Here Is The Most Tortured Biglaw/Military/Al-Qaeda Analogy Of 2018

Could Biglaw defeat Al-Qaeda? I dunno. Is this a real question?

This photo has nothing to do with Biglaw. (SALEH AL-OBEIDI/AFP/Getty Images)

I mean, look, I like clicks too. I get it. But this headline right here is ridiculous:

Beyond the Assembly Line: Could Big Law Firms Defeat Al-Qaeda?

I mean, one is a group of well-trained, anti-social people with dark aims, and the other is Al-Qaeda (zing). But, umm, it’s a good headline because when I read it on Law.com’s Mid-Market Report, I clicked to see what combination of crazy and market pressure could lead to such a question.

The premise is that Biglaw has an outdated approach to client services, the same way the U.S. military had an outdated, Cold War approach to counter-insurgency and it was only when the military adapted to new realities that it was able to push back against Al-Qaeda.

Or something. I didn’t spend too much time wrestling with the central premise, lest I be sucked into a vortex where John Quinn has his hands on the nuclear button and gives Selendy & Gay 48 hours to disband, “or else.”

Turns out, the piece was written by John Pierce, who is the managing partner of Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht, and has a interest in talking about how his firm outcompetes the big boys. Again, I get all that. Please email advertising@breakingmedia.com and I’ll get it even more.

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But… I don’t know what to do with this passage:

Pierce Bainbridge’s history so far only confirms how well [General Stanley McChrystal]’s vision does indeed apply to legal battlefields. In case after case, we’ve bested Big Law firms; their timekeepers and research specialists could not prevail against the kind of software in which we’ve invested, because ours makes “frenetic sharing” possible in ways that conventional email cannot…

In the past, Big Law Goliaths typically massacred small competitors by overwhelming them with sundry documents and motions. That may have been sound strategy once upon a time. But our firm has achieved something comparable to the 10-hour-to-27-minutes transformation achieved by McChrystal’s task force.

This feels like a good time to mention that: LITIGATION IS NOT WAR! It’s not like war. DELIVERING CLIENT SERVICES IS NOT LIKE DEFEATING AL-QAEDA.

Commercial aviation, unlike other industries, faces the constant possibility of disaster; indeed, United’s initiative was inspired by the crash of Flight 173 three years earlier. Like the U.S. military after 9/11, there was compelling motivation to entertain radical change. However, many other types of organizations won’t really adapt until their own ramparts start to tumble like Twin Towers. Alas for large law firms, that day of reckoning may come sooner than their harshest detractors predict.

NOBODY IS FLYING A PLANE INTO SKADDEN BECAUSE THEY DON’T USE SLACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Here’s an analogy I can go with: Small law firm proselytizers sometimes just need to chill instead of trying to blow everything up like Al-Qaeda.

Beyond the Assembly Line: Could Big Law Firms Defeat Al-Qaeda? [Law.com]


Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.