Remember, Remember, Mark Cohen Came in November – the Clearspire Plot

When it has been nearly a month between writings, at least from your personal catalogue of
events, certain events fade from memory, rambling ekes its way into writings and you find
an increasingly indeterminable collection of words meander into your mind in place of
meaningful, coherent conclusions and observations. With this in mind, I shall do my best to
keep the events of the last month as concise as possible, being ever away that my posts
seem to only grow with each mildly noteworthy event. However, this month some
particularly interesting figures have made themselves known during my time at Bucerius
and I feel it important to dedicate some time to give a little context as to their significance
to what it is we are (I assume) here to do.

November (no don’t worry I haven’t gone mad, I’m just busy and this is late) for me has
been dominated again by exam results and the filling of time with firm applications and
legal writing. Through it all however, one event has stood out as what should be the
dominant influence of this post. Meeting an American known as Mark A. Cohen. For those
of you either too young or too new to the law to have been invested around 10 years ago,
Mark Cohen sounds like the name of a not particularly interesting geography teacher who
took you slowly through permeation of water through porous rock, clad in tweed and
annunciating with all the vigour and social decorum of a novelty toy running out of battery.
For this reason, I feel it necessary to give you some background on a man who, without you
knowing it may have a significant influence on your field of work for decades to come.
Mark A. Cohen was the founder of a company known as Clearspire which was, primarily, a
commercial failure. I had done some reading on the company prior to meeting him,
attempting to understand their vision. In short, Clearspire LLC and it's a subsidiary service
company, intended to ‘reengineer’ how corporate legal services were delivered, attempting
to combat the skyrocketing prices of big law and provide ‘faster, cheaper, better’ solutions.
Through stripping out cost escalators (like pesky offices and such) instead of opting for an
online service enabling lawyers to work when they wanted and gain instant access to
clients.

This all sounds extremely inviting, and the market at the time received the concept as
intriguing. However, while the concept was just that, the broad market definition meant
that no one was really sure what it was they would do or where in the market their services
would fit. Inevitably, Clearspire was deemed to be too revolutionary for the market at the
time and failed to adapt to the demands of the market at the time and subsequently
produced poor financial results. For a fuller reading of the story, I will link to their own bio
as written by Mr Cohen.

So why did a man who developed a commercial failure come and present in a top law
school? Warning? Bad example? Ignorance? Barefaced cheek?

Mark Cohen presented to me like an American. To anyone who isn’t English, let me be clear,
by this I mean he came well-groomed, neatly suited, tanned and deeply convincing to the
point of near-total investment in his vision. Through his commanding hand gestures and
analytical hindsight, Mr Cohen showed us that while Clearspire didn’t necessarily return his
investment monetarily, he remains adamant that the vision Clearspire pioneered was the
future of law firms, that he had delegated a path which the legal marketplace would be
forced to take to stay competitive in the new internet age. While traditional big law maybe
partially unconvinced as to the scope of Mr Cohen's influence, it is inevitable that the market
place is developing and legal delivery needs to become more streamlined to keep pace with

the economy and information age we live in. Global thought leaders like Mark Cohen,
whether we like it or not, are going to come up with ideas and it is a gamble to know
whether to jump on the next ideological train that pulls into the station, not knowing where
it will end up. Mark Cohen, in my time meeting him, was terribly convincing and eloquent in
expressing his vision and the positive influence it will have on the legal market, for those
willing to notice, he simply acknowledges it came too soon.

‘What has this all taught me this month’ I hear you crying at your respective computer
screens. Certainly, it’s possible to be engulfed by the vision of Mr Cohen and his assertion of
the necessity of the developments he proposed. I would argue, however, that while the
market today would likely be more accommodating of his proposals than in 2008, I would
argue that the present influence of big law and its established foothold on the industry,
means that the future of law still lies with them. Though they are likely to take on lessons
from the Clearspire story, and although the legal service industry is a far more diverse field
than ever before, the stronghold of firms like Wachtell, DLA and others, in my opinion, is
unlikely to be broken certainly before I will hopefully gain access to their prestigious high
office. Demand, in my opinion, will change over time but the influence of big law has
remained relatively constant throughout, it is much more likely that these firms will develop
and mould to market demands than be overthrown by new entities.

One month wiser on this year abroad, I have seen the influence a deeper understanding of
the global marketplace and mythical economic forces which linger like a post-Christmas
dinner bit of flatulence, or a particularly offensive comment by elderly family members over
the Turkey. It is simply not possible to develop a new ideal in the world we are in without
fundamental knowledge and foresight as to the changing of the market, if you can work out
how to do this effectively, then you’ll be a lot richer than all of us.

My next post shall be my last from Germany, I shall be moving to Belgium as of February
and will likely use this space for a further ramble about the trials of moving to a new
jurisdiction having barely got used to this one. Hopefully, by then, I will have somewhere to
live.

JH

The Clearspire Story (as told far better than I did)
https://www.legalmosaic.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/LegalMosaic-ebook-print-
final1.pdf