Dear lawyers! Don’t seek faster horses. Start with “Why?”. (002)

Dear lawyers! Don’t seek faster horses. Start with “Why?”. (002)

by | 05.11.2019 | #FutureProofLegal | 0 comments

The new laws of competition on the legal market call for shifting focus from the customary “Who?” towards the question of all questions – “Why?”. Beware of old habits, as this is an outward query to clients, on top of some preliminary self-examination. This is a turn from “me/us lawyers” to “you/them clients”. It’s a building block towards “we/us”. Legal experts teaming up with clients to tackle law’s challenges as part of providing broader business solutions. It is a cultural change, “shaped by client expectations, not by the legal guild” in response to the requirements of the globalised and digital economy.
Legal profession shall be able to thrive, beyond merely surviving, only upon: (i) truly listening, combined with (ii) scrutinising the basis of success of the non-traditional legal service providers, and (iii) promptly acting upon what we hear and observe. Otherwise, lawyers follow suit of the supposed Henry Ford’s customers. Stuck in the “faster horses mindset”, traditional law is choking. Behind the wheel sit the new competitors – the business of law companies – racing towards greater market shares; leaving the practice of law far behind.
This post briefly presents some recent changes to the legal service provision in the context of Alternative Legal Service Providers. Then, explores a recently circulating notion of potential new entrants into legal – technological giants, like Amazon. By doing so, it looks at the newly formulating “laws of competition” on the legal market. It concludes that while technology, currently, is a leading enabler of the legal organisation’s success, it does not single-handedly constitute any magic formula. What is required in the long-term, are changes towards a more customer-focused and business-driven culture, for which tech is just an accelerator.
With this blog, we set the scene for our next posts – looking at the legal market transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Stay tuned and follow our Blog @CEELegalTech.

It’s already here! Threat or opportunity for CEE Lawyers? (001)

by | 27.10.2019 | State of Play | 0 comments

I am talking, of course, about technological and organisational transformation. Still, is it something real in Central and Eastern Europe (“CEE”) and, more importantly, should legal professionals be mindful of it? To put it shortly: YES.

Changing paradigms poses significant challenges especially in industries with more traditional mindsets such as the CEE legal one. The resistance  towards innovation manifested by legal professionals here can be traced back to the nature of both law and legal industry. First, law is branded as a human science, for and about social interaction; I will further detail on the accuracy of this assertion. Second, for centuries now, lawyers have had absolute monopoly over providing and delivering legal services, which in turn eliminated any significant form of stimulation or constraint for the professionals to be agents of change. Change is upon this industry, whether the practitioners like it or not. At this stage, the only control they can exert is over the solutions to adopt in order to survive and thrive under these new circumstances. There is a myriad of options out there but what currently seems best fit for CEE would be professional upskilling and a change in the working methods.