We have this funny little idea in the law that the nature of your work and the quality of your practice are heavily influenced by the physical environment in which you operate. Are you on the 40th floor of a steel and glass tower in an urban center? You must be doing intricate, high-end, bespoke work for multinational clients. Are you in a nice but inconspicuous brick building with a wooden front door and creaky floorboards in an exurban community? You must be doing basic, commoditized work for unsophisticated clients. Lawyers love to judge people, and the people we love judging the most are each other, using criteria that reveal more about our own assumptions and biases than anything else. What the rise of the virtual law firm really signifies is that those assumptions, at least in terms of law firm structure, should soon be fading away.

I love this point. I don’t care about fancy offices or prestigious anything and I get a huge kick out of going working on deals opposite people who do and underestimate me because I don’t have a receptionist *and* a secretary screening my calls.