Abstract

The aim of this Article is to map out a possible future for corporate legal services. This future appears to be emerging, but is still nascent. The future described in this Article need not be our future. Social change is not deterministic. This Article is not an argument for this future; indeed, it is an argument against it. I do not explore the positive gains, especially economic ones, made possible by this imagined future. My concerns are the impediments this future presents to legal professionalism and its regulation. This Article aims to be hypothesis generating, not hypothesis validating. If it succeeds, it will stimulate further work to explore the issues that this possible future raises.

"We're All Consultants Now" means that corporate legal services are changing because corporate clients are organized to use lawyers as they use any consultant. Lawyers may continue to supply specialized technical services, but that work will be integrated into the company's decision-making as a consulting service. To the company, the legal department becomes just one internal consulting group among others and outside law firms become just one type of professional service firm. "We're All Consultants Now" also means that legal departments and law firms are re-organizing themselves to supply what corporations seek from consultants. For the largest law departments and firms, this means imitating the consulting divisions that have been attached to the large accounting firms. Smaller law departments and firms will organize themselves on the model of other consulting firms.

To explain why "We're All Consultants Now," Part II analyzes four current organizational strategies: downsizing, outsourcing, self-managing teams, and porous borders. Part III, using M&A practice as an example, describes how companies redesigned by these organizational strategies use lawyers as consultants. Part IV(A) discusses how legal departments are re-organizing to serve company teams and how outsourcing leads to legal departments losing their role as gatekeepers of outside legal services. Part IV(B) examines how inside and outside counsel relations are developing by a "partnering" model as companies re-organize to have porous borders and utilize outsourcing strategies. Part V(C) discusses how corporate law firms are re-organizing themselves to serve company teams, creating "The Age of the Minders," and responding to outsourcing by selling both services and products. This Article concludes with questions for future research.

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