Moving from a Brandeis Brief to a Brandeis Law Firm: Challenges and Opportunities for Holistic Legal Services in the United States

Abstract

The need for multidisciplinary approaches to legal services has given rise to increasingly creative service delivery models. The phenomenon is a natural outgrowth of three important ideas that Louis Brandeis developed. First, his work gave rise to the concept of the Brandeis Brief, which in its broader meaning has become a metaphor for the relevance of such social science insights to legal problem-solving. Second, Brandeis introduced the concept of “counsel for the situation” to capture a vision of lawyering that provided a broader identification of the interests involved, again with an orientation on problem-solving. A third idea championed by Brandeis was to boldly proclaim that business can be a force for good. These ideas, brought together, suggest that clients and users of legal services can benefit not just from a narrow Brandeis brief, but a true Brandeis law firm that unleashes the insights from other professional perspectives, allows for creative problem-solving, and sees the potential of business as a force for good. This essay explores the challenges and opportunities to U.S. law firms that wish to move from using the spirit of a Brandeis brief to become a more fully holistic Brandeis law firm.