The "Why" of Litix

Something beautiful happened recently at the Litix Legal team meeting.  I asked everyone to answer a simple question:  Why are you here?  And although each team member's answer was unique, the core of each response was the same:  all of us are driven by a desire to improve how legal services are delivered. This alignment of purpose is rare in a company, and it absolutely confirms my belief that we are on to something special.

The idea itself isn't particularly revolutionary. Improving client experience, driving efficiencies, reducing costs, these are things that we take for granted in nearly every other industry because they are commonplace and frankly, necessary to remain competitive.

But the legal industry has remained mired in the past, and the consequences have been disastrous.

Since 1977:

• The cost of legal services has outpaced inflation by 4.5x

• The percentage of Americans who think lawyers are highly ethical and honest has dropped by half to a pathetic16%

• The number of hours that firms expect lawyers to bill each year has increased by as much as 40% with some rising to an insane 2200 billable hours per year 

• Career satisfaction dropped to an all-time low, while mental health issues and substance abuse problems rose nearly 4x higher than the general population

• The percentage of lower-income Americans who had adequate legal help dropped below 8%

This is incredibly sad, but what's even more tragic is that the root cause of this decay is blatantly obvious: the billable hour business model.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of lawyers out there doing hourly billing ethically and providing substantial value to their clients.  And for some types of cases, hourly billing is necessary due to their complexity, variability, and unpredictability.  But given the statistics above, it's clear that something must change, for clients, for lawyers, for society.  Although this beast is going to be difficult to kill, I'm confident the tools now exist to seriously wound it.  And if there's a way, we here at Litix Legal have the will.

In the next blog post, we'll talk more about the billable hour, why it persists, and why it simply must die.  Stay tuned for the revolution!