In Law Firms of Endearment, I wrote that “[f]or law firms, primary stakeholders are clients, benches, bars, clients, employees, suppliers, communities and partners.” A Law Firm of Endearment, however, “becomes a vehicle of service to every stakeholder group.”1 Clearly, the bench is a primary stakeholder for attorneys. This is easily discernable by considering what happens in litigation when a judge is not kept in the information loop about a case before him or her. The judge is a stakeholder because actions taken by the attorneys and their clients impact the judge. But are legislatures primary stakeholders in the legal industry?
Are Legislatures Stakeholders?
To clarify, an attorney could see his or her role in the legal industry as knowing what the law is and using that knowledge to best serve the client’s interest. Competent client representation does not require engaging legislators in any way. It is hard, however, to say that legislatures are not legal industry stakeholders, they make the law. When a law they have made adversely impacts a client, the law (the work of the legislature itself) can be challenged and changed or overturned judicially. Sometimes this results in a dance between the judiciary and the legislature as a new law is passed in response to judicial force on the law. Legislatures are stakeholders in the legal industry, but are they primary stakeholders in the context of Law Firms of Endearment?
Are Legislatures Primary Stakeholders?
When Sisodia, Sheth and Wolfe studied Firms of Endearment, they found that “84% of conference boards engage in social or citizenship initiatives to improve society, company tradition or personal values.[?. Firms. P. xxiii] This might not necessarily be initiatives that created law or promulgated rules, but citizenship initiatives engage the legislative or executive branches of government where those branches impact, or potentially impact, their customers or corporate mission.
So, for attorneys, legislatures are a primary stakeholder group because they literally create the world of attorneys and their clients, judges and bars.
What About The Executive Branch?
Likewise, the executive branch (agencies, enforcement officers, and such) in executing the law are primary stakeholders because they directly impact our clients’ activities. Sometimes, they directly impact the client’s activities as well. Consider, for example, the law firm that collects consumer debts. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has the power to curtail the business the law firm conducts in the future and heavily fine the law firm for business it has done in the past. It would be difficult to argue that such agencies are not primary stakeholders in the legal industry.
Legal Industry Primary Stakeholders
So, taking this more inclusive look at primary stakeholder in the legal industry, a lawyer and his or her firm or organization is a vehicle of service to these primary stakeholders:
Clients,
Benches,
Bars,
Clients,
Employees,
Suppliers,
Communities,
Partners,
Legislatures (Including municipal and town councils),
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
Is there such a thing as Law Firms of Endearment? The authors of Firm of Endearment define a firm of endearment as a firm that is reorganizing and optimizing in response to the new age we live in, the Age of Transcendence.1 An example of a non-legal Firm of Endearment would be Whole Foods.
Age of Transcendence
In essence, the Age of Transcendence emerged around 1990 as the adult majority started getting over 40 years old and the internet started making information readily accessible to the masses. With the shifting maturity of the population, views about business started shifting away from materialism and toward meaning. One manifestation of this shift is a consumer who is now motivated more by experience than materialism.2
Law Firms of Endearment
A Firm of Endearment “…strives through their words and deeds to endear themselves to all their primary stakeholders.”3 For law firms, primary stakeholders are clients, benches, bars, clients, employees, suppliers, communities, and partners. “By aligning the interests of all in such a way that no stakeholder group gains at the expense of other stakeholder groups … they all prosper together.”4
Do They Exist?
The answer is, we don’t know yet. Converging market trends seem to indicate that law firms of endearment must emerge for the legal profession, as we know it, to survive. Today, however, no qualitative or quantitative standards have been established to qualify law firms as law firms of endearment. Who will step up and establish these standards? Will it be regulatory agencies like state bars? Trade associations? A consortium of law firms and organizations? More importantly, what role will you play?
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
Shared office space, coworking, virtual office, whatever you want to call it, shared office space is the future. Even large traditional firms are sharing space with attorneys outside the firm walls with no guarantee that at least some legal work won’t happen at Starbucks or a Regus facility. With the growing acceptability of shared office space, what is the most effective way to use shared office space and how can you use shared space without getting sued, like I did.1
In case you’ve never been sued – it isn’t pleasant. I’d suggest avoiding it if you can. Even if you are a lawyer and know about the in-workings of lawsuits, it isn’t pleasant. First, there are the nasty things the lawsuit says about you. After all, the lawsuit has to allege something bad enough for you to be sued over. Then there is this, even when the lawyer that drafted the lawsuit is well-meaning and competent, lawsuits are filled with inaccuracies – inaccuracies that make you look, well, worse. And then, no matter how confident you are that you will win, there is some lost sleep.
Shared Office Space Cautionary Tale
Some other lawyers and I shared office space with the real target of the lawsuit (let’s call him “Chip”). Chip settled a six-figure case for one of his clients and pocketed the money. The claims against me were that I should have safeguarded Chip’s client’s money. Also, Chip’s client said that nobody ever told him that the firm had dissolved. Even more, he claimed that during the numerous phone calls that he made over several months I nor my secretary told him that the firm had dissolved. The implication was that somehow I knew about his lawyers’ theft and actively worked to conceal it.
Except for my getting sued part, this is a great cautionary tale for lawyers who shared office space. You can control what you tell your clients – but you have no idea what other lawyers are telling theirs.
Bad Facts
The underlying facts are bad. Chip did make a six-figure recovery for his client and Chip did pocket the money. I didn’t know that at the time, but the evidence that came out of the lawsuit made it clear. Several months before this lawsuit, the other lawyers in the shared space and I had dissolved our connection with Chip due to repeated claims that he was ambulance chasing. Each lawyer in the shared space had a direct dial phone number which they kept. Since Chip was the only one that did any paid advertising, we agreed for him to keep the main phone number as well.
After the dissolution, best as I can tell, Chip never paid another client any of the money he recovered on their behalf. He pocketed it all.
The lawsuit was dismissed against me (and all the other lawyers except Chip) because there was not an attorney-client relationship between Chip’s client and anyone else. As to the concealment, once Chip’s former client realized that the only numbers he had went to Chip’s office, that is, he never called my office once, he dismissed those claims as well. I understand that Chip’s client was ultimately able to recover from his malpractice insurance.
One Way To Not Get Sued
There are many rules about shared space with lawyers. There is, however, an additional safeguard that may save you from being sued by someone else’s client.
Require that all tenants in your office sharing arrangement have their clients sign an acknowledgment that there is not a lawyer-client relationship between any lawyer in the shared space and the client unless expressly agreed upon in writing that the lawyer signs.
Even better, require that the acknowledgment be a separate document from the retainer agreement.
Hopefully, this will help someone not be a party in a lawsuit. Even more so, hopefully, this or similar practices will reduce client confusion and improve how clients perceive law as a profession.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
