Is the Legal Market Poised for Disruptive Change? by Carolyn Casey

I had the pleasure of moderating a recent panel on disruptions impacting the Big Law business model at a Thomson Reuters New York City Law Firm COO/CTO Forum. Bruce MacEwen, of Adam Smith, Esq., Firoz Dattu, Founder & CEO of AdvanceLaw, Liam Brown, Founder & CEO of Elevate Services and I chatted about disruptions that have caused other industries to innovate, and what disruptions are here or on the horizon for law firms.

Wheelies and Yogurt

Bruce made some very interesting comments on how the luggage industry was triggered to innovate when a clever airline pilot first put wheels on suitcases to get around airports faster. And even though yogurt is ancient, that didn't stop most manufacturers from producing their brand of Greek yogurt as that new item took over grocery shelves a few years ago. And, you can talk about how Nokia disrupted the mobile phone market. Then Apple really ate Blackberry's lunch causing huge disruption and change in enterprise mobile phone purchasing. Bruce also commented that hidden changes can suddenly accelerate on an exponential curve as shown in his chart below.

We also talked about Watson and future impacts on legal practice. IBM predicts that Watson can offer law firms an automated associate with instant recall, automated legal research and due diligence and analytics to predict case outcomes and costs. The International Institute of Analytics predicts that in 2015 [a]nalytics, machine learning, and cognitive computing will increasingly take over the jobs of knowledge workers, and we will become more conscious of this in 2015 they are well on their way to threatening doctors, lawyers, accountants, marketers, and HR managers. The Georgetown Law Center for the Study of the Legal Profession's 2014 publication comments that rather than growth, firms would do better to strategically focus on what clients clearly care about:

Better and more efficient service delivery models;

New and more effective pricing models; and

Expanded and more efficient partnering with clients and other service providers.

Legal Process Outsourcing (LPOs) has disrupted the legal market, with in-house counsel telling their firms to work with LPOs for eDiscovery processing and coding, document review (supervised by the firm), project management, diligence and other tasks that really don't require a law degree. The idea is GCs don't want to pay law firm rates for these tasks. Some firms innovated and set up their own lower cost review teams, others have gotten used to the idea of partnering with the client-selected LPOs. Legal Zoom, Rocket Lawyer and other companies offer affordable legal services for basic documents like wills and incorporation.

Like other industries, the tradition-bound legal profession has been triggered by disruptions. The question is: how will leaders in Big Law respond to what is already here and on the horizon? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2015/industry/law-firms/is-the-legal-mar...
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