We have come to see the legal market as a superposition of three different markets: a market for standard services ("commodities"), a market for expertise, and a market for big, strategic transactions or litigation. We often represent these three markets as a hierarchy: commodities at the bottom, strategic transactions at the top, and expertise in the middle. (This also reflects the differentiation in hourly rates). There may be more to it, actually. It may be wrong to believe that commodity work is necessarily low-end and at the bottom of the pyramid. There is a market segment for "high end commodities", and you will find a lot of it in banking and finance work.
Antoine Henry de Frahan
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