Page 223 - Leaders in Legal Business - PDF - Final 2018
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practice, this prohibition may have become more harmful to the consumer of legal services than
good.
In the U.K. and some other jurisdictions, things are changing fast. By defining and
dividing out specific areas of practice, the new U.K. laws encourage more competition from
“non-lawyers.” Critically, the U.K. now allows for a new structure of law firm called alternative
business structures (“ABS”). Critically, ABSs allow non-lawyers to sit in professional,
management, and even ownership roles. In the past few years several large consulting and
professional services companies have obtained ABS status — including KPMG, BT, and
PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
In our view, this simply makes too much sense to ignore. Shouldn’t estate planning, for
example, involve experts who provide tax and accounting insight alongside legal advice?
Shouldn’t high-volume discovery matters also include e-discovery technology and IT
consulting? Why don’t technology consultants include IP attorneys and their wisdom in their
offering? Wouldn’t clients benefit from HR consulting paired with labor and employment legal
practices? ABS entities will begin to create these innovative, integrated legal/business offerings
and compete globally for the business of multinational companies. We struggle to see how they
do not end up claiming market share in the States and “arguably open the world to legal services
providers.”11
The American Bar Association (“ABA”) has investigated this in the past, but even small
steps in this direction were halted. Given the pressures, however, and the enormous potential for
innovation and profit, incremental steps forward are anticipated by many. In the meantime, LMS
providers will play a big role in bridging this gap and allowing U.S. Biglaw to compete. We
foresee future partnerships between Biglaw and LMS providers to be a necessary interim step
until our laws are liberalized.
Legal Managed Services: Benefits for Law Firms
If LMS companies are eating into Biglaw’s market share, it would stand to reason that
they are natural-born competitors. After all, it was not long ago when outside counsel collected
virtually all fees related to representation — from legal research, to long-distance telephone
calls, to document review, to closing arguments at trial — as revenue to the law firm (even with
some of those costs as pass-through).
Today, with technology startups, and LMS companies on the scene, law firms are seeing
revenue from traditional legal support tasks departing coming off their books. And the Biglaw
firms are perceiving this “threat” from LMS providers: according to a recent survey, 68 percent
of respondents from large firms believe that non-law firm providers of legal services are either
presently taking their business or pose a threat to do so.12
We respectfully disagree. If leveraged correctly and incorporated as part of a larger
strategic approach, the deployment and integration with LMS companies can result in new
business lines, market advantages, and increased job satisfaction resulting from an increase of
the actual practice of law.
Project Management is Not What Lawyers Signed Up For
11 Laura Snyder, Does the UK Know Something We Don’t About Alternative Business Structures?, ABA J. (Jan. 1, 2015, 5:51 AM) (“ABS
structures can arguably open the world to legal services providers”).
12 Altman Weil, 2015 Law Firms in Transition (2015), http://www.altmanweil.com/dir_docs/resource/1c789ef2-5cff-463a-863a-
2248d23882a7_document.pdf.
209
good.
In the U.K. and some other jurisdictions, things are changing fast. By defining and
dividing out specific areas of practice, the new U.K. laws encourage more competition from
“non-lawyers.” Critically, the U.K. now allows for a new structure of law firm called alternative
business structures (“ABS”). Critically, ABSs allow non-lawyers to sit in professional,
management, and even ownership roles. In the past few years several large consulting and
professional services companies have obtained ABS status — including KPMG, BT, and
PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
In our view, this simply makes too much sense to ignore. Shouldn’t estate planning, for
example, involve experts who provide tax and accounting insight alongside legal advice?
Shouldn’t high-volume discovery matters also include e-discovery technology and IT
consulting? Why don’t technology consultants include IP attorneys and their wisdom in their
offering? Wouldn’t clients benefit from HR consulting paired with labor and employment legal
practices? ABS entities will begin to create these innovative, integrated legal/business offerings
and compete globally for the business of multinational companies. We struggle to see how they
do not end up claiming market share in the States and “arguably open the world to legal services
providers.”11
The American Bar Association (“ABA”) has investigated this in the past, but even small
steps in this direction were halted. Given the pressures, however, and the enormous potential for
innovation and profit, incremental steps forward are anticipated by many. In the meantime, LMS
providers will play a big role in bridging this gap and allowing U.S. Biglaw to compete. We
foresee future partnerships between Biglaw and LMS providers to be a necessary interim step
until our laws are liberalized.
Legal Managed Services: Benefits for Law Firms
If LMS companies are eating into Biglaw’s market share, it would stand to reason that
they are natural-born competitors. After all, it was not long ago when outside counsel collected
virtually all fees related to representation — from legal research, to long-distance telephone
calls, to document review, to closing arguments at trial — as revenue to the law firm (even with
some of those costs as pass-through).
Today, with technology startups, and LMS companies on the scene, law firms are seeing
revenue from traditional legal support tasks departing coming off their books. And the Biglaw
firms are perceiving this “threat” from LMS providers: according to a recent survey, 68 percent
of respondents from large firms believe that non-law firm providers of legal services are either
presently taking their business or pose a threat to do so.12
We respectfully disagree. If leveraged correctly and incorporated as part of a larger
strategic approach, the deployment and integration with LMS companies can result in new
business lines, market advantages, and increased job satisfaction resulting from an increase of
the actual practice of law.
Project Management is Not What Lawyers Signed Up For
11 Laura Snyder, Does the UK Know Something We Don’t About Alternative Business Structures?, ABA J. (Jan. 1, 2015, 5:51 AM) (“ABS
structures can arguably open the world to legal services providers”).
12 Altman Weil, 2015 Law Firms in Transition (2015), http://www.altmanweil.com/dir_docs/resource/1c789ef2-5cff-463a-863a-
2248d23882a7_document.pdf.
209
