The current economic downturn has been a wake-up call for lawyers. A profession that thrived on working by the hour in a market based on closing multiple deals has seen much of that work disappear. Over 4,000 American lawyers, many of them equity partners, were terminated by U.S. law firms last year, while new lawyers often found their lucrative job offers “deferred” to an uncertain future date. It is not hard to finance law firm growth when each new associate a law firm hires can support billings at two or three times what she is paid. It is harder to finance a firm through the inevitable swings of good and not-so-good economic fortune...