Stuck

All of this only makes sense when what the firm really sells is lawyer hours. It doesn't make so much sense when what the firm has to sell is results, and it has to answer for itself how to get the maximum profit in the shortest possible time without compromising its ability to deliver reliable results. The problem with the lawyer you have speaking isn't that he's wrong, it's that he's outdated. His practice is okay for his lifetime, which is all that it has to be. But when "the firm" has absorbed everybody's practice, when it has to be good for your lifetime as well as his, it stops being realistic. It is now designed to fail. It can be managed so that it doesn't fail, but that won't optimize for the partners who are like your guy. And they run "the firm."

So your best bet isn't the quality of the management of an institution that needs excellent management in order to serve two sets of disruptive transitions over your professional lifetime. Your best bet is to reactivate the form of law practice in which you get to make those management decisions for yourself.