MidLaw and Divers Items
Bloomberg recently reported that JPMorgan Chase has deployed contract-analysis software that does in seconds work that takes lawyers hundreds of thousands of hours annually.
One thinks of John Henry who was a steel driving man. He died with a hammer in his hand.
JPMorgan’s technology budget runs to $9.6 billion. For that kind of money, you can eliminate more professions than one (or, at least more categories of services).
Keep on pounding.
For all the well-known reasons, aggregate demand for legal services delivered by traditional law firms is flat. That has been pretty well documented. (In fact, enough already.)
So, the firms that are succeeding are the ones taking business from others (they are taking business from other law firms and taking it from alternative legal services providers, as well).
Here are three opportunities for midsize firms in this jungle:
Midsize firms can take business from big firms when clients elect to hire smaller firms where (i) the service is equivalent or better, (ii) costs are lower, and (iii) firm principals are more directly engaged in direct client service.
Midsize firms can take business from small firms where the midsize firm can bring broader and deeper capabilities.
Midsize firms can take business from anyone, anywhere, any time a midsize firm can provide experience-honed legal judgment delivered person-to-person by empathetic, seasoned professionals.
But “taking business” from others need not be all tooth-and-claw. Think instead pilot-fish-and-shark.
Artful midsize firms can build lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with other firms — large and small — law firm and alternative provider — by networking, collaborating, complementing.
Midsize firms are uniquely apt for networking.
Holiday prices on selected services. Order now!
Did MidLaw recently say that “non-lawyer competitors are thriving based on the proposition that much that law firms do is not the practice of law”?
Well, you can get holiday pricing with that.
MidLaw received an email message that same day (subject: “Christmas Blast”) from somebody in India who offered an “end of the year special.” Special low rates, good only until December 31, for
I am serious. This offer came from a firm that is “not a law firm and neither provides legal advice nor practices law.”
Cut-rate legal research and document review. But you must act now!
How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news.
The Financial Times recently published a very good, short article about legal technology: “Artificial intelligence disrupting the business of law.” It drives home the point that law firms are surrounded by new technologies, by alternative providers, by accounting firms providing legal services, and more. Big Law is under attack and it is beginning to fight back by investing in big technology.
MidLaw can never do that. Mid-size firms must look to third party providers to bring technology solutions.
But that’s fine. It frees mid-size firms to focus on their particular competencies, their core clients, and their home markets.
What does a mid-size firm do uniquely well? What is its focus? Get clear about that. There is a different answer for every firm. Context matters. Identity matters. Competence matters. Ethos matters.
The counter-intuitive next step after finding focus is to go beyond it. After you know who you are, the next step is to ask what goes with that? How do you grow it? What else can you be? What other services are natural expansions of core competencies?
And here is a key: growth beyond core competencies may not be limited to services that require a law license. The definition of the “practice of law” has limited relevance to the growth of a law practice. Do not allow the fact that you are a law firm delude you into the belief that you are limited to delivering legal services. Non-lawyer competitors are thriving based on the proposition that much that law firms do is not the practice of law.
Context matters:
The definition of the phrase “law firm” is shifting, shaking, and shrinking. Potential clients don’t see law firms as alternatives that all do about the same thing. And they don’t much care what the legal definition of “the practice of law” may be.
Blockchain is coming. It will radically transform commerce. And the economy. And the practice of law. It’s another one of those things.
So what is blockchain? What is it going to change?
Start with this: blockchain is not a technology that blocks chains (of data). Instead, it assembles blocks (of data) into chains. Start there.
Blockchain is also called “distributed ledger technology.” In effect, it promises an internet-accessible registry system. Data is recorded electronically. And, instead of having one central official “place” where it resides, the data is “distributed” among all participants or potential users. Participants “agree” electronically about the validity of relevant information.
The resulting “distributed ledger” is analogous to land registration, such as that authorized in North Carolina, only it is digital and it goes much further. All the components of ownership, or an agreement, or a transaction, including enforcement, can be linked, block by block, into an inalterable, decentralized, automated digital chain — a ledger — that is Internet accessible.
This has the potential for “radical transformation” of commerce. Ownership, agreements, and transactions can be digitized. The processes of authentication, verification, validation, recording title, and executing transfers upon counter-performance, can be blocked, chained and automated.
Currently, functions such as these are heavily dependent on assurances from lawyers: opinions and certifications.
But with the technology that is coming, lawyers will no longer be needed for those functions. Blockchains will provide them. Lawyers will be replaced by 1’s and 0’s.
Blockchains though will recast the role of lawyers.
North Carolina lawyer Nina Kilbride says that while lawyers will no longer be administrators of commerce; they will become instead its engineers. (That began this summer, she says.) The future role of lawyers, she says, is not to administer and validate processes, but to design the digital processes (blockchain structures) best suited to automate particular commercial objectives.
Good places to start to understand this are
North Carolina appears to be right at the center of blockchain’s emergence, with Nina Kilbride and Monax, the Raleigh company she’s associated with. At least, that’s the evidence of the recent North Carolina Bar Association program on the subject (“What Lawyers Should Know about Blockchain Today”).
This has the feel of that moment in 1839 when Caswell County’s Stephen Slade awoke from his slumber and discovered the process for flue-curing tobacco.
People get ready, there’s a chain a-coming.
Here’s another article predicting that robots and artificial intelligence are getting ready to replace lawyers. Japanese scholar Hiroshi Ishiguro is the principal source.
Two highlights from this piece:
People simply like robots better than they do lawyers. And the clear implication is that robots have better ethics than lawyers do. It’s not only lawyers. Ishiguro says that in the future “about half of comedians are going to be robots.” (About half?)
Lawyers are advised to develop capacities for creativity, human connections, and emotion. Emotion, connection, creativity.
Or, get a hammer.
And, see Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, and of course, Richard and Daniel Susskind, The Future of the Professions, How Technology Will Transform the Work of Experts.
I hope law schools and bar associations are looking at the implications of these issues for those just entering the profession.Ten years from now is when it will really start to matter.
When MidLaw was interviewed by Lawyers Weekly, it was written questions, written answers. NC Lawyers Weekly Interview, Part I; and Part II
Just recently, Kathryn Whitaker for JD Supra Business Advisor also interviewed MidLaw. This time with oral questions, oral answers: The Case for the Mid-Sized Law Firm. Oral questions and answers are not exactly like having your deposition taken, but …
Here’s another thing. With oral questions and answers, there’s a (perhaps regrettable) tendency for the witness to speak at greater length. (Unlike a deposition, there’s nobody sitting next to you telling you to shut up.) So, with JD Supra‘s assent, MidLaw will set out JD Supra‘s piece in two parts in the near future.
If you want to see the whole thing, right now, in JD Supra‘s stylish format, go to JD Supra right here.
The champion of French-language Scrabble can’t speak French.
My gut is screaming at me that this says something important about the future of traditional law firms.
Should they have left? Should they have stayed? Should we build a wall around ours?
Technology, communications, transportation, the ability to operate at scale, the force of populations — irresistible forces. Globalization is upon us.
There will always be boundaries. Boundaries will always be crossed.
Commerce is inevitable. Ain’t no wall high enough, ain’t no valley low enough, ain’t no river wide enough.
Boundaries are terrains of uncertainty; they are where complexity grows. That makes them hunting grounds for lawyers. Someone must make things predictable.
From PPTPOP
Do you like to look up there and see a slide with about 5 bullets, all words & a lot of single spacing?
Who really likes complete sentences anymore? Words? Who’s got the time?
