ABA List of Legal Rebels Not Very Rebellious

Written by Tom Gordon

In the 1990's, Canon aired a series of commercials for its Rebel line of cameras featuring Andre Agassi. The implication was that Agassi was a rebel since he had (at the time) long hair and occasionally wore a splash of color on traditionally white tennis apparel. After viewing these commercials, I coined the term "tennis rebel" to describe someone who is completely mainstream, but who is deemed a rebel for ever-so-slightly pushing the boundaries of a staid subculture.

​The American Bar Association's annual list of Legal Rebels perfectly fits the tennis rebel definition. This year's list focuses on large law firms. The acts of "rebellion" include asking legal hypotheticals in hiring interviews, engineering a law firm merger and expansion, creating a wiki to guide paralegals' work, and sending lawyers to Harvard for training. There are also "rebels" whose acts of rebellion are non-specific, but seem to involve social media and the use of technology.

To be sure, all of those are worthy accomplishments. But, of this year's crop of rebels, only two are doing anything that matter to the average person. Paul Sweeney, of Foley Hoag, has marketed his firm's services on the online deal site LevelUp. The firm offered a $250 incorporation package to startup businesses, which qualified buyers for additional discounted services from the firm. The other true rebel, David Perla, founded Pangea3, a business that facilitates outsourcing of legal services to India. Perla's project would have been impossible to implement through a law firm because it relied on venture capital and the legal industry's rules prohibit firms from having outside investors. Now, if a lawyer were to work to challenge those rules, that lawyer would be a true legal rebel.

​Tom Gordon is Executive Director of Responsive Law.