THE gentleman’s profession of the law is becoming a vestige of the past, removed enough from reality to be remembered, like phone booths or fedoras.

Philip K. Howard, a senior partner at Covington & Burling, another multinational firm, may be the closest thing to a gentleman lawyer that one is likely to find these days. He is courtly, white-haired, civic-minded and blessed with an aristocratic pair of arching eyebrows. While he declined to speak directly about White & Case (“I’m not really interested in the business of the law”), he touched on the firm’s current troubles by suggesting that as the bottom line increases in importance, the traditional role of the lawyer as a trusted counselor slips away.

“To the extent that lawyers are simply churning out the same problems one after the other and are treated as factors of production to be laid off or not because of market forces or marginal declines in profitability,” he said, “the emotional and professional commitment that goes along with being an adviser and a solver of problems begins to diminish.”

Oh boo hoo, y’all.

The key there is “churning out the same problems one after the other.” If you, as a lawyer, as a law firm, are not earning your keep (in economic, free-market terms) then you AREN’T a solver of problems… you are a problem to be solved. Having gone to law school does not entitle you to a $160,000 starting salary, and having an “aristocratic pair of arching eyebrows” does not make you more profitable to the client. I’m not surprised this guy isn’t interested in the business of law. It seems like the business of law is no longer interested in him and his ilk.

A few decades ago, the “power” of the big computer firms shifted into the hands of geeks in garages. As those geeks have become “the man,” newer, smaller, cooler garages have sprung up, and power keeps leaking out to them. The same thing has happened in music, in journalism, and in a host of other fields where flexibility and creativity are more important than mahogany desks and cut-crystal decanters.

The same thing is happening in law. The public isn’t aware of it, because the public cares more about iPods than about jurisprudence. The media isn’t really aware of it, because they think that if they need an opinion about the legal profession, they should ask a firm that has existed since before the Civil War. Even most lawyers are only dimly aware of it, because the future isn’t widely distributed.

But the future of law is here, and it’s eyebrows are much less aristocratic:

• Chris Marston at Exemplar Law is it’s chief prophet and evangelist, along with his team of legal rock stars.
• Roger Glovsky and John Koenig of Indigo Venture are writing the new rule book for the long tail of innovative small and solo practices.
• Erik J. Heels of Clock Tower Law has come close to perfecting the use of Social Media in a law practice (especially Twitter), while increasing his fees every few months and (ghast!) wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and baseball cap to work.
• (Shameless Plug) Dayanna Moreno of Moreno Law has hired me (a non-lawyer) as Creative Director. Why would a law firm need a creative director? Because, like the other firms on this list, we think that amazing customer service and creative innovation are actually good for business.

And that’s just a few examples here in (and around) Boston.

The country (the world, probably) is buzzing with a new kind of legal energy. I hope you are as excited as I am.