Multidisciplinary Practice.

• Author: Pope, Daniel J.

"I've been a fool for lesser things"

--BILLY JOEL

TEN YEARS ago, if you asked the average lawyer what an MDP was, the likely answer would have been a rock band from England. What rock-and-roll did to big bands and hip-hop is doing to music today, the advent of multidisciplinary practices or partnerships is doing to the way the law has been practiced in this country for the last 30 or 40 years. As one professor recently put it, the MDP train has left the station and the enforcement train is now on its final boarding call.(1)

What's happening in Europe and why? What ethical rules are involved in the United States if we are going to follow the lead set by Europe? What are some of the pitfalls for lawyers who practice with MDPs?

Europe today

London Calling, a special supplement to the November 1999 issue of The American Lawyer, recently featured a roundtable discussion of the future of MDPs in Europe.(2) The selection of the panelists themselves was extremely revealing. They included managing partners from Jones Day, Howry & Simon, and Mayer Brown & Platt, to name just a few. Mark Andrews, senior partner at London's Wilde Sapte, thought the market for MDPs would divide into three different levels of business in Europe: high street, mid-corporate, and global transactional business. All panelists agreed that conflicts of interest in such far-flung operations presented the greatest challenge to MDPs in general.

What does the future hold for MDPs in Europe? Tom Blass, a writer for London Calling, put it this way:

Runaway Groom

When, in the Fall of 1998, Arthur Andersen called off its marriage to city law firm Wilde Sapte, there was an audible sigh of relief among many of the UK's commercial lawyers. This was the second time the firm had led a willing bride-to-be toward the altar--and jilted its betrothed. "I think, "said one City partner," that put the issue on the back burner. At this writing, the accountancy firm's legal adjuncts include Arnheim Tite & Lewis and Garretts and Dundas & Wilson. But while these are credible firms, they don't give the accountants the marketplace kudos to which they aspire. Law firms in the U.K. know the accountants and MDPs are live issues. But it isn't yet clear what form the threat will take. The Big Five, it is rumored, have made overtures to possibly all the U.K.'s leading law firms. But they know that breaking into the top end of the market is going to prove difficult. From a marketing perspective, the global dimension of the accountants is very seductive, but only if you are competing for a client that needs seamless service from Manchester to Mumbai. And they just don't have the clout to attract clients of that caliber. Without stronger marketplace credentials, the accountants can't get the best lawyers. Without the best lawyers ... res ipsa loquitur. U.K. lawyers voice their reservations on several planes. Conflicts of interest are inevitably invoked, as is a strong belief that lawyers can't just function well in organizations the size of the Big Five. But beneath the logistical arguments lurks a professional pride verging on snobbery. Those caught up in their own reactionary rhetoric are likely to be left behind. But a more compelling reason for not rushing into an MDP was summed up by the managing partner of a City firm who said, "As far as we can tell, it's just not something our clients either need or want yet. And until they do, it isn't something we'll even consider.(3) United States today

Some very smart people in the United States see it differently. Robert Ruyak, managing partner for Howry & Simon, described his firm as the first to advertise, the first to have an economic consulting group, and the first to have an accounting group as a subsidiary--that is, the first firm to have an MDP law firm in the United States. He explained that except for Washington, D.C., which allows non-lawyers to be a partner in a law firm, Howry & Simon has been able to accomplish all this by having what he called "partner equivalencies, i.e., non-partner compensation equivalent to partner compensation."(4)

Howry & Simon does this by simply employing a different methodology to compensate its non-lawyer partners. Ruyak hopes to add engineers to his firm to assist their commercial property practice as soon as the Rules of Professional Conduct are relaxed. Since...