A Virginia couple that gave birth to the billable hour
First, I agree with the other posters who suggest that this article might have flaws with it.  It very well might.<p>But, those aside, let&#x27;s at the view from 10,000 feet.  Let&#x27;s look at things from the perspective of pure capitalism...<p>Buyers of legal&#x2F;law&#x2F;lawyer&#x2F;law firm services, specifically the largest buyers (large corporations), typically are run by CEO&#x27;s who have relatively little knowledge of Law.  Oh sure, they might be advised by a Chief Legal Officer &#x2F; General Counsel, but then the question is, why are they outsourcing their &quot;home-team&quot; legal capabilities to large law firms for certain cases?<p>Well, let&#x27;s suppose a corporation was sued for millions, heck, <i>billions</i> of dollars (you remember Carl Sagan, right?  &quot;Billions and billions...&quot;?  Well, it&#x27;s like that, but not with stars in the galaxy, but with dollars in a lawsuit, directed against your company! &lt;g&gt;)<p>Here&#x27;s a good example, &quot;Google v. Oracle America&quot;:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Google_v._Oracle_America" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Google_v._Oracle_America</a><p>&gt;&quot;Google v. Oracle America (previously named Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc. in lower courts) is a current legal case within the United States related to the nature of computer code and copyright law. The dispute centers on the use of parts of the Java programming language&#x27;s application programming interfaces (APIs), which are owned by Oracle (through subsidiary, Oracle America, Inc., originating from Sun Microsystems), within early versions of the Android operating system by Google. Google has admitted to using the APIs, and has since transitioned Android to a copyright-unburdened engine, but argues their original use of the APIs was within fair use.<p>Oracle initiated the suit arguing that the APIs were copyrightable, seeking US <i>$8.8 billion</i> in damages.&quot;<p>OK, so now let&#x27;s look at things from Google&#x27;s perspective:<p>From Google&#x27;s perspective, $8.8 billion (not million, <i>8.8 billion</i>) dollars is on the line.<p>Is that something that should be kept with Google&#x27;s home-team legal department, or outsourced?<p>Think of this like a giant poker game.<p>That is, <i>it might be worth many millions</i> (in outsourced legal fees, etc.), <i>if the possibility for loss prevention is in the billions</i>.<p>Hey, you&#x27;d spend a few million dollars of your own money, if it could prevent you from losing $8.8 billion of your own money, wouldn&#x27;t you?<p>I would.<p>And I don&#x27;t know anyone else that wouldn&#x27;t.<p>So now enter the &quot;Big Legal&quot; law firm.<p>Big Legal (their sales pitch): &quot;We&#x27;re the top legal firm, we&#x27;ve served the following list of corporate clients (insert impressive-sounding list of corporate clients here), and we have tons of the brightest legal minds, recent graduates of the nation&#x27;s top ivy-league law schools that we poached from other law firms and academia, etc., etc.&quot;<p>Well, from the perspective of the company getting sued, for billions, <i>what&#x27;s not to love</i>?<p>It sounds great, it sounds like the solution!<p>It sounds like the best defense possible!<p>With a company like that on your company&#x27;s side, there&#x27;s no way your company could lose!  So how much is all of that going to cost?<p>Big Legal: &quot;Well that&#x27;s the best part of everything!  We&#x27;ll simply let you rent X of our brightest legal minds for Y dollars per hour (billable hours!), where we will take Z% as a percentage (a large percentage!) for the privilege of your company having used (what amounts to!) our <i>legal match-making service</i>!<p>You know, it&#x27;s like Fiddler on the Roof: <i>&quot;Match maker, match maker, make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch!&quot;</i>.<p>It&#x27;s like that, except that the Big Legal law firm acts as a matchmaker between the large corporation who is getting sued, with a lot at stake, and the legal minds (AKA recent graduates) that they have poached from some of our nation&#x27;s top ivy-league law schools...<p>Then the partners at the Big Legal law firm -- collect the profits on their matchmaking activities; the difference between the hour billed to the corporation in legal trouble, and the (much lower!) per hour rate they pay their recently-poached legal minds.<p>And thus, the &quot;billable hour&quot; was created -- <i>as yet another form of trickle-down &quot;Voodoo&quot; economics.</i> &lt;g&gt;<p>&gt;&quot;Hourly billing also pleased clients, who received a clearer look into the services provided them, though it did not take long for the lawyer’s time sheet to go from a record-keeping tool to a record-breaking profit generator. This was accomplished in large part on the back of associates’ labor — billed out to clients at two to five times their own compensation rate, which meant that hiring legions of young lawyers became, as one big-firm managing partner once admitted, “like owning a printing press.”&quot;<p>Yes, being a partner at a Big Legal &#x2F; Big Law law firm is <i>great work -- if you can get it!</i> &lt;g&gt;<p>(Fun Fact: In Greece, in Athens, a long time ago, while it was permitted for friends to argue and help argue cases for other friends -- it was against the law &#x2F; prohibited -- for someone to earn their living as a professional Lawyer&#x2F;Attorney&#x2F;Bar Association Member.)<p>(Additional Fun Fact: Getting sued, from a pure economic perspective, comprises <i>negative value</i>.<p>That is, much like garbage, there&#x27;s economic value in getting rid of the thing, but nothing of positive economic value is produced, no goods are produced, nothing positive happens to the economy, yet (paradoxically) <i>the transaction is worth money</i>...)