In rendering their services, lawyers must contend with a range of distractions. Providing competent legal services is often no more valued than the accounting for these services. Working long hours is too often caused by incoherent internal processes. Externally imposed rules set the standard of care, and the devaluation of lawyering seems to come from every direction.

In this environment, only lawyers and law firms can serve as inspiration. When the common perception is that legal services can be adequately obtained through a computer program, lawyers will no longer rank among the professions. The result will be the end of new approaches to society’s ills, and American freedom will have lost its safeguard.

For the sake of all lawyers, leaders must create a culture that emphasizes the quality of a lawyer’s work.