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threat as opportunity. The combination of more focused search and abundant free resources
online means that, for many lawyers, Google is their starting point for research.
One of the best examples of a publishing model being blindsided by changes in the
digital world is Martindale-Hubbell.
Factors Driving Change
Rapid change in the legal market.
Continuing globalization of business and regulation.
Big data explosion.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Customer expectations driven by digital experiences.
Increased and potential competition from outside the sector.
Changes in the Legal Market
As discussed elsewhere in this book, the role of the lawyer is inexorably moving toward
that of a business advisor, and further away from document processing and painstaking legal
research. Likewise, the type of information and training that lawyers require will change. Law
firms are under pressure to charge fees that reflect the value added and avoid reinventing the
wheel.
As the disaggregation or unbundling of legal processes, long predicted by Professor
Richard Susskind, becomes a reality, publishers are seeing clear opportunities to become
integrated in that workflow and provide content at the point of need. Exactly how high up the
value chain they sit will depend in large part on how successful they are in applying technology
to their content.
One of the best examples of a publisher succeeding by playing a specific role at a key
stage of the legal process workflow is Practical Law.1 It identified major inefficiencies around
the production and maintenance of what is essentially generic content, ranging from current
awareness to standard contract templates.
By the turn of the millennium, U.K. business law firms had streamlined their processes
by employing non-fee earning lawyers to work on their own knowledge management as
professional support lawyers (PSLs). This was one of the early examples of firms breaking down
their processes and identifying areas that could be handled more efficiently. Librarians and PSLs
were charged with providing front-line lawyers with databanks of content that they could use in
their practice. Fee earners were given basic resources to which they could apply their skill and
experience to add value — for example, in negotiating an agreement rather than drafting it from
scratch.
What Practical Law saw then was that there was little difference in much of the output of
PSLs among firms. By hiring, replicating, and in some ways improving what these PSLs did, it
was able to produce digital products that became integrated in clients’ workflow in a way that
made them nearly indispensable.
Without the confluence of process reengineering and technological advances, this would
1 PRACTICAL LAW, http://us.practicallaw.com.
186
online means that, for many lawyers, Google is their starting point for research.
One of the best examples of a publishing model being blindsided by changes in the
digital world is Martindale-Hubbell.
Factors Driving Change
Rapid change in the legal market.
Continuing globalization of business and regulation.
Big data explosion.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Customer expectations driven by digital experiences.
Increased and potential competition from outside the sector.
Changes in the Legal Market
As discussed elsewhere in this book, the role of the lawyer is inexorably moving toward
that of a business advisor, and further away from document processing and painstaking legal
research. Likewise, the type of information and training that lawyers require will change. Law
firms are under pressure to charge fees that reflect the value added and avoid reinventing the
wheel.
As the disaggregation or unbundling of legal processes, long predicted by Professor
Richard Susskind, becomes a reality, publishers are seeing clear opportunities to become
integrated in that workflow and provide content at the point of need. Exactly how high up the
value chain they sit will depend in large part on how successful they are in applying technology
to their content.
One of the best examples of a publisher succeeding by playing a specific role at a key
stage of the legal process workflow is Practical Law.1 It identified major inefficiencies around
the production and maintenance of what is essentially generic content, ranging from current
awareness to standard contract templates.
By the turn of the millennium, U.K. business law firms had streamlined their processes
by employing non-fee earning lawyers to work on their own knowledge management as
professional support lawyers (PSLs). This was one of the early examples of firms breaking down
their processes and identifying areas that could be handled more efficiently. Librarians and PSLs
were charged with providing front-line lawyers with databanks of content that they could use in
their practice. Fee earners were given basic resources to which they could apply their skill and
experience to add value — for example, in negotiating an agreement rather than drafting it from
scratch.
What Practical Law saw then was that there was little difference in much of the output of
PSLs among firms. By hiring, replicating, and in some ways improving what these PSLs did, it
was able to produce digital products that became integrated in clients’ workflow in a way that
made them nearly indispensable.
Without the confluence of process reengineering and technological advances, this would
1 PRACTICAL LAW, http://us.practicallaw.com.
186
