LEADING LAW FIRMS IN THE “NEW NORMAL”: RECOVERING FROM CRISES THROUGH LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Beginning in 2008, the first of three major crises hit the nation and had global implications and effects, including significant ones for the legal profession. Those crises were the financial crisis of 2008, followed by the social justice movements reflecting outrage at several highly-publicized police killings of Black men and women, and, most recently, the 2020-2022 COVID-19 pandemic. The crises created significant challenges for lawyers and legal institutions but they also created opportunities for enhanced access to justice, more efficient law organization practices, and new workplace requirements. The Article considers several difficult questions about where the legal profession is at following these events and whether it has learned to anticipate inevitable, future crises.

To do so will require effective, sustained and thoughtful leadership throughout the legal profession including the judiciary, law firms and law schools. The Article envisions a “new normal” where effective leadership in managing crises and leading clients and law organizations through those challenges is practiced across the profession.