Your Unemployed Lawyer has spent a great deal of time over the past two weeks in a rather frantic state over the breakdown of the Corporations pages. I still don’t what happened or why, but I do know that it is slow, steady, tedious work to repair them and get them back on line. I feel like the breakdown makes me and the website look bad, but I comfort myself with the thought that not only can I restore the pages, I can return them to use in a new and improved condition.

It is not quite so with our “industry”, I think. (Have you ever wondered why the business of law is called an “industry”?). And then I think that even though I think it is not so; it may be so or similar. Similar. Yes. Definitely similar.

I believe that there has been a breakdown in the business or industry of law. For that matter, I know that virtually every industry in the country has suffered some degree of breakdown, many far worse than in the legal world. But it is our purpose here to discuss the world of lawyers, law firms, legal education, the practice of law, the business of law (two very different things in my mind) and the condition of lawyers in general. So, we will talk about the legal industry.

Like those infernal Corporations pages, it just doesn’t work the way it used to do. As with the Corporations pages, I am struggling to understand what happened and why. Similarly, I have the same uncomfortable feeling that I may never fully know but that I must take all possible steps to prevent it happening again.

I have a very bad feeling that whatever happened to the Corporations pages was my fault, though. I blame myself. I need to improve my scanty HTML skills.

I know that what happened to the legal world was not my fault. I can’t say that it wasn’t anybody’s fault, because I’m not a believer in spontaneous combustion; but I think that the blame is so widespread and nebulous that it can’t attach to anyone identifiable. This leaves no focus for blame, which, to me, is the equivalent of having nobody to blame at all. This is useless, since the good in blame is present emotional catharsis and the hope of future prevention.

Like the Corporations pages, the legal industry is still broken. We all read the news every day. Some of us wonder if we will someday pass the point when there will be more unemployed lawyers than employed lawyers. It’s a silly pastime but a little black humor never hurts.

Now we come to some differences.

First, I don’t know whether anybody but me cares at all about fixing the Corporations pages. I labor at it link by link until my back hurts so much that I have to stop. I’ve promised these resources and I feel guilty and responsible that they are missing. I want them to help someone.

On the other hand, I think everyone even remotely connected to the legal industry desperately wants to fix it. I think there’s a lot of guilt and shame and sorrow floating around out there. There’s fear and worry and uncertainty. Everybody wants to stop reading about lawyers and staff getting the axe.

Second, I know that if I keep slogging away I can put the Corporations pages back the way they were before the crash.

This is not going to happen in the world of law. It will never be the same. We have to accept this and let go. We don't have a choice.

As I read the news and talk to my friends, I feel a strange sense of history happening. Something is going on that will make our world, both in the overall and the specific, shift off its former track and become something that it never was before. I think I like this. It's a heady feeling.

Life has become unpredictable because the past no longer feels like an accurate reference. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I feel frightened and excited. We are all like settlers moving into new country. We don’t know what lies ahead, but we’re going because we hope it’s good. We’re also going because in this case it beats the alternative.

Finally, to come full circle, we fall back into sync.

I know that when I am finally finished with my slow, steady work on them, the Corporations pages will be better than they were before the crash. I have discovered that I can’t do it all at once, but I know that I can, indeed, do it.

I know that I cannot fix the legal industry. I can and do hope that these, my small contributions, may provide a tiny bit of help. But, because I am at heart a naïve and foolish optimist, I have to believe that same kind of slow, steady work will eventually make the legal world, including both users and providers, better than it was before. Obviously, this model no longer works. We need new things.

 The possibilities are endless. Just think of history happening.