Law is changing, even in Taunton

Patrick is a solicitor with a small team in Taunton. I guess I’ve known him for over 30 years since I met him when I lived in Bath and worked for the BBC in Bristol. I directed the local news program “Points West” which often took me down to cover stories in his neck of Somerset.

“Taunton has a thousand-year history,” he told me recently when we had one of our Zoom catchups. “And I’ve been around for most of it. I’m as much of a fixture as the old Tudor buildings in Fore Street.”

As far as I can make out from the clues he’s dropped over the years I reckon he’s about 85. He’s still active in his practice and in various local charities. He sits on the board of several Taunton-based companies and is a regular at the Ale House, which he calls his “second office.”

His father ran the firm and his grandfather founded it.

Attitudes

“I’ve always been in law and I’ve always been in Taunton,” he continued. He’s been practicing since the late 1950s. “It was different then. Law was different. It was a profession, not a business.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, that was before the large firms started dominating everything. They’re like black holes drawing everything into them—money, talent, the larger clients.”

“Isn’t that like any business?”

“That’s my point, Bob.” He paused for a second. “Like any business.”

“Isn’t that just because they’re in London where they have huge rents to pay and expensive people to pay?”

“Yes, but the attitude is starting to become pervasive here, too. A number of pretty big firms have set up in Taunton and one or two local firms have grown to about 300 people. You have to turn over a lot of money and reel in a lot of work to cover that. You don’t have time for people.”

Constant pressure

Most of my and my firm’s consulting work is for the bigger players in the market although we have a number of mid-size clients, just the kind Patrick was talking about. The constant unremitting competition, the struggle for market share and the annual rise in partner revenue targets has led to huge increases in stress, mental and physical illness and, as a report by the International Bar Association found, a pervasive climate of bullying and harassment in many firms.

Recent studies show the dehumanization of the profession increases the rate of burnout, while the burnout rate among lawyers is around 30-40 per cent.

“I’m sick of AI and I don’t want to talk to bloody computers!” Patrick spurted. “Conveyancing is blockchain, communication is email and you can download your contracts for most things from Google.” He took a long swallow of his coffee. “There are law firms with no lawyers,” he said with a tone of disgust.

I know people who run some of those firms in rural and urban Australia where many of our clients are based—young people with law degrees and powerful computer skills originally catering to the 75% of people who previously never used legal services because they couldn’t afford them. More recently even mid-sized businesses are using their services for routine work.