Page 63 - MASTER COPY LEADERS BOOK 9editedJKK (24)_Neat
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Leaders in Legal Business
relationship team. It’s also more and more common to see matters staffed by a defined team of in-house and
outside counsel who operate on a virtual and highly collaborative plane; sometimes the demarcation between the
in-house and outside folks is blurred and seen as irrelevant in such a collaboration.
3. Staffing agencies and contract lawyers:
Many departments have drastically increased their use of staff lawyers and contract lawyers. Once seen
as second-class workers, these kinds of placement companies are now known for peddling incredibly well trained
and sophisticated lawyers (partly because of the changing economy and partly because of changing lifestyle
interests of millennials, among various other factors). Whether it’s to cover for a new parent or a caregiver who
has to leave the workplace for a few months; staff a regularly occurring task that’s only one day a week; or provide
surge capacity for an intense deal that’s snowballing toward deadline, being able to pick up a phone and have a
competent lawyer show up in two hours to stay for any relevant period (and then leave without further
obligations!) when no longer needed is an incredible efficiency and convenience for department leaders. While
these lawyers used to just do document review or other mundane tasks, you can now replace the need to retain
expensive outside firms with a deeply competent staffing company that can provide most any kind of worker
expertise imaginable.
4. ABS — Alternative business structures — MDPs are coming!
As of this writing, a few jurisdictions have authorized the creation of ABS (alternative business structure)
firms that allow lawyers and other kinds of experts (whether via financing or via the creation of a multidisciplinary
practice, or MDP) to co-own/share profits in the same firm. This means that clients may now consider hiring such
firms for regularly repeating work or to do work out of the country if the ABS firm doesn’t operate in the client’s
home jurisdiction. The entrants in this market — unlike some of their vendor counterparts who start small and
have to grow the hard way — are often large and well financed. This draws participation from the likes of the
traditional accounting firms/consulting practices (such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Deloitte, etc.) and
newly structured law firms with outside investors (such as Riverview Law) and more, to do their work. How these
firms will fit into clients’ portfolios and the larger legal landscape (whether their entry will change everything or
very little) remains to be seen, but clearly they will create greater competition via more definite and clearly
articulated pricing and service strategies; a re-shifting of top talent as new practices open and steal top name
experts and practice groups; and probably some firm merger mania, all of which will inevitably affect clients’
decisions about which firms to hire with the correct value proposition for their work…
5. Outsourcing to vendors:
Clients are being offered an ever-increasing number of options beyond sending work they can’t staff
internally to lawyers in firms or some other structure that contracts lawyers to staff client matters. They’re making
more and more use of them each year, sometimes exponentially growing the percentage of work they’re sending
on an annual basis as they get more comfortable with the concepts. LPOs (on-shore and off-shore legal process
outsourcers), e-discovery vendors, litigation support companies, firm service centers, and more are creating
predictably priced service options for clients who wish to buy a particular “product” or a talented and highly
trained team to deliver a pre-defined set of results at a fixed cost (as opposed to undefined work often thrown over
the wall to a law firms which was told to get going on it, figure it out, would then anticipate that the client would
argue with the firms over the invoice later). These kinds of companies first showed up in India, Singapore, and
other cheaper-workforce/highly-educated labor markets, but now are just as likely to be found in West Virginia,
Northern Ireland, or even in a big law firms’ back office operations somewhere in the hinterlands, away from the
high-price real estate and labor market where the big firm opens its offices.
56
relationship team. It’s also more and more common to see matters staffed by a defined team of in-house and
outside counsel who operate on a virtual and highly collaborative plane; sometimes the demarcation between the
in-house and outside folks is blurred and seen as irrelevant in such a collaboration.
3. Staffing agencies and contract lawyers:
Many departments have drastically increased their use of staff lawyers and contract lawyers. Once seen
as second-class workers, these kinds of placement companies are now known for peddling incredibly well trained
and sophisticated lawyers (partly because of the changing economy and partly because of changing lifestyle
interests of millennials, among various other factors). Whether it’s to cover for a new parent or a caregiver who
has to leave the workplace for a few months; staff a regularly occurring task that’s only one day a week; or provide
surge capacity for an intense deal that’s snowballing toward deadline, being able to pick up a phone and have a
competent lawyer show up in two hours to stay for any relevant period (and then leave without further
obligations!) when no longer needed is an incredible efficiency and convenience for department leaders. While
these lawyers used to just do document review or other mundane tasks, you can now replace the need to retain
expensive outside firms with a deeply competent staffing company that can provide most any kind of worker
expertise imaginable.
4. ABS — Alternative business structures — MDPs are coming!
As of this writing, a few jurisdictions have authorized the creation of ABS (alternative business structure)
firms that allow lawyers and other kinds of experts (whether via financing or via the creation of a multidisciplinary
practice, or MDP) to co-own/share profits in the same firm. This means that clients may now consider hiring such
firms for regularly repeating work or to do work out of the country if the ABS firm doesn’t operate in the client’s
home jurisdiction. The entrants in this market — unlike some of their vendor counterparts who start small and
have to grow the hard way — are often large and well financed. This draws participation from the likes of the
traditional accounting firms/consulting practices (such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Deloitte, etc.) and
newly structured law firms with outside investors (such as Riverview Law) and more, to do their work. How these
firms will fit into clients’ portfolios and the larger legal landscape (whether their entry will change everything or
very little) remains to be seen, but clearly they will create greater competition via more definite and clearly
articulated pricing and service strategies; a re-shifting of top talent as new practices open and steal top name
experts and practice groups; and probably some firm merger mania, all of which will inevitably affect clients’
decisions about which firms to hire with the correct value proposition for their work…
5. Outsourcing to vendors:
Clients are being offered an ever-increasing number of options beyond sending work they can’t staff
internally to lawyers in firms or some other structure that contracts lawyers to staff client matters. They’re making
more and more use of them each year, sometimes exponentially growing the percentage of work they’re sending
on an annual basis as they get more comfortable with the concepts. LPOs (on-shore and off-shore legal process
outsourcers), e-discovery vendors, litigation support companies, firm service centers, and more are creating
predictably priced service options for clients who wish to buy a particular “product” or a talented and highly
trained team to deliver a pre-defined set of results at a fixed cost (as opposed to undefined work often thrown over
the wall to a law firms which was told to get going on it, figure it out, would then anticipate that the client would
argue with the firms over the invoice later). These kinds of companies first showed up in India, Singapore, and
other cheaper-workforce/highly-educated labor markets, but now are just as likely to be found in West Virginia,
Northern Ireland, or even in a big law firms’ back office operations somewhere in the hinterlands, away from the
high-price real estate and labor market where the big firm opens its offices.
56
