All in the hope of raking in low-risk, peer-pounding partner salaries and, later, possibly large chunks of equity profit. There may be a more exciting alternative however.

For a new breed of lawyer-entrepreneur, the business of law is increasingly being seen as an investment opportunity of a different sort. We’ve heard about the threat of outsourcing and alternative business structures to the current shape of the profession; well these guys are already taking the chisel to it:

ABAJournal: These risk-takers speak a language investors understand. Rather than profits per partner, they talk about market share and return on invested capital. They converse as easily about finance, technology and management as finer points of law. And their enterprises produce steady returns even when unemployment soars and stock markets tank.

Some drive down costs by automating routine legal tasks. Others assemble dedicated teams of lawyers for in-house legal departments to draft simple contracts, review documents and conduct research. Still others use proprietary models to predict probable outcomes in complex commercial litigation, then contract to finance the most promising cases, freeing up corporate litigants’ capital for other uses.

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Who does this matter most to – the people who will be most affected by dramatic changes in the structure of their profession. i.e. lawyers with most of their career ahead of them. So check out the article and get up to speed.