over 1,100 lawyers across 25 offices. Ralph was recognized as a top attorney by everyone and anyone: “Top 100 Most Influential Lawyers” by the National Law Journal, “Most Innovative Managing Partner” by Law 360 for two years in a row (2011 and 2012), and the accolades go on and on.
So what’s left after a legal career like that? On his blog, Ralph describes himself now as an “advisor, writer & speaker on the legal profession.” Eschewing a life of resting on his laurels, Ralph turned his unstoppable energy to the alt.legal movement. In Mason-like fashion, he is well-known for investigating and masterfully wrestling with today’s issues in the legal industry from the perspective of innovation and technology. Today, Ralph is a godfather and revered voice in the alt.legal community, advising startups and transforming the practice from the outside.
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Naturally, we could not be more excited to spend time with Ralph, but importantly, we’re even more excited today because – drum roll, please – Ralph has agreed to let us share our conversation with him through our inaugural alt.legal podcast, debuting today (hyperlink here, and here)! Our interviews with legal innovators have been really eye-opening for us, and we wanted to be able to share them in their entirety with you. Thanks to Thomson Reuters for letting a couple of ex-lawyers stomp around their professional recording studio in Times Square. So please, thank our friends at TR by sharing, liking, and sending our podcast along to friends . . . it makes a huge difference. Now, back to our story.
Today, law firms are starting to make some noise around innovation, but at alt.legal we have been a little skeptical that even highly trained legal minds will be able to compete with the best technology and managed services providers. Importantly, Ralph pointed out that “[a] law firm is not an ideal organization for innovation for lots of reasons, but law firms need to push themselves to innovate.” In his view, Biglaw needs “to push themselves beyond their natural tendency to rely on precedent and do things the way they’ve always done.”
Nevertheless, new innovation will come from “new organizations…that are created as businesses,” or as we call them, alt.legal companies. Post-Orrick, Ralph has dedicated himself to improving the legal system through new business models. Ralph works different angles to usher in this change, both in business and in academia. From the business side, Ralph served on the Board of Directors of Lex Machina and is on the Board of Advisors of Ravel Law. On the academic side, Ralph has advisory or board positions at three little law schools, known as Stanford, Harvard and Georgetown. Finally, Ralph serves as the Chairman of the Legal Executive Institute at Thomson Reuters, a forum designed to spur engagement with legal executives and “offer[] keen insight into the profession of law and the legal marketplace.”
In sitting down with Ralph for the podcast, and through other encounters, one gets the sense that this flurry of activity isn’t just keeping him busy, or occupying his time. Rather, it’s clear that Ralph’s passion for this alt.legal work increases with every step forward.
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Ralph is clearly informed by his perspective and intimate familiarity with the inner workings of a global law firm. He exhorts others to draw on that perspective, to close the mental gap between people innovating new solutions and the attorneys that will actually use them. For any alt.legal company trying to sell a law firm, “job one would be getting everybody to think and talk in the way that a law firm does.” As former Biglaw associates now working in and writing about the alt.legal market, this was an affirmation of our approach and generally a high-five to our professional existence.
But as former litigators, we perceived something else about Ralph’s thoughtful approach, something ineffable about his manner at a meta level. It wasn’t just that Ralph brought intel from the depths of Biglaw. No, his instincts for masterful persuasion permeate the advice itself, as if every potential alt.legal engagement is a federal trial and every potential attorney-cleint was a member of a jury.
Ralph’s eyes lit up as he explained: “If you want to get your idea adopted by a law firm, you have to… do what you do if you want the jury to vote your way in a trial.… If you want to motivate anybody to do something you’ve got to tell them a story that will get your point across in a way they will hear, they will believe, and they will trust.”
You can take the managing partner out of the law firm, but you can never take the Perry Mason out of Ralph Baxter.
Finally, Ralph is optimistic about the future, but he warns the current crop of lawyers that “[y]ou can’t go in [to your career] with a blueprint,” you need to “figure it out and be successful.” He acknowledged that the legal industry is “fundamentally different and changing in ways that are more profound than during most of my career.”
Please check out the podcast. We hope you will enjoy this as much as we did.
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Alt.Legal Podcast with Ralph Baxter: On Becoming an Agent of Change within your Legal Firm [Legal Managed Services]
Joe Borstein is a Global Director at Thomson Reuters’ award-winning legal outsourcing company, Pangea3, which employs over 1,000 full-time attorneys across the globe. He and his co-author Ed Sohn each spent over half a decade as associates in Biglaw and were classmates at Penn Law.
Joe manages a global team dedicated to counseling law firm and corporate clients on how to best leverage Pangea3’s full-time attorneys to improve legal results, cut costs, raise profits, and have a social life. He is a frequent speaker on global trends in the legal industry and, specifically, how law firms are leveraging those trends to become more profitable. If you are interested in entrepreneurship and the delivery of legal services, please reach out to Joe directly at [email protected].
Ed Sohn is a Senior Director at Thomson Reuters Legal Managed Services (formerly Pangea3). After more than five years as a Biglaw litigation associate and more than two years in New Delhi overseeing the delivery of managed document review, Ed now focuses on managing the new e-discovery solutions with technology managed services. You can contact Ed about e-discovery, legal managed services, theology, chess, Star Trek: The Next Generation, or the Chicago Bulls at [email protected].