LEXPERT MAGAZINE
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APRIL/MAY 2017 7
LEXPERT.CA
Jean Cumming
Editor-in-Chief
EDITORIAL
Business Lawyers into the Future
"WHAT DO BUSINESS lawyers really do? Embarrassingly enough, at a time when lawyers
are criticized with increasing frequency as nonproductive actors in the economy, there seems
to be no coherent answer ..." is very current sounding comment was in fact written 33
years ago by Ronald Gilson in an article of e Yale Law Journal entitled "Value Creation by
Business Lawyers." is does not bode well: how will we determine what business lawyers
are going to do in the future, if their role has been misunderstood and under-appreciated for
quite some time?
Since 1984, Gilson's article has been widely called "seminal" and frequently rebutted. But
his coining of the term "transaction cost engineers" to describe business lawyers is at least a
solid start to future-gazing: "I suggest that the tie between legal skills and transaction value
is the business lawyer's ability to create a transactional structure which reduces transaction
costs and therefore results in more accurate asset pricing."
Looking into the future, will traditional business lawyers be relied upon to create that
transactional structure; especially when legal functions will be serviced by various providers,
including so-called disruptors? It would seem that business lawyers of the future, be they
in-house or external, in law or multidisciplinary firms, stand a better fate if they keep their
eye on transactions as a whole.
fortuna favet fortibus
APRIL/MAY 2017
VOLUME 18 NO. 5
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Jean Cumming
EDITOR
David Dias
SENIOR EDITOR
Elizabeth Raymer
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Gena Smith
ART DIRECTOR
Brianna Freitag
COVER PHOTO
Daniel Alexander
DIRECTOR/GROUP PUBLISHER,
CARSWELL MEDIA
Karen Lorimer
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Grace So
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Mohammad Ali
PRODUCTION COORDINATOR
Joanne Richardson (416) 649-8818
joanne.richardson@tr.com
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