What's to Become of the Legal Profession?

Michael Trotter is the author of three books about the legal profession in the United States: “Profit and the Practice of Law” (Univ. of Georgia Press 1997, reissue CreateSpace 2012), “Declining Prospects” (CreateSpace 2012), and “What’s to Become of the Legal Profession?” (CreateSpace 2017). As an equity partner in two of the largest law firms in the United States (the predecessors of Alston & Bird and of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton) and in three entrepreneurial law firms (Trotter, Bondurant, Griffin, Miller & Hishon; Trotter, Smith & Jacobs; and Taylor English Duma LLP) Mr. Trotter has been a keen student of the economics and ethos of modern law practice. He has written and spoken frequently on law firm management, operations and economics and has authored many articles and columns on law firm management and related issues in publications including “The National Law Journal,” “Managing Partner,” “Law Practice,” “The Daily Report” and “The Journal of Southern Legal History.” He served as Chairman of the Law Firm Finance Committee of the Law Practice Division of the American Bar Association in the 2015-16 year, and continues to serve as a member of the committee. His courses in law firm management and economics at the Emory University Law School in the early 1990s may have been the first, and were certainly among the first, to be taught at a major American law school. He currently serves as an adjunct professor at Emory where he is teaching courses in “The Evolution of the Practice of Law and of Law Practice Economics,” and in “The Future of the Legal Profession.”