Chicago Bar Foundation Seeks to Re-engineer the Law Firm Business Model
Friday, January 31, 2014

Taking a page from Silicon Valley startups, the Chicago Bar Foundation is seeking to re-engineer the law firm business model through a venture called the Justice Entrepreneurs Project, a legal business incubator for young attorneys looking to start their own firms.

According to a recent Businessweek profile of the project, the foundation is seeking to address two major problems plaguing the U.S. legal services market:  an oversupply of attorneys and an undersupply of clients that can afford the current going rate for basic legal services.

The foundation, which is the charitable arm of The Chicago Bar Association, leased a warehouse in the Chicago Loop and started recruiting young lawyers to join the 18-month program last summer.  They started with 10 attorneys for the first six months, and rotate in 10 new recruits every six months.  The first six months are spent doing pro bono work with local legal aid groups while the participants work on setting up their own firms.   Each lawyer in the program gets a $1,000 monthly stipend, which the foundation said is usually covered by his or her respective law schools.

One recruit, Nora Endzel, joined the project fresh out of DePaul University School of Law.  She reported that she has 10 paying clients and has covered her bills since October.  She found that one of the biggest challenges was figuring out what to charge, balancing being able to make a living and being affordable to middle class and other clients of more modest means for her family law practice.

Endzel settled on a flat fee structure, charging between $250 and $1,500 depending on the complexity of each case.  She told Businessweek that her clients are people who work full time and “just can’t afford the uncertainty of $400 an hour forever to solve some sort of legal challenge.”

The project shows young lawyers how they can operate their firms more efficiently by sharing office space, using technology and instituting new billing structures.  Bob Glaves, Chicago Bar Foundation executive director, says that he hopes the fledgling project teaches new lawyers how to think like entrepreneurs: ““They’ve learned a lot about the law in law school but not necessarily about how to run a practice or how to run a business.”

Amen to that – and two thumbs up to the Chicago Bar Association for their innovative approach.

 

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