In 1519, Hernán Cortés landed near what is now Veracruz with around 600 men, eleven ships, and the ambition to take on the Aztec Empire. His soldiers were outnumbered, frightened, and still had the ships behind them. Retreat was still an option. So Cortés did the one thing that made it no longer possible: he had the fleet destroyed. No ships, no plan B, no Cuba to sail back to. Conquer, or die on that beach.
The principle is older than Cortés. For centuries, military thinkers understood a brutal truth: commitment deepens when escape disappears. Burn the boats, remove the exit, force the decision.
I think about this every time I scroll LinkedIn and come across another “hybrid lawyer” or “new kind of law firm”.
You know the profile. The lawyer-coach. The lawyer-designer. The lawyer-entrepreneur. Or the law firm that presents itself as something more than a law firm: part advisory business, part innovation studio, part strategic partner, part product company. The pitch is usually some version of the same claim: traditional practice is stale, we think beyond it, we bring business thinking, a proactive approach, and a more human way of working. Often, the critique is fair.
But there is a structural problem beneath the branding, and very few people name it.
In many European jurisdictions, and in plenty of others, neither a lawyer nor a law firm can fully occupy both categories at once. If you want to operate like a business (sell products or tools, market yourself like a company, build commercial lines that go beyond legal advice, and behave like an entrepreneur) then you have to accept what follows. Change structure. Change status. Possibly leave the Bar behind. Build a different professional life or a different kind of organisation. Full stop.
The “hybrid” identity may look modern on a landing page. Legally, it is often far less coherent. You are either on the register, with all the duties and constraints that come with it, or you are in business.
That is not an accident. Bars were built around principles meant to keep the profession distinct from commerce. Lawyers and law firms cannot advertise the way companies do. They cannot pursue clients through performance marketing. There are real limits on mixing professional activity with commercial ventures. These rules can be debated. I have been for a long time, and I still am, among those who debate them. But while they exist, they bind.
So when a law firm or a lawyer presents itself or themselves publicly as legal-and-something-else, the reality is usually less innovative than the branding suggests. Either the “business” side is mostly decorative (a brand extension, a newsletter, a few workshops, little that truly crosses the line) or the firm or individual is moving into territory their professional status does not really allow. In both cases, the promise tends to be larger than the structure underneath it.
This is where Cortés comes back.
The metaphor survives because half-commitments are more expensive than we think. If your soldiers can still see a way home, part of them is already leaving. If your clients can sense that your innovation pitch is hedged, they will trust it only halfway. And if you can sense it yourself, you will make every decision with one hand on the railing.
That is the real problem with “hybrid.” In practice, it often means unclear. Unclear to clients, who do not know whether they are buying legal advice or a product. Unclear to the bar, which does not know how to classify you. Unclear to yourself, which is the most damaging kind of confusion.
The problem, paradoxically, goes beyond the current framework. It is pretending we do not have to choose inside it.
If traditional practice no longer fits you, and what you truly want to build is a company, a product, or a service that operates like a business, then the honest move is to build it properly. Burn that ship. Commit. The moment the ambiguity ends, your work gets sharper, because the energy you were spending managing contradiction comes back to you as focus.
And if you want to remain a lawyer or a law firm while modernising practice from the inside (better communication, better tools, better client experience, stronger positioning within the rules) then do that fully. There is enormous room inside the profession for people willing to do the work. But burn the other ship: stop presenting yourself as something you are not actually free to be.
Making that choice will not be easy. It wasn’t for me either. But I know firsthand that one path does not work: standing on the deck with a boarding pass in each hand, telling yourself both journeys are still available.
