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The legal market is being subjected to unprecedented levels of market disorientation.
In the UK, by way of example, it is now possible to have a listed law firm with the possibility that non-lawyer shareholders may dictate terms of business to lawyer-employees albeit indirectly. Firms with considerable history are merging with, or being absorbed into, one another such as the Allen & Overy / Shearman & Sterling merger.
Alternative service providers have entered the market with aggressive and transparent pricing as their chief selling proposition. Teams of lawyers are moving between firms as if they were an independent entity in their own right.
Clients cannot agree on what drives their decision to choose a particular law firm. For some it is price and accessibility; for some it is perceived prestige; for some it is the spirit of compromise as opposed to zealous representation; for some it is finding a lawyer who echoes their own views, whether right or wrong; for some it is neatness and organisation in the delivery of legal services; for some it is the quality of legal judgement and advice; for some it is aversion to change and preference for continuity of legal representation.
The picture that emerges is one other than a cohesive whole. This perhaps explains the sheer number of law firms to be found in each major legal market today – upon inspection, there is no one legal market and all these firms are not really competing with each other. Not that this is obvious from looking at law firm marketing literature or the legal press.
It has been some 25 years since the release of The Matrix. A film that had raised tantalising questions about our understanding of reality. Fate of mankind rested on effecting change in the real world as opposed to an imaginary one. A close parallel to the Matrix exists in the form of the Metaverse. The difference being that the latter was created voluntarily and for a more benign and mercantile purpose – that of popular entertainment.
Integration of machines in nearly all spheres of life continues unabated. Hollywood screenwriters have had to wage protests against the use of A.I. in the very city that is supposed to be a cradle for human creativity and passion. ChatGPT is substituting for the exercise of critical faculties and people are finding it increasingly difficult to tell apart truths from untruths, to make life decisions, or to vote in their enlightened self-interest. Virtual platforms with a dopamine-centric design (aliases, character limits, short form content) are changing the nature of public discourse into mutual hauling of fanciful assertions and insults between anonymous individuals not well acquainted with the subject matter. Virtual girlfriends as SaaS are courting customers who are in need of human interaction more than an affectation of human interaction.
Do these inventions advance human welfare such as reverse large scale environmental degradation, reconcile differences between groups of people, uphold the underlying architecture for the rule of law? Suggesting that a virtual world will do even as the real world disintegrates, or suggesting nonchalantly that humans will “live on” in the form of robot consciousness to the exclusion of human consciousness, represent the height of abstraction and irresponsibility.
From 2025, the UK government has decided to charge VAT (20%) on tuition fees for private schools causing pushback from interested parties. Not enough participants in this market are discussing whether education qualifies as a public good (for example, German or Scandinavian governments support this notion by guaranteeing secondary as well as tertiary education to their citizens at public expense). The more practical dimension of not leaving one’s children to their own devices in publicly funded schools predominates. This naturally leads to the next question – is private education in its current form worth its price tag?
Dissatisfaction with the education system (whether privately or publicly funded; whether secondary or tertiary) almost knows no bounds. Elon Musk has decided to set up his own school named Ad Astra (later re-named Astra Nova) for his children and those of SpaceX employees; offering an entirely personalised curriculum centred on creative problem solving as opposed to gaming of standardised tests and free from an age-based seniority system that mistakenly assumes all children develop at the same rate. Former Snapfish CEO Ben Nelson established Minerva University in America where undergraduates are assessed by means of group discussions and project work as opposed to formal examinations at the year end and where they experience communal living across major metropolises of the world – including San Francisco, Seoul, Berlin, and Buenos Aires. Mr. Cho Chang-Gul, founder of the Korean furniture manufacturer Hanssem, has established Taejae University which requires its students to study a multi-faceted educational curriculum (including having to learn foreign languages and programming languages as well as critical thinking, character building and “global harmony”) and to live in economic and political centres around the world. In the UK, AC Grayling has set up the New College of the Humanities (now acquired by Northeastern University) to rekindle an interest in the humanities and to simulate a one-on-one tutoring model which has hitherto been the trademark of Oxford and Cambridge universities.
Innovation in private education is probably a plus factor, all things considered. If for no other reason then for the fact it provides a welcome stimulus for governments and publicly funded schools to do better. Lack of innovation also affects private schools that do not deliver value as advertised. In the new age marked by globalisation, technological advancements and geopolitical tensions, appearance of competence by association with certain strata of society will no longer work as well as actual competence and, as such, private schools will need to pay more attention to the latter. What follows is a possible blueprint for an ideal private school (which may also be taken up by publicly funded schools):
- Transformation. The value of a good education lies in its transformative effect on the individual. A private school may justifiably take credit for turning a student lacking in several important areas into a student excelling in all those areas. However, this cannot be said for most schools whose modus operandi is to admit those who are almost "ready-made" and who will develop further on their own without significant intervention by the school.
- Burden Sharing. If a student underperforms, the fault may lie with the student himself as well as with the teaching staff. There may be issues with a teacher’s level of knowledge, style of delivery, or due fulfillment of his role as a caretaker. However, it would not be in the school’s interest to admit their teachers could be in the wrong so they do not.
- Post-Graduation Outcomes. It is worth recalling that a private school is not an end in itself. Eventually, the student will leave the place and make his own way in the world. If a school cannot stand behind the post-graduation outcomes of its graduates, this logically casts doubt on the quality of education it has provided. There is virtually no private school that satisfies this test. The closest are German hochschules which guarantee employment for its graduates by way of refunds but these are vocational schools rather than conventional schools.
- Well-Roundedness and Social Network. It will be argued by some that the real value of a private school lies in the development of a balanced individual and of a reliable social circle. To assert that developing oneself into a mature human being, or making friends of a good quality stock, can only occur within the four walls of a private school and at that point in one's life just beyond puberty is quite a statement to make. This is also hard to square with the utilitarian motivations of most parents who believe they are paying for advanced test preparation programmes.
For law students who are repeatedly told to read cases by their eager law professors and who, at the same time, find themselves at a loss when it comes to explaining the utility of cases.
Please see here.