Biglaw

Lawyering Has Changed A Lot In The Past Decade

The legal profession has progressed far in the past 10 years, and this makes one circumspect about how the legal profession will change in the next decade.

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Recently, I was speaking to an attorney, who started practicing law this year, about my legal experiences and my career so far as a lawyer. I graduated law school in 2012, so I do not feel like an old timer by any stretch of the imagination, but I started telling this person about how things have changed in the legal profession even in my short time as a practicing attorney. The whole experience really made me feel like I was from a different generation from this person, which I hope at 33 isn’t true! In any case, I first started working as a summer associate at a Biglaw firm in 2011, so I only have firsthand knowledge of how lawyering has evolved over the past decade. However, the legal profession has progressed far in the past 10 years, and this makes one circumspect about how the legal profession will change in the next decade.

Perhaps the biggest change I have seen in the legal profession recently as a litigator is the widespread institution of electronic filing. When I first worked as a summer associate in 2011, only the federal courts in my area had mandatory e-filing for almost all litigation papers. New Jersey did not have e-filing for most cases, and New York also only had e-filing for some matters. In my early days as a practicing lawyer, much time and effort was spent printing and preparing documents for filing. At one of the firms at which I worked, someone would even come to our office every day around 3 p.m. to pick up items that needed to be filed. In addition, attorneys needed to be careful about recording when papers were received and needed to properly file papers so that they could be used and reviewed later.

Now, pretty much every court in which I practice has adopted e-filing systems, and dealing with COVID-19 has made e-filing more widely used in the legal profession. Unless judges require courtesy copies (which happens less and less), papers do not need to be carefully printed and prepared for submission to a court. Moreover, all of the parties are notified the instant papers are filed so there is little chance they will miss seeing documents. It is also far easier to find filed documents and use them for motions and other purposes. I remember earlier in my career, a litigant asked each of the codefendants in a case for copies of their answers so he could include this in his motion for summary judgment. This request would be unnecessary in the current environment because most papers can be accessed instantaneously and are available to all through e-filing.

Another huge shift in the legal profession is the movement toward unlimited use of legal research platforms. When I first started as a summer associate, individuals were either billed for the time they used on a legal research platform or for the searches they made on such platforms. This made legal research cost-prohibitive in certain instances, and a few of my earlier firms even had libraries so that attorneys could do book research and save money on expensive online legal research. Also, you had to be super careful and efficient in your research to avoid running up the bill on legal research platforms.

At some point in the past decade, legal research platforms switched to unlimited use from per minute or per transaction pay systems. This is kind of like when AOL stopped charging by how long you were on the system but on a monthly basis — but now I’m really aging myself! Now, legal research projects are rarely cost-prohibitive because people usually just pay one flat rate per month to use the resources, and attorneys do not need to worry about running up the cost. In addition, lawyers have a lot more freedom to search around and find the right authority for their issue. This change has also democratized the practice of law because law firms of all kinds can afford to have access to quality legal research.

Another major difference in the way that many firms operate is how they charge expenses to their clients. When I first started practicing law, we charged out clients for legal research, which was pretty standard. However, we also charged our clients 10 cent a page for copying, for telephone charges, and pretty much everything else under the sun. This made practicing law inefficient because every time I wanted to use the phone or copier, I had to enter the appropriate client code. Since this was often a long number, I usually had to drop what I was doing, access the code, and type in the code, all so the client could be charged pennies in some instances.

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Someone correct me if I am wrong, but there seems to be a movement away from charging for de minimis items in the current environment. Although some firms still charge by the page for copying, telephone expenses, and other costs, the later firms I worked at did not pass along small expenses to clients. This makes practicing law a lot more efficient, and clients probably appreciate that they are literally not being nickel and dimed by their attorneys.

Obviously, the practice of law has changed over a great period of time, but as I look back on my own experience, it’s wild to think how the practice of law has changed substantially in the past decade. Feel free to email me your own experiences about how lawyering has changed over the past 10 years, and it is crazy to think where the legal profession will be in the not-too-distant future.

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

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