Three approaches to legal work
Graeme Johnston / 28 August 2023 Two established ways to approach legal work are: 1) Focus on substance: concepts, words, evidence, stories, negotiations, documents, solutions. That’s where the magic is. ‘Process’ is mainly about finding time to focus on them. It takes as long as it takes. Ideally you’ll manage to find ways to limit […]
The sacred and the mundane
Graeme Johnston / 10 August 2023 A conversation I’ve been having for many years now, but which always comes back, is the distinction in legal work between The complicated and the complex The standard and the bespoke The template and the matter The planned and the reactive The commodity and the unique The routine and […]
Minimum viable process in English and Scottish litigation
Graeme Johnston / 31 July 2023 [T]he key problems facing civil justice today are cost, delay and complexity, these three are interrelated and stem from the uncontrolled nature of the litigation process. Lord Woolf (English judge), Access to Justice: Interim Report (1995) (England and Wales) Litigants do not care all that much about stones being […]
A simple taxonomy of legal fee types
Graeme Johnston / 20 July 2023* * Updated on 24 July 2023 to deal with paras 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 in a different way and to split out some content into para 4.2 This article proposes a draft simple, practical, neutral taxonomy for fee structures used in legal work. ‘Draft’: it’s work in progress and […]
Different dreams: a US survey on business law services
Graeme Johnston / 18 July 2023 In my article a couple of days ago, I mentioned a 2022 survey of US law firms and corporates by the Blickstein group. I think the contents are sufficiently interesting to warrant a further article. I won’t go through the whole thing, but will simply highlight the things that […]
Legal work: times never a-Changin’?
Graeme Johnston / 16 July 2023 Olas de gordo aceite son mis días:pasan tan lentamente que no pasan.Los hombres a mi lado miran, pasan,lentos también como mis lentos días. El futuro está ahí, lleno de días,pero es un duro charco: por él pasanlentas sombras de sueños cuando pasan…Nocturnos cielos cúbrenme los días. Aprendí, me enseñaron […]
A fourth pillar for legal work: process and pricing
Graeme Johnston / 10 July 2023 The argument of this article is that people doing legal work typically utilise three highly-developed technology pillars but that a fourth needs more attention if real progress is to be made with the crucial challenges of improving both quality and pricing. I freely admit that this is not […]
Making legal simpler, without being simplistic
Graeme Johnston / 26 May 2023 Reading Colin Burrow’s new review (“Algorithmic Fanboy”) of Lorraine Dalston’s recent book (“Rules: a short history of what we live by”), I’m drawn back into a topic of central fascination for me over the last thirty years. How, in short, can we make requirements and expectations accessible and meaningful, […]
Unintended consequences: a short introduction to the work of Reg Smith on legal process and cost
Graeme Johnston / 13 April 2023 This is just a short piece to introduce the work of Reginald Heber Smith (Reg Smith) who lived from 1889 to 1966, and whose impact on legal work is not as widely known as I think it should be. He studied law in the years 1910-1914. After that, he […]
Tomorrow, and tomorrow (#5 of 5)
Graeme Johnston / 10 March 2023 The cartoon is English and almost two hundred years old. It dates from just before the start of several decades of radical changes in English law and court procedure. The artist dreams of sweeping away, among other things, the incomprehensible ‘Special Pleaders & their wigs also’ together with ‘Delays […]