Even though Law21 was offline for the first half of 2016, I was still busy writing a number of articles and contributing columns to several publications worldwide. Now that they’ve all been published, and since, let’s face it, August is not a month generally conducive to either producing or consuming huge tracts of original content, I thought I’d share the links with you today.

Back in January, I wrote a column for Bloomberg Business Of Law about the fact that “Consolidation is Hitting the Canadian Legal Market.” Among my observations:

I’ve been saying for awhile that although Canada is not over-lawyered, it is “over-firmed.” There are too many large firms for such a modest population and capital base. Combine all that with the development of truly sharp and businesslike management in a small but growing number of aggressive law firms worldwide, constantly on the lookout for expansion opportunities. The end result is a situation where, regardless of the local fiscal weather, the underlying economics and demographics of Canada’s legal sector suggest that consolidation and reorganization are right on time.

Then in March, I contributed an item to the Spring 2016 edition of Law Matters, the newsletter of the Canadian Bar Association-Alberta, titled “9 Emerging Truths About Legal Service Delivery.” Here’s #2:

Lawyers will ultimately benefit from a multi-provider market. In truth, we’ve been punching below our weight for some time now, devoting our immense talents to tasks that are essentially clerical, transactional or procedural in nature. Others will take that work from us — and in the long run, we’ll thank them, because we will be freed to apply our highest and deepest skills to more important and valuable needs and opportunities.

Shortly afterwards, Lexpert magazine published a column in its April 2016 issue with the slightly aggressive title “Lawyers: Accountants are eating your lunch.” Here’s one of the reasons why:

The Big Four prioritize the client relationship: they learn everything they can about the challenges, risks and opportunities facing the companies they serve, and they constantly look for ways to help their clients achieve their goals. They streamline their processes and systematize their operations with technology, in order to make their costs of production lower and more predictable. They promote their brand above their individual professionals, not the other way around.

In June, after already having recorded a podcast with Sam Glover, I wrote a column for Lawyerist called “What Makes Uber Tick, and What Lawyers Can Learn from It,” in which I said, inter alia,

The lesson for lawyers, especially those in sole practice and small firms, is this: the many new competitors in our market are not beating us on quality. They’re beating us first on service and convenience, and then on price. We’re not being out-lawyered in this market. We’re being out-customered.

And finally, just this week, I contributed one of several entries in SmartLaw: Expert insights for the future of law, a free downloadable e-book published by HighQ. My entry was titled, “Move your feet,” about mobilizing your law firm:

Instil not just a sense of urgency among your equity owners and employees, but also an ethic of continuous responsiveness. Help your people understand that this isn’t a one-time crisis, but an ongoing process of market adjustment that requires fluid, real-time reaction. Don’t just wait to see what other firms are doing so you can copy them. Be the firm others try to copy — and do it so well that they don’t stand a chance.

I hope the foregoing constitutes some light summer reading for you (in reality, I hope you have access to much lighter summer reading than that), and I’ll be back with a new post later this month.