The Future Needs Lawyers, Not Investors
For most of my career, I helped large corporations. Organizations that had hierarchies, five-year plans, KPIs, and entire departments dedicated to making sure no one ever colored outside the lines. Then, a little over a decade ago, I was introduced to the world of law firms.
It felt like landing on a different planet.
Nothing worked the way I expected. Lawyers were entrepreneurial and self-directed, loosely tethered to the firm around them. They shared a roof, a brand, and a set of resources, but underneath it all were hundreds of independent businesses moving in parallel. WeWork before there was a WeWork. They could leave whenever they wanted, take their clients with them, and rebuild across town without missing a beat. The structure rewarded autonomy more than alignment.
It made me wonder how long a system like that could hold, and whether someone or something would eventually try to make it more controlled, more measurable, more like every other business.
That moment seems to have arrived. Private equity spotted an opportunity, and law firms, stretched by rising costs and talent pressure, are tempted by the promise of order. Efficiency sounds good. Profitability sounds even better.
Private equity is famous for streamlining organizations that have grown complicated or inefficient. The pitch is appealing. Better systems. Cleaner operations. Stronger margins. Many industries, worn thin by rising costs and market competition, see these promises as a lifeline.
The consequences arrive later.
Look at industries where PE has already made its mark. Independent healthcare facilities, local media, public housing. Revenue goes up and so do prices. Staffing goes down and so does care. What used to serve a community now serves a spreadsheet. Long term value gives way to short term extraction.
This is capitalism operating precisely as designed. Which is the problem.
Because the legal profession cannot be treated like a retail chain or a dental clinic. It plays a very different role in society.
We are living in a time defined by forces that no longer pretend to serve us. Artificial intelligence already influences decisions that determine our finances, our freedoms, and our futures, while those responsible shrug at the impossibility of oversight. Governments collect intimate data faster than they can protect it, claiming security as they erode privacy. Technology companies surveil our lives with a level of precision once reserved for intelligence agencies, extracting profit from our fears, desires, and vulnerabilities.
Meanwhile, the climate destabilizes under the weight of corporate indifference, and the same actors who accelerated the crisis now seek to monetize the remedies. Space is no longer an arena for exploration but yet another battleground for power. Data has become a weapon used against the very citizens who generate it. And misinformation is deployed as a deliberate strategy by political and commercial interests that benefit from division, confusion, and doubt.
These systems are not accidentally dangerous. They are intentionally exploited.
They grow stronger while ordinary people grow more powerless.
Most of us do not have the resources to fight back against any of this. We have no shareholders or lobbyists to advocate for us. We have no control over the systems reshaping our lives.
Except through the law.
The law turns vulnerability into a legal argument. It says a person can confront a company that has violated their privacy. It says a community can demand accountability when their land or water has been harmed. It says even the most powerful actors must follow the rules.
In other words, the law converts fear into agency.
Which is why the incentives of those who control law firms cannot be ignored.
Lawyers might not describe themselves as guardians of democracy. They negotiate deals and analyze precedents. They file motions and chase deadlines. The work looks ordinary from close range.
But the consequences are extraordinary.
When a parent sues a corporation because their child was harmed, a lawyer makes that possible. When citizens challenge government overreach, a lawyer stands with them. When privacy is compromised, when contracts are weaponized, when power becomes predatory, lawyers intervene.
No one else can do that. Not effectively.
This is why the rise of private equity in law should make all of us nervous.
PE rewards what is measurable. Billable hours. Lower costs. Scalable offerings. It rewards stability over experimentation. It rewards safe matters over risky ones. And risky matters are often where the public good is on the line.
Imagine a world in which law firms hesitate to take a case because the financial outcome is unclear. Imagine a world where precedent is never challenged because challenges are too expensive. Imagine a world where the most difficult problems are ignored because the return on solving them is too small.
This is not hypothetical. It is the natural result when fiduciary duty flows upward to investors rather than outward to society.
Private equity optimizes systems. The law is not a system to optimize. It is a safeguard to preserve.
The irony is that lawyers already possess what society most needs right now: the ability to slow down the march of unchecked power. They know how to ask the hard questions and force real answers. They have the tools to confront what frightens the rest of us. They are, in a very real sense, the last line of defense against forces that would overwhelm human rights, privacy, autonomy, and justice.
So the question becomes: who will decide how lawyers show up in the future.
Investors or citizens.
Quarterly returns or generational responsibility.
Efficiency or courage.
Because if investors are allowed to determine the answer, the rest of us may learn too late what a world without courageous lawyers really looks like.