Back in my university days, I remember walking past the Graduate Students Office and seeing a photocopied diagram taped to the door. It was called “The Doctoral Candidate Flowchart,” and it provided a series of turns and directions for graduates struggling to get their thesis finally completed. My favourite entry on the flowchart was in… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Innovation
The year of living dangerously
So there goes 2011, and from a legal marketplace perspective, you could probably call it the year of hanging on. Large law firms hung on in the face of flat-lined or diminishing revenues, in no small part through the wonders of de-equitization. Small law firms hung on despite an expanding sea of legal service providers… Read more »
The franchised future of small law firms
Today’s dispatch from England & Wales, the world’s legal laboratory, informs us of a new company called Evident Legal that is setting up the latest in a series of law firm franchises. Simplify the Law (STL) aims to create a national network of law firms with between 2 and 20 partners that serve both individual… Read more »
Goodbye to all that
Last week, having written about the rise of online disruptors and the emergence of super-boutiques, I promised that the final entry in this de facto trilogy would identify how lawyers and law firms can ensure their profitability in this new environment. But then I spent three days at ILTA’s Rev-elation, the 2011 annual meeting of… Read more »
The rise of the super-boutique
Yesterday, I advanced the notion that lawyers’ profitability now depends on what they do and how they do it. One reason is disruptive internet-based providers that not only are grabbing commodity work and profiting from it, but more dangerously, are also changing the values clients associate with “good legal service” to emphasize speed, affordability and… Read more »
Here come the disruptors
Lawyers used to have the Midas Touch: whatever we did, however we did it, we were profitable, because no one else could do it (and no one else was allowed to try). From now on, lawyers’ and law firms’ profitability hinges completely on what we choose to do and how we choose to do it…. Read more »
Innovation pays
I’m willing to wager that the one phrase most frequently spoken in partnership meetings, when the subject of potential new initiatives comes up, is: “Are any other firms doing this?” Law is virtually the only industry where a negative answer to that question is met with disappointment. Doing what everyone else is doing will get… Read more »
Legal outsourcing’s AFL moment
It’s July, we’re in the middle of a record-breaking summer of heat, and the major-league baseball trade deadline is just days away. So naturally, I’m going to talk about football. This isn’t entirely a propos of nothing: the National Football League lockout recently ended with a 10-year collective bargaining agreement, and a frenzy of free-agent… Read more »
Countdown: it’s time to enter the 2011 InnovAction Awards
Lawyers are supposedly averse to innovation. Apparently, someone forgot to inform these law firms and companies. Allen & Overy, whose FIG Global Compensation Tracker helps banks and hedge funds monitor compensation reform initiatives Campbell Law Group of Boulder, Colorado, which is developing a global distributed legal support infrastructure for social enterprises Choate Hall & Stewart… Read more »
A changing of the guard
Legal historians might look back at the spring of 2011 and judge it the time when the old law firm model began to pass away and a new one began to take its place. Specifically, they might contrast last month’s dissolution of Washington-based global firm Howrey LLP with today’s announcement by 300-lawyer Irwin Mitchell LLP… Read more »