Page 12 - Leaders in Legal Business - a
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Leaders in Legal Business
e-discovery; any tool or process that increases the quality, efficiency, or effectiveness of a lawyer’s work is
technology, and in that respect, tech providers have dominated the legal support ecosystem longer than anyone.
For all that legal technology continues to develop and multiply within the profession, it’s getting harder
to remain competitive as a supplier. Ever-decreasing price expectations drive providers to constantly cut costs.
New “killer apps” appear so suddenly that market leaders can be reduced to the back of the pack or even
bankruptcy in a matter of months. Most importantly, for many lawyers, “systems” are the new technology —
process improvement, project management, and system analysis are integrating with technology and introducing
brand-new players and skill sets to this area. It’s not enough to offer the best “product” anymore; the race now is
to provide the best productivity and the best operational platform for lawyers. That contest is up for grabs like
never before.
NewLaw
Looming over this increasingly vibrant ecosystem, however, is an unexpected and unfamiliar new
participant: “NewLaw.” Defined (by me, anyway) as “any model, process, or tool that represents a significantly
different approach to the creation or provision of legal services than what the legal profession traditionally has
employed,” NewLaw is a strange hybrid of customer and supplier, both law firm and legal support provider. A
powerful NewLaw competitor is as likely to disrupt and unseat a traditional law firm as it is to overturn a marketing
consultancy, a CLE platform, or a technology offering.
There are new-model law firms such as Riverview Law, Valorem Law, and Slater & Gordon, which draw
upon an array of innovative options such as fixed fees, outside equity investment, and business models truly
focused on the client.
There are project-based legal talent providers like Axiom Law, Lawyers On Demand, and Project
Counsel, which match skilled lawyers with short-term and specialized legal matters in ways that satisfy both hirer
and hiree.
There are managed legal support services like Novus Law, Radiant Law, and Elevate Services, the direct
descendants of legal process outsourcing companies that now oversee sequential processes within larger matters.
Those are just the entities that directly align or match human talent with legal tasks; not one of these
businesses is a “technology” company or a traditional legal service support provider.
On the technology side, we would find tools that help lawyers do legal work differently, such as Lex
Machina (analytics from big data), KMStandards (automated contact generation), and Neota Logic (expert
applications); those that help clients resolve disputes directly, like Wevorce (family law), Modria (ODR), and
Picture It Settled (negotiation analytics); and even those that help clients conduct their own legal matters, such as
Shake’s legal agreements, Fair Document’s immigration forms, and LegalZoom’s virtually everything.
NewLaw is a wild card in this environment, because its members refuse to fit easily into either the
“supplier” or the “provider” categories of the legal support ecosystem. More such entities will emerge in the
coming years, further blurring the lines between direct suppliers of legal services to clients and complementary
providers of support and guidance to those suppliers. This ecosystem is going to become more complex and
diverse, not less.
So when you read through the comprehensive and incisive essays to follow, cataloguing and analyzing
today’s legal support ecosystem and the challenges it faces in future, keep two things in mind: just how quickly
this entire professional support structure emerged, developed, and established itself over the past 30 years; and
just how quickly and completely everything we know and recognize about that environment today can change,
permanently.
5
e-discovery; any tool or process that increases the quality, efficiency, or effectiveness of a lawyer’s work is
technology, and in that respect, tech providers have dominated the legal support ecosystem longer than anyone.
For all that legal technology continues to develop and multiply within the profession, it’s getting harder
to remain competitive as a supplier. Ever-decreasing price expectations drive providers to constantly cut costs.
New “killer apps” appear so suddenly that market leaders can be reduced to the back of the pack or even
bankruptcy in a matter of months. Most importantly, for many lawyers, “systems” are the new technology —
process improvement, project management, and system analysis are integrating with technology and introducing
brand-new players and skill sets to this area. It’s not enough to offer the best “product” anymore; the race now is
to provide the best productivity and the best operational platform for lawyers. That contest is up for grabs like
never before.
NewLaw
Looming over this increasingly vibrant ecosystem, however, is an unexpected and unfamiliar new
participant: “NewLaw.” Defined (by me, anyway) as “any model, process, or tool that represents a significantly
different approach to the creation or provision of legal services than what the legal profession traditionally has
employed,” NewLaw is a strange hybrid of customer and supplier, both law firm and legal support provider. A
powerful NewLaw competitor is as likely to disrupt and unseat a traditional law firm as it is to overturn a marketing
consultancy, a CLE platform, or a technology offering.
There are new-model law firms such as Riverview Law, Valorem Law, and Slater & Gordon, which draw
upon an array of innovative options such as fixed fees, outside equity investment, and business models truly
focused on the client.
There are project-based legal talent providers like Axiom Law, Lawyers On Demand, and Project
Counsel, which match skilled lawyers with short-term and specialized legal matters in ways that satisfy both hirer
and hiree.
There are managed legal support services like Novus Law, Radiant Law, and Elevate Services, the direct
descendants of legal process outsourcing companies that now oversee sequential processes within larger matters.
Those are just the entities that directly align or match human talent with legal tasks; not one of these
businesses is a “technology” company or a traditional legal service support provider.
On the technology side, we would find tools that help lawyers do legal work differently, such as Lex
Machina (analytics from big data), KMStandards (automated contact generation), and Neota Logic (expert
applications); those that help clients resolve disputes directly, like Wevorce (family law), Modria (ODR), and
Picture It Settled (negotiation analytics); and even those that help clients conduct their own legal matters, such as
Shake’s legal agreements, Fair Document’s immigration forms, and LegalZoom’s virtually everything.
NewLaw is a wild card in this environment, because its members refuse to fit easily into either the
“supplier” or the “provider” categories of the legal support ecosystem. More such entities will emerge in the
coming years, further blurring the lines between direct suppliers of legal services to clients and complementary
providers of support and guidance to those suppliers. This ecosystem is going to become more complex and
diverse, not less.
So when you read through the comprehensive and incisive essays to follow, cataloguing and analyzing
today’s legal support ecosystem and the challenges it faces in future, keep two things in mind: just how quickly
this entire professional support structure emerged, developed, and established itself over the past 30 years; and
just how quickly and completely everything we know and recognize about that environment today can change,
permanently.
5
