Richard Feynman blackboard courtesy of Caltech Archives

How to start a law firm in three easy steps:

(1) find some people that you hope (but you don’t
really know) have integrity and are great at their jobs;

(2) commit to collectively act as a friend, advisor, legal encyclopedia, consigliere and drinking buddy to people and businesses going through some of the most stressful moments of their professional lives; and

(3) find God.

It’s kind of like a reality game show, where you read about some people in Law360 and then think to yourself: “Sure, we should dig trenches in a Siberian gulag together for the rest of our lives. Will be [checks with 13-year old daughter] totes fun!”

But birds of a feather and so on and so on. And what we mean by that is it’s kind of amazing how the right people are drawn to a vision, if that vision is authentic. What’s ours you say? Well, it’s an unwavering commitment to integrity, playing the long game with clients and an unhealthy desire to win to start – but sprinkling in kindness, true partnership, eye of newt and toe of frog.

Jordan Furlong, one of the most incisive thinkers on law firm culture around, recently gave a hypothetical: an attorney walks into your office and says she needs a few days off for undisclosed personal reasons. What do you do?

The question made me laugh.

As we enter our 5^th year at MM&H, our individual achievements have been lawsome. Yaniv finished his term as President of the South Florida Chapter of the Federal Bar Association. In one month, we resolved three cases resulting in more than $50 million in recoveries for our clients. We brought on Stone-Cold Killer and Trial Lawyer Extraordinaire José Ferrer and The Skullcrusher Michelle Genet Bernstein (those are their wrestling names). We made it through another couple of letters of the Greek alphabet Covid-wise. But seeing our cultural vision take root has been our greatest achievement this year. And knowing – beyond any shadow of a doubt – what our answer would be to Jordan’s question above (execute the attorney on the spot of course), made us realize that we are well on our way to building something special.

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Don Hayden is Chairman of MIAS, 2022

Miami International Arbitration Society is continuing its strong programming on timely topics in International Arbitration under the leadership of its Chair, MM&H’s own Don Hayden. This month MIAS has two “hybrid” events. First, John Barkett will speak at a breakfast meeting on April 12^th on his attendance as MIAS representative at the UNCITRAL Working Group II sessions and the new UNCITRAL Expedited Arbitration Rules. Later in the month, a leading expert in the field, Gary Born, will present at an early evening event presented jointly with the University of Miami International Arbitration LLM Program on April 20^th.

The Gary Born program will also be available on a live remote feed. (See the information on each program below). Next month, we are planning a program in the investor-state arbitration space involving leading experts and some of MIAS’ own members who are active in that space.

“There is a lot of exciting programs and other developments in the pipeline for this year. We are hoping to make further inroads in advancing our mission of making Miami and Florida as a whole a leading arbitration venue for Latin America and the world as a whole.” — Don Hayden

mias.org

April's upcoming events:  (CLICK ON A POSTER FOR MORE INFORMATION / TO REGISTER)

Florida Bar’s Rejection of Non-Attorney Ownership Thwarts Innovation

By Etan Mark, Josh Migdal and Don Hayden  |  Published in Bloomberg Law, Jan 12, 2022

If the Florida Board Bar of Governors truly cared about protecting the public, it would not short-shrift the opportunity to fix a broken system. If instead, the board of governors is more interested in protecting its turf, then it should spare us the platitudes and have the guts to just say so.

By and large, the delivery of and access to legal services is broken. Too slowly, jurisdictions throughout the U.S. are beginning to consider ways to improve access to justice, with non-attorney ownership of law firms a leading candidate for institutional improvement. There was hope in 2021 that Florida—our home state—would be one of the leaders for innovation in this space. But embracing the definition of insanity, the Florida Bar’s governing body instead determined that doing the same thing will yield different results.

Most people who need legal services do not get it because they cannot afford it. In 2017, Legal Services Corporation released a report finding that the vast majority (86%) of low-income Americans do not receive the civil legal services they need, usually relating to fundamental, life-altering matters including evictions, child custody proceedings and debt collection.

Despite the U.S. having one of the highest concentrations of lawyers in the world, it ranks 108th out of 128 countries in access to justice, behind Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan. Sixty percent of small business owners who have what they characterize as a “great” threat to their business do not have a lawyer to help them.

With these realities in hand, the Florida Supreme Court appointed a special committee focused on how to “improve the delivery of legal services.” That committee—comprised of the former president of the Florida Bar and some other leading Florida attorneys—issued a report in June to consider ways to improve the relationship between attorneys and consumers.

Foremost among its conclusions, the report recognized that the prohibition in allowing non-attorneys to own portions of law firms resulted in a threshold barrier to increased access to justice. The report’s research strongly suggests that attorney-only ownership leads directly to failed innovation in marketing, finance systems, and project management (ask an attorney you know to run some Excel calculations or prepare a compelling slideshow).

This prohibition stunts access to justice because it stifles outside investment, reduces capital, and therefore makes it harder for law firms to innovate their business practices. Joint-venturing with other service providers becomes impossible, leading to inefficient processes, clunky interfaces, and unintegrated services.

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