Urgent change is needed for the long-term survival of the legal industry, but there is also a tremendous opportunity to drive business growth. Law firms that respond to the disrupted events of 2020 by adapting to bring us to a new balance will generate more revenue, attract more clients, and position themselves to provide legal services to those in need. Curious about what makes ClioCon great? Here are ten reasons why lawyers are the best legal conference in the world. The use of automated solutions, chatbots, and other forms of product-related legal services will increase, requiring the support of lawyers as well as a more multidisciplinary workforce with different skills. In fact, the proportion of legal work done by paralegals, data analysts, operational experts and other legal specialists could increase to the point where lawyers become almost in the minority. To achieve this and survive in today`s technologically disruptive marketplace, traditional law firms must employ people with a different range of skills, especially managers who specialize in change and innovation. Carefully considered strategic plans should be created to guide the architectural innovation required to provide future legal services and more comprehensive client solutions for a new market. The punctuation of COVID-19 will result in law firms speciating into two groups: those that have quickly adapted to the new realities of the COVID-19 landscape and those that cannot or will not change. There will be law firms that struggle very hard in this new reality and others that fail completely. But the law firms that adapt quickly will be the law firms that not only survive, but thrive in our new legal environment. The second part of this question is just as important as the first. Law firms are just a construct of how legal services are delivered.
Customers now purchase services from a number of companies that typically focus on one business unit. I expect this trend to accelerate further in the coming years, as the financial and structural advantages allow for very different investment models, both from an equity investment perspective and from a business model and technology perspective. All of this will contribute to what law firms will look like in the future and how quickly they change. The majority of participants have verified or will significantly verify their legal suppliers. More than half are willing to purchase legal services from a non-traditional law firm that offers a range of professional services. Respondents were the most likely to cite fixed or capped fees (30% of all responses), while more than one-quarter of respondents (27%) were for some form of value-based pricing. The benefits of adaptation were confirmed in the results of our 2020 Legal Trends Report. We analyzed aggregated and anonymized data from tens of thousands of lawyers to compare the impact of using three technology solutions within the Clio platform – online payments, customer portals, customer acceptance and CRM software – on business performance.
Those who used the technologies studied saw a significant year-over-year improvement in business performance during the pandemic. In addition, we found that the introduction of more than one technology had a reinforcing effect on business performance, both in terms of impact during the coronavirus pandemic and on the total volume of case processing and revenue collection. The role of in-house legal teams is rapidly evolving. The companies they support are going digital. The regulatory environment is becoming increasingly complex. Cost pressures are at an all-time high, while standardization and automation are opening up new paths to efficiency and insight. COVID-19 has further exacerbated these challenges, but the sudden shift to remote work is also evidence that there is even more reliance on connectivity, centralization and technology. Legal education and training should be adapted to these new approaches to legal service delivery by extending the mandatory curriculum beyond the areas of substantive law.
Students should be taught in the areas of economics, project management, and general technical skills. Case management processes and legal technologies should also be introduced. In addition, specific legal technical skills (such as database management, statistics, analysis and digital communication) should be taught. [10] Law schools need to figure out how to cope with changes in the legal market and prepare students to think outside the box and consider employment outside the legal sector, e.g. in consulting, large corporations, banks, international organizations and the political sector – where legal education and skills are welcome and useful. [11] Lawyers are useful and competent service providers, but without efficient and effective models of legal service delivery, they will not be able to adapt to the changing needs of clients. [6] This requires new approaches to the delivery of legal services. Some of them are: The American Bar Association (ABA) has released its report on the future of legal services in the United States, which is available at abafuturesreport.com. One of the recommendations is that the ABA support the stated goal of 100% access to justice and approach this issue from the perspective of the organized bar association.
The twelve recommendations – abafuturesreport.com/#recommendations – begin with the first: “The legal profession should support the objective of providing some form of effective assistance to all those who otherwise cannot afford a lawyer.” The more personalized and user-centric experience developed in the business-to-consumer (B2C) space has set new standards for all forms of business interaction. An exception is unlikely to be in-house legal services. Internal customers expect the ease of use and customization that user-centric design brings. As the legal services market evolves, business units may have more opportunities to seek assistance from third-party legal service providers, creating new competitive threats for in-house lawyers. In a growing market, purchasing habits for legal services are changing. In-house teams are looking for pragmatic industry specialists who are tech-savvy and can offer more than traditional legal advice. Reading the data will be just as important as reading the legal terms. However, in keeping with how customer experience is at the heart of legal delivery, legal teams need to ensure that all self-service options are easy for the business to use and provide a high-quality experience for internal clients.
We anticipate that legal technology solutions will impact more standardized service areas, freeing lawyers to focus on higher-value strategic advice to clients. In Singapore, we had a unique opportunity to establish an innovation and service delivery hub for the Asia-Pacific region. The Hub establishes cross-functional teams of professionals, including legal project managers, legal technology experts, resource managers, pricing specialists and continuous improvement practitioners, and provides opportunities for lawyers and technologists to collaborate. We also have the best delivery centers in London, New York and continental Europe. In the new reality, the composition of legal teams changes with activity. As processes are improved and standardized, technology enables new strategies for procuring legal services, and demand increases to do more with less, the traditional hierarchy of legal functions is likely to transform into a more agile and cost-effective structure. Such factors can force legal functions to improve the way their clients interact with them by building their services around key factors and challenges from across the enterprise. Again, data will be critical to enable this change. Like many of the world`s most successful B2C companies, legal teams will use detailed analytics to constantly refine their processes and improve their service delivery. The following article is based on predictions made by KPMG Legal Operations Transformation Services professionals at member firms around the world regarding the evolution of the legal function from today to 2025.
Due to their nature as predictions, they are not intended to provide guarantees of future results. Legal services may not be offered to SEC-registered audit clients or otherwise prohibited by law. KPMG L.P./s.r.l./S.E.N.C.R.L./s.r.l., the U.S. member firm, does not provide legal services. There are many legal service providers that already don`t look like a traditional law firm and that number will continue to grow. The law firm of the future will take many different forms, depending on the services offered, as long as they evolve. Standing still is not an option if you want to survive. This paper examines the future of legal services and changes in the delivery of legal services.
This is largely due to technology challenging companies to harness the efficiency of automation without losing sight of the importance of building relationships and recognizing how to deliver the most value.
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