The practice of law has flipped from vocation to business. Law firms and individual lawyers are measured explicitly in predominantly economic terms.Profit per equity partner (PEP) and other indicators trickle down firms through targets and bonuses. Hourly rates are the oil that greases this engine. Alongside that is the somewhat servile claim that lawyers are not deal breakers or pettifoggers, but business-focused advisers, and business-focused advisers for whom the client comes first.
There is a lot to commend that approach – lawyers have been too insular, their advice not always useful in practical terms – but there are also problems. The first is that priming lawyers to think of their own value in primarily economic terms poses risks. Some, including Maryam Kouchaki of the Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, call this the money prime. Money primes make us more selfish; we see others as less human; and they increase lying and cheating.
