"Seize the Future" Comments

"SEIZE THE FUTURE" COMMENTS

Author

Jim Thompson, President of the Maryland State Bar Association (MSBA). On November 5 and 6, 1999, Jim attended a very valuable conference in Phoenix, Arizona, entitled "Seize the Future." These are his notes from the conference plus some of his questions and observations. (Written in late 1999)

Jim Thompson
200-B Monroe Street
Rockville, Maryland 20850
Phone: (301) 762-5212
E-mail: jlthompson@mmcanby.com

Background

Along with the information given by the program speakers, we received books written by many of the speakers including Tom Peters book entitled, two books by Gary Hamel, one entitled Competing for the Future, and the other entitled Alliance Advantage, a book by Roberta Katz entitled Justice Matters, a video cassette by Lotus entitled Knowledge Management: Beyond the Hype, two additional cd's, one by Lotus and one by the AICPA

Speakers

Tom Peters, author of The Professional Service Firm and The Work Matters

Melinda Brown, Vice-President, General Counsel of Lotus Development Corporation, and two colleagues

John Landry, strategic technologist for IBM's Executive Management

Seth Earley, Michael Harnish and Carl Liggio

Mark Powers, managing partner of Atticus and Mark Maraia

Roberta Katz, former general counsel of Netscape Corporation and CEO of a Silicon Valley lobbying group

Barry C. Melancon, president and chief executive officer of the AICPA, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants

Comments By Tom Peters, author of The Professional Service Firm and The Work Matters

The conference started off with a bang. Our first speaker was Tom Peters. He is a very dynamic nationally known writer, speaker and business consultant. He wanted to acquaint us with the revolution which is taking place in the business community as a result of the internet. These are "bizarre times." Microsoft is worth more than GM, Ford, Boeing, Sears, Lockheed plus seven other Fortune 500 companies. What does this mean?

Once every 1,000 years we have a change such as what we are seeing now.
This is the age of talent. Incumbency and history are no longer that important. How does a company get talent?
90% of white collar jobs that we know today will be gone or unrecognizable within the next ten years. That giant sucking sound is the middlemen (e.g. distributors of products and information such as stockbrokers, insurance salesmen, car dealers, tax preparers and lawyers (???)) being sucked out of the global economy.
The problem is not how to get new innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out. This is especially difficult for successful people but necessary in the age of the internet. Incrementalism is our worst enemy. Generally, it is much easier to kill an organization than to change it. Many existing corporations such as Amway are in the process of creating internet companies to eliminate the parent company within 10 years. e.g. Quickstar. Does this mean that our bar associations and firms will be replaced by new competitors or entirely new types of organizations? Quite possibly.
Business' objective should not only be to be the best but to be considered the only ones who do what you do -- Jerry Garcia.
He believes that our businesses need a massive transfusion of talent and talent, he believes, is mostly to be found among non-conformist, dissenters and rebels -- not exclusively the top 10% of the Harvard class of 1999. Diversity is very important for creativity. Diversity deals with "stuff that does not fit comfortably together."
85% of what goes on within a business or profession is typically "bullshit."

Major Point
Welcome to a "do-it-yourself nation" -- "Self help is in." This is the age of the consumer. Retail and service organizations must totally revamp their thinking to be more consumer oriented. The internet allows the consumer to identify commodities and to order commodities and goods effortlessly 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Where does the internet rank in priority? According to Jack Welsh, CEO from GE, it priority rank is number one, two, three and four.

Major Issue
Five suggestions for law firms to consider:

Reorient your hiring for next year. Get freaks, non-conformists, young people, people who have a serious flaw (e.g. applicant who baked a one-ton cookie).
Systematically stamp out "mediocre successes." Work with your clients. Get to know what they want and how to address their needs specifically. He sees talent going to a small firm which is doing "cool stuff" rather than a 500-person law firm simply doing corporate paper shuffling. He sees healthcare, intellectual property and some other areas as being hot areas.
Make the internet your best friend and do it through independent staffing.
Spend more time hanging out with 18-year olds. In the internet age, students will become the teachers.
Lawyers can still do personal service law practice. Don't let the do-it-yourself books pollute your action. Become consultants and counselors - stop relying on producing product to make money! programs such as Quicken or other fill-in-the-blank services intimidate you or pollute your action.

Main Point
Multi-disciplinary practice (MDP). MDP is one of the only ways the legal profession can do anything in 1999 and beyond. Opposition to it is not an issue. Boundaries are vanishing everywhere. Our profession must be market driven. How we go about defining and utilizing multi-disciplinary practice is up to us as lawyers. He believes that we should have a very sparse payroll of employees. He wants infinite reach but few employees on the payroll. He believes that temporary employees or contract services will be important to our profession in the future but we will choose to network with other professionals to deliver a value added product.

He says, "It is fabulous to be a lawyer today because we will have to reinvent the rules of practice and lifestyle." Firms will lose more of their unique and energetic partners within the next five years than they have ever lost in the past unless changes are made, even so, we may lose them in any event. Get interesting people and train them up, he says. That means lawyers must seriously return to mentoring and training instead of their total focus on production of hours and product.

Other Observations
Action beats talk; people matter; customers are why we exist; vision and values are more important than policy manuals; keep the structure very simple and radically decentralized; natural entrepreneurial spirit, even in the biggest companies is key.

Since writing these thoughts in the prior paragraph, Tom Peters has reevaluated the situation and his current thinking is summarized in an outline that is attached to the course materials (also on the website).

Comments By Melinda Brown, Vice-President,
General Counsel of Lotus Development Corporation, and two colleagues.

Be aware that as you change the management structure of your firm, the management structure of your major clients may be changing as well.

Surviving the technology revolution requires adaptability. That is the key. Competition is speeding toward hyper-competition and only the adaptable will survive. How well are we lawyers dealing with this competition and creating new ways of becoming very, very market driven.

What are you trying to preserve in your organization, your livelihood, your firm and your pride? Preservation is a difficult process in the internet age.

What is your mission? Service to whom -- corporate client, consumer, other? How do you evaluate the growth in future markets and how does that affect your mission?

Which law firms survive? Those that face up to the competition; improve client communication (explain the problem and demystify the law) and develop strategies for charging other than by the hour.

The new client relationship requires us to focus on the real problem -- it may be other than as stated.

Firms must leverage technology -- much more than just e-mail. Go beyond the internet to intellectual and knowledge sharing. Share or die.

Law firms need to alter their organization and create a paperless open file operation.

Are we as lawyers and law firms willing to reinvent ourselves as a profession within the next 10 years to be relevant to the questions in the community? We need to be willing to risk "noble fiascoes" and "glorious defeats."

Multi-disciplinary practice is really a third-tier issue. Essentially, that issue is all done and over with. If the horse we are riding dies we should dismount not simply change riders or change ways to ride or to ask if the horse is really dead or to increase our standards for riding or to harness lots of dead horses together. Is the bar a "dead horse" in this context?

The customer is now in control of the attorney-client relationship -- we as lawyers must understand this. Consider the issues raised in the article "Creating a Client-Driven Firm" on the Seize the Future web-site.

Talent is "in" and we must figure out how we can become the talent our firms would wish to hire. Consider the "brand you" described by Tom Peters. "You" the individual will become a recognized asset, a brand name that clients will wish to retain.

Try to make the client's experience with the firm exciting, interesting and pleasurable.

What is the extra benefit that lawyers can add to the process? What is the value added that lawyers add to the documents which can pulled off the internet? We need more emphasis on solutions and decision making. Lawyers must be problem solvers and facilitators - not barriers or problem creators.

Comments By John Landry, strategic technologist for IBM's Executive Management.
He is also Chairman of Narrative Communications and the Chief Technology Officer at Lotus Development Corporation.

John describes "e-business." This is a global digital marketplace. The players in this marketplace, the "pure plays," are the "fruitflies," and the incumbents (the existing businesses) are nervous.

He uses the terms "commoditization" and "disintermediation." These are forces which shape business in the internet. Business forces try to define your product or service as a "commodity" which consumers can describe and purchase over the internet. We need to assess the law practices vulnerability and outsourcing and see what portions of it can be turned into a commodity (e.g. wills, etc.).

Consumers are driving technology and innovation. PC's are now selling for $399.00 and the penetration rates in the United States will be up to 60% by Christmas 1999. Many people in the audience have two PC's in their homes. The internet can be surfed by Web TV (with personalized ads and point of sale directly on the television), palm 6 or 7, wireless phones, cell phones (Nokia) -- all allow access to the net.

E-business versus existing business. New entrepreneurs and "heat seekers" build new e-businesses. Legacy companies (incumbents) are reluctant to compete on the net and chaos reigns. Prices fall and power shifts to e-business. Consider a case in point with the stock market brokerage business. Note "it's the system, stupid" -- it's simple, quick and reliable. Here's how it happened. Systems guys got a couple of people in the stock brokerage business to explain the fundamentals and the rest is history. E-trade came on the scene. It had performance availability, security, efficiency and style. The e-businesses created new systems that are constantly evolving and changing. The process was repeated with cars and real estate. Consider America On Line (AOL), and Yahoo (the Yahoo Store).

The net. Players have come on line which instantly provide the consumer with a comparison of prices for commodities. The cost of the search to consumers is key to net success and that cost is zero. Consider, buycomp.com. It shows you the lowest prices on the web. Other companies/incumbents are going out of business. Real companies can't compete. Several net companies will sell office supplies at zero profit if you accept their advertising. A seller driven model such as this can drive profits to zero. Existing and incumbent companies must change or be eliminated. More and more incumbents are creating e-companies independent of themselves that are designed to eliminate the incumbent companies (which created them) in 10 years. Consider Bank One and Wing Span or Amway and its e-trade company, Quickstar.

Consider buyer driven models as distinguished from seller driven models referenced above. Buyers can tap into or create a reverse auction market place. This applies to insurance, finance, telephone company services, cars, etc. A click of the mouse permits comparison shopping in all of these areas and the consumer can select the lowest price or, he/she can create a buyer's auction which posts the specifications that he or she wants and allows the sellers to meet his specifications and price. This has become a grave concern to the automobile industry where consumers can go directly to the manufacturers and eliminate the middlemen, the dealers. Detroit is trying to go direct. In these competitions, prices drop. Consider priceline.com. The consumer can bid for a ticket to a destination of his or her choosing.

Main Point
The internet is taking products and services, commoditizing them, and then causing disintermediation where the product is driven to a point of zero profit. The two issues which cause this to happen are the ability of the consumer to make the product or service into a commodity which the consumer can configure or describe, and second, having a reliable and secure distribution channel for product. My special note: We as lawyers must prevent the practice of law from being commoditized. We need to make it more personalized (less describable as a commodity) and have service/value components added to it to keep it from being disintermediated. We need to "e-bundle" our services by providing a wide-range of problem solutions, specialties and counseling. Amazon.com now covers books but has value-added features, cross-selling and other features which keep buyers coming. We as lawyers need to consider doing that with our own practices, especially in the areas most easily targeted -- wills and trusts, leases and standard documents.

Comments By Seth Earley, Michael Harnish and Carl Liggio.

In confronting this situation and the revolution with technology, we as lawyers should not focus on obstacles. Rather, focus on the value you create. Consider what it is like to compete against others who do have internet applications.

Customers are not interested in the billable hour, they are interested in results. They are beginning to dictate standards for law firms to meet.

There are a number of barriers to change. Attorneys are resistant to change and don't like to take time from billable work. We have lots of disparate and outdated technologies and technology players are constantly changing. Think of the internet as the "forklift" for white collar workers.

Main Point
Lawyers need to imbed their work product and concepts into their clients' needs and the clients' software and document systems. We should evaluate our own internal processes to see what our internet capabilities are. Then we should look at what repetitive work we get from clients and how we could improve that work by having them directly access our internet site and vice versa. Michael Harnish did this for Dickinson Wright PLLC, the law firm that does all of the financial work for Chrysler and for Kmart. They did application software (Lotus Notes) which was simple and allowed the clients to answer a few questions at various data sites throughout the United States and then they plugged that data directly into the internet applications. This had the effect of causing Chrysler to use this law firm for all of its financial work nationwide and it also protected the firm from having the partner who created the relationship take the client when he or she left the firm. Now the firm and Chrysler are bound to one another by a system. Note: We need to evaluate a national practice for niche areas of law and how to address state by state licensure requirements. We need to tap into and exploit the knowledge of clients at all levels. We need to invent new ways of doing business that will tie clients and counsel together, that will save the client money, and that will provide a better product, while at the same time increasing our volume of business. We should create "anytime-anywhere" work environments and fully use the web internal and external systems seamlessly.

The law firm of 2005 will look somewhat different. The structure and makeup of staff will be different. Voice recognition will change the role of secretaries and clerical staff. Technical skills will change, training of law students will change and there will no longer be any libraries. There will be no walls, laptop access files through cellular (non-wired technologies) e.g. each lawyer will have a laptop computer. There will be minimum file rooms and few if any secretaries. The only constant is change. The barriers between firms and the size of firms will become somewhat irrelevant. Technology and the internet will allow small firms to compete for legal work on a global basis. Note: If firms will changes like this, how will Bar Associations need to change to meet their needs?

We must improve our client focus. The American Corporation Counsel Association (ACCA) was created in 1982. The corporations are defining needs and services. Law is a knowledge based profession. Information is available to everyone with or without Lexis, Nexis or Westlaw. Clients want from lawyers benchmarking, quality, control, lessons learned, values added and best practices. Globalization will occur. We need to be client-centric/client focused.

Lotus Notes has 42,000,000 seats worldwide and growing daily. Our speaker believes that this is one of the single most dynamic products available for lawyers. Almost every major corporation in the United States today uses this system.

C-Changes (Culture Shift Changes) which we will see. Far-reaching organizational changes and organizational innovation plus inter-organizational networking. Knowledge workers. There will be greater demand on management skills and different skill sets. We as law firms need to enlist creative thinkers and allow these people more opportunity to run things.

If lawyers do not hear the wake up call, business will walk right around the legal profession. Further, when the client pays you one dollar, you must maximize what that dollar buys. How do you leverage your service to the client?

We need a team approach. Use technology and Lotus Notes since this allows us access to the same data set for each member of the team.

How do we become proactive with our services to our clients? e. g. help the client clean up the e-mail sites from discovery litigation -- a service done prior to the litigation being instituted.

If we only do legal services in a narrow market, that's not good enough. We need to become integrated with our clients and provide value added services and we need to define what our practice will be and not allow others to do so.

Mike Harnish says lawyers must inject themselves in several ways into the value chain, what he calls "reintermediation." This develops more business, creates a legacy and keeps business for the firm even after the originating partner walks out and leaves the firm.

Gary Hamel is a research fellow at the Harvard Business School and at Stanford as well. He is also Chairman of Strategos, a company dedicated to helping clients emerge in the new technology. He is one of the world's great strategy gurus and he has written several best-selling books.

Change in this age of the internet is exponential. The opportunity is there and then it is gone.

Heritage is no longer destiny.

A new industrial order is taking shape all around us. Never before has incumbency meant less. All corporations are struggling to survive. Never has it been a better time to be a newcomer since all the old barriers are being swept away by the net, including capitalization, size, investors, etc.

The battle today is for "talent." The process. The bright unconventional young leaders first take their talent elsewhere then develop an e-business, then the e-business takes assets from the incumbent businesses, then eventually it takes the business altogether. Consider how e-Bay took over Butterfields, a major auction house.

The newcomers are aggressive. They live on a precipice and failure is only two years away.

The incumbents or existing businesses tell themselves little lies. For example, "Insurance is very complex. I think people will always need agents." The net has proved that wrong and the incumbents will gradually lose their business. Consider Deja.com - here you can get a rate on any product or service. It is a consumer-to-consumer chat room. Also see "word of mouse."

Consumer control is the theme of the new age. This applies to lawyers. No longer are there stupid customers or local monopolies that will allow yesterday's firms to dominate.

Main Point
In order for service firms like lawyers to compete, we need a relationship with the client and innovation. That wins. In perfect competition, no one makes any profit. What does this lead to? First those new competitors will take our clients, then our talent and finally our assets.

Effective sellers are selling solutions. Consumers want to buy a result. Apply this to the legal field. Question: A consumer wants a divorce, a will -- can these services be commoditized and sold on the net?

We need to look at our situation with a new level of honesty. If we look at events through the legacy we already have, then we tend to be protective and that is dangerous. Protective barriers cannot be erected and are not effective in the new age of the internet. Even state borders and local regulatory environments are becoming irrelevant. E-business will walk around them. Note: Watch the accountants.

Because of the urge to be protective, the incumbents (the existing businesses) will almost always lose. The newcomers (the pure play techies) will win by changing the rules, not necessarily executing better.

Who is driving the transformation agenda in law? Our firm, our bar, the CPA's, who? Note: This is an area the MSBA must carefully consider. See what the AICPA's have done infra.

We need to ask first principles and get over denial. We need to change our deepest philosophical beliefs. New wealth is being created by new radical ideas, e.g. the banks mergers do nothing since savings is not something which the consumers now buy. Mutual funds (investment) is the winner in that race.

Profitability does not correlate with size. The mega mergers are a big mistake.

Main Issue
How can we reduce the cost of getting access to the law?

The doctors made a fundamental error. They allowed the payers/insurance companies to get in the driver's seat and to move the medical profession into the future to drive the transformation agenda. Now the insurance companies are setting up the system with capitation risks and health care rationing all to the detriment of the doctors. They are in the driver's seat and the doctors simply dance to their tune. Lawyers cannot allow this to happen. We need to come up with a pro-consumer agenda and get in front of the change curve.

Main Issue
How should the practice of law change to take advantage of the rapidly changing world -- major item?

We need a "point of view." Some consensus.

We need to separate form from function. We lawyers trap ourselves inside of form and that is a mistake.

We need to build foresight.

Here are some suggestions for us to evaluate:

Listen to revolutionaries, not the elite. We need the voices of young people. People outside the profession, newcomers. We need to develop a hierarchy of imagination. Note: The MSBA needs to invite young people, diverse people, people under 30 to be involved in the retreat.
We need to challenge orthodoxies. For example, a legal orthodoxy is hourly billing. If we look at the top ten commonly held legal-business oriented beliefs, at least five of them are toxic to the legal profession's future. What business are we in? How do we measure success? Who are our customers? We should sort this out. Main Issue: What is the size of the underserved population for legal needs?
We should exploit discontinuities. To do this, we need to observe what is changing and how to exploit it. We should visit the fringe. Dr. Hamel takes insurance company executives out to visit crystal healers. The future is never changed by people on the inside. Note: We as lawyers need to get people who are not lawyers involved in our planning and evaluation processes including our retreat. We should look for change differentials (things changing at slow speed versus fast speed.) There is opportunity here. Then we should follow the chain of consequences and keep asking, "so what," at the end of each causative link until a conclusion is reached. We should look for transcendent themes. Note: The computer age may very well lead to isolation of people in the system. That's a possible theme -- how do we solve it?
We need to be more consumer oriented. New programs are markets and markets are being built permitting the consumer to be the architect and to choose commodities and services on the net. Consider the Barbie Doll or building your own computer by Dell, or the web van permitting grocery shopping on the internet. The lesson: Consumers are saying, my place, my time, and my space. Sites like Valuestar.com, provide the consumer with objective data (a consumer satisfaction rating system). It lists insurance products, costs and valuation criteria for different products in an objective manner. This is dynamite for consumers and permits them to bypass insurance agents. Could this happen to the legal profession? Consider deja.com. They tend to rate products and services in a consumer chat environment.
We need to unleash our core competencies. As a part of this, we need some attestation concerning value. Consider the Nielson ratings, J.D. Powers for other accreditation events. What about Martindale Hubbel ratings? We must consider not what we do, but what we know. We must consider blending several ideas with our competencies, e.g. the "swatch" where the innovator blended the technical precision of a Swiss watch with a Lego plastic configuration and hit a homerun.
We need to work from the customer backwards. The customer should feel at ease, empowered, valued, respected, amused, informed, trusted, confident and involved. We should avoid the opposite where the customer is bored, confused, impatient, belittled, misinformed, mistrusted, ignored, helpless or alone. One of the keys for the legal profession is to consider how our clients or customers feel and avoid the negative implications and move them into the positive categories. We, in a sense, should walk through the process that a client goes through and see where it has its weaknesses.
We should find a "cause." When you meet your maker, you want to be able to say that you did something more than get a 20% return on equity. Consider the Charles Schwab example. He was motivated by what he felt customers wanted -- what is "best for the customer." He felt if fees were cut by 60% this would be significant. After he made that decision, then he figured out he could live with the 40% fees that were left. How he had to change his work environment and process to make this work was the key to Schwab's success. Note: Could lawyers do this?
We need to experiment. We as lawyers should pick out two or three vectors in the legal field. Do a broad base blueprint of how we want to change, then experiment. We need a process, a synthesis and a point of view. We should imagine, design , experiment, assess and scale as we go along. Then we must implement. Consider the use of coaches in that process.

Comments By Mark Powers, managing partner of Atticus, and Mark Maraia
How can the legal profession use coaches to sustain the change process?

A career coach can boost your profits and improve your lifestyle. Professional coaching has been a staple of corporate America for nearly a decade. Only recently have lawyers begun to see its value for themselves. Most attorneys do not have good basic habits or skills and do not have a mission statement for their personal and professional lives. Coaching helps lawyers define and achieve these goals by refining their basic life and business skills. The regular coach can work one-on-one with the attorneys to help the attorney meet these goals and to stay on target. Coaches are different from consultants or therapists. Instead of giving advice or exploring a person's past, they make clients focus on the process rather than the outcome. This usually involves long-term relationship where a client is constantly prodded by the coach. Coaches can help lawyers get their life and career goals in alignment and take their practice to a higher level.

Most lawyers go to seminars such as this one and develop a lot of good ideas and then go home and put them on the shelf and ignore the implementation. Left to our own devices, lawyers will just go back to the practice of law. Coaches help you keep focused on what you say you want.

Learning steps include preparation, execution and debriefing. This is important for associates as well as partners. Technique and psychology are also important. When you want somebody to read something, give him or her the document and ask for their opinion. Don't say, "You need to read this, read it."

In marketing, you need to conceive what outcome you want when you take a prospect out for lunch, not just a random lunch with a potential client.

It is better to move in the wrong direction then not to move at all -- e.g. it's like tacking a sailboat. You can't tack if you have no movement at all.

Many lawyers speak to groups. Speaking is one-third to one-half of the work, the preparation and groundwork you lay before the event and the follow up after the event is the rest of the work. Note: This is something that we often forget.

The number of licensed lawyers is growing dramatically. By the year 2000 we will have one attorney for every 340 Americans (men, women and children). Law schools and new jobs are at odds with each other. 36,000 law school graduates are turned out annually and many of the firms are not hiring.

Barriers to professional fulfillment include lack of balance at home, work and in community service. Increasing pressures for greater productivity; and a growing sense of isolation and alienation regardless of the nature of the workplace.

Barriers to professional fulfillment include lack of effective training and mentoring for attorneys; lack of training on how to manage the practice of law. Note: Can bar associations provide service here?

National trends indicate that lawyers are more stressed; working more hours; professionally unfulfilled; incomes flat or decreasing; and the attorneys feel out of balance. This is a very fertile area for coaching. Coaches have worked with the Florida Bar Association, the Massachusetts Bar Association as well as Attorneys Title Insurance Fund plus numerous individual attorneys.

The elements of coaching include one-on-one relationship; regular follow up; accountability; skill assessment and development; direction and problem solving; and motivation and enthusiasm.

The criteria for profitable practice and a balanced life include: first you must have a life; good time management habits, ability to attract clients predictably; a championship staff and financial control systems which are simple and focused on profitability.

Getting focused on what's important would include a personal mission statement; ten-year, five-year and one-year goals; and a practice mission statement. Note: This sounds like a great idea for the new year -- the new millennium.

Lawyers should become more selective with their clients. To do so, they should list their clients, rate their clients (a, b, c or d); note who are the time and money bandits and then say no to them (e.g., the c and d clients).

Law firm profitability should be evaluated and it should include increasing profits per file; financial dashboard reports (like dashboard on your car, e.g. gas full/empty, etc.); effective billing system and eliminating collections.

What does coaching cost? A coach can cost anywhere from $100 to $200 per hour depending upon experience and credibility. You will pay $400 to a $1000 per month for a decent coach.

Comments By Roberta Katz, former general counsel of Netscape Corporation and CEO of a Silicon Valley lobbying group

The legal system must adapt to the information age and the needs of our society.

The current legal system was based upon the practice of law in England during the Industrial Revolution and is structured on that society's model. The Industrial Revolution and society as a whole had certain expectations and beliefs and certain systems in place that made that system fit. Those systems are no longer in place or particularly relevant to the information age. Society is different and we, as people, live in totally different communities with different family, church, work, and environmental expectations.

There is too much information available today for the system. Excess information leads to a variety of problems including discovery abuse and confusion of the parties and triers of fact. We easily get buried in data.

Our legal system increasingly uses experts to explain cases to the fact finders, the judge or jury, on a regular and routine basis. Experts would not be as necessary, if the judge or jury and the litigants had the same shared values and same life experiences today, which used to exist in our society 50 years ago. Back then, we had a sense of neighborhood and certain common expectations of one another. Today, that no longer exists. Hence, in most cases we have a battle of experts and each side hires their own expert. Often, each expert has a certain bias built in.

The juries often don't fully understand the battle of the experts and they do the best they can, but judgments sometimes are made by default. We have jury consultants to help the litigants figure out how to select the juries that will be most sympathetic or most enamored with the point of view of the litigant. Then parties present their cases to play to that sympathy.

This current system, which is out of phase with the information age, does not lead to justice. As a result, many business and personal disputes are now leaving the justice system and going to alternative dispute resolution. As more and more cases leave the legal system, what happens to the common law? Today, there is a mismatch between the legal disputes and the tools we have to use to resolve them.

We need to have our courts and our juries more educated in connection with the various disputes which they consider. She recommends the "CORE" courts system (Commonality/Resolution System). This would involve a series of integrated courts according to subject matter (e.g., family court, securities court, intellectual property court, tax court, etc.) with both ADR and litigation functions. The judges would be knowledgeable in the law and the juries would be self selected for service based on their interest and experience in the subject matter of that court. She believes that we should modify the strict adversarial system of win versus lose and seek to create more of a win-win situation. This problem needs to be evaluated over time. Her solutions and suggestions are set forth in her book which, at this point, I have not read.

Comments By Barry C. Melancon, president and chief executive officer of the AICPA, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants

Mr. Melancon talked to us about how they are reinventing themselves as accountants and touched briefly on the multi-disciplinary practice issue for our benefit. The CPA's found that financial service groups were acquiring their firms. They were looking at low end and low value services in the audit and tax preparation area and they went to their grassroots membership with the professional consultants to help redefine their practice and reposition their profession. They spent $22,000,000 in this process. They decided that they would lead change rather than being changed by someone else as the doctors had done. They presented us with a very professional and well thought out program that drove their process. Note: Is the legal profession going to let the CPA's and/or the clients drive the transformation process? Probably unless enough lawyers say no and jump into the driver's seat.

CPA's are more market driven and not dependent on regulations. The future success of the profession relies on the public perception of the CPA's as providing value and having integrity. They place emphasis on competence and more value-added services for the consumer.

Their compass or the theme for their actions is "making sense of a changing and complex world." They push the idea that CPA's are trusted professionals who enable people and organizations to shape their future by designing pathways for their clients.

Globalization of the process. There are no boundaries and global networking is sensible for their profession.

They have an information pipeline which quantifies/qualifies work assignments as level one through level seven. Level one being simply filling in the blanks on a preprinted form, and level seven being world-class work by people who change the world. Their objective is to move up the value chain, moving from tax returns to value added services which go from the regulation based to market based assignments. They want to return to professional judgment and higher value services that communicate, translate and transform. See their vision on the net at www.cpavision.org. Also see the CD-ROM which they provided entitled, The CPA Vision, which I have at MSBA Headquarters and also excerpts of the CPA Vision Project 2011, which will be attached and reprinted once permission is granted.

They wanted new internal regulation of CPA's, modernization, new more modern CPA exams. They set up an investment advisory services center, center for excellence with financial management and international alliances.

They have set up a brand image for radio and TV and spent $10,000,000 on image ads, many of which they showed to us as examples. Their hallmark effort is focused on the consumer.

Their challenge is not to see what no one has seen, but to think thoughts no one else has though of on things everyone sees. They want to design pathways to transform knowledge (data) to important value added decisions. Since many of these decisions are multi-disciplinary, they want to have these disciplines at their disposal.

Their consumer studies suggest that their thinking is right on target but that the CPA's must protect the integrity of their attest function. Even so, they must move away from number crunching and into value added services. They must "modernize" the regulatory process on a state by state basis in the United States. Their biggest hurdle was to fight their collective urge of CPA's to justify the status quo. They asked, "If we don't change now, then when?"

Their view of appropriate CPA regulation. Apply the regulation to the CPA's in the audit area, but, when CPA's and their "consultants" are working outside that area, then the CPA regulations should not apply.

Main Point and Challenges to the MSBA
The CPA's have done a very impressive job in recreating themselves and seizing the initiative for the future shape of their profession. We, as lawyers, have done nothing except complain about what the CPA's are doing. We have no vision statement, we have no mission (except to protect the status quo -- an impossible task in the information and technology age) and we have taken no bold step to deal creatively with the information and technology revolution. The organized bar, the ABA and the MSBA can and must do a better job than this. We, in the MSBA, must make this the focus of our retreat in March 2000 and start the process. The penalty for our failure to act will be what happened to the doctors. Another group will seize the future and we will be along for a bumpy ride as passengers in a vehicle driven by another professional group or business.