So I was asked to give a presentation about “NewLaw.” No problem at all — aside from the minor, niggling detail of figuring out what “NewLaw” is supposed to be.
Like other terms in vogue within the legal profession (cf. “non-lawyer”), we seem to understand better what “NewLaw” isn’t than what it is. George Beaton of Australia, who has written more than anyone else on this subject, describes the NewLaw business model as the antithesis of the BigLaw model, and that’s certainly true. For my purposes, though, I was inclined to cast the net a little more widely — to encompass not just law firm models, but also new legal talent combinations, legal service managers, and technology that both changes how lawyers practice and places the power of legal service provision in clients’ hands. So I decided to use “NewLaw” to describe 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.
With that definition and goal in mind, I set out to catalogue the genus “NewLaw” as best I could. What I wound up with was two broad categories, six sub-groups, and a whole bunch of exceptions. I thought I’d share the lot with you, partly because I thought you might be interested, and partly because I’d welcome your suggestions for supplementing the list with new entries, transferring an entry into a different category, expanding upon the disclaimers, and generally broadening and deepening the conversation. This is not meant to be a definitive inventory of “NewLaw.” It’s merely my attempt to understand the term better and identify at least some of its manifestations in the market.
First, the exceptions and disclaimers.
1. Several innovative legal companies and technologies aren’t on the list, but only because I think their primary focus is the marketing or management of law practices, rather than the creation and delivery of legal services. So I set aside the growing number of practice management support companies like Clio, CaseTrek, Curo Legal and Rocket Matter, as well as marketing, management, and business development services like Avvo, DirectLaw, LawDingo, LawGives, FlatLaw, Legati Law and UpCounsel, although they’re certainly in the NewLaw neighbourhood (and if you think they should be in the NewLaw community itself, let me know why in the Comments).
2. I also decided not to include e-discovery providers, but mostly because I’d have been here all week cataloguing all the players in this market. Also, while there’s no question it’s had a serious impact on how litigators do their job and sell their time, I might argue that e-discovery is increasingly accepted as part of litigation and isn’t all that “New” anymore. Similarly, predictive coding (or more accurately, binary classification) is a warp-drive engine for e-discovery and many other emerging legal functionalities; the whole area of legal machine learning promises to be extraordinarily disruptive. But aside from a few firms that made the list, I was hard-pressed to think of many clear leaders in this area. Again, I’d welcome your recommendations.
3. I really wasn’t sure where to put LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer in this list. They’re clearly “NewLaw” leaders and must be included, even if they’re frequently (and wrongly) described by lawyers as legal technology companies. They provide a sort of hybrid combination of legal documents available online and networks of affiliated law firms that supplement the documents with higher-value services (Jacoby & Meyers, which is listed below, could also fit within this category). Given that LegalZoom is frequently challenged by state bars and that Rocket Lawyer presumably also gets dirty looks from legal regulators, we might also refer to these enterprises as the NewLaw strike force.
4. Also not making the cut: BigLaw online legal services (Ron Friedmann’s list is essential, but I’m not sure how many of these entries are game-changers), law school-based entities (Reinvent Law, LawSync, and Law Without Walls are still all worth your attention, though), and some true category killers that just haven’t reached a critical mass yet (say hello to accountants practicing law).
5. I repeat: this list neither pretends nor aspires to be exhaustive. You may have a fascinating legal startup that I’ve never heard of, or that (to my mind) hasn’t gained enough traction yet to merit inclusion here. But if you belong to a small or midsize firm that’s pricing everything with fixed fees or selling through online delivery, or if you’ve launched a legal technology offering that’s changing the way legal services are produced or obtained, by all means identify yourselves in the Comments section.
6. A final note to startups: in no way does this post mean I can give you useful feedback on your product or service, because I very likely can’t. I was a liberal arts major for a reason. This really is just an attempt at a “NewLaw” catalogue, not a stealth advertisement for consulting services.
With all that out of the way, we can move to the actual lists. I ended up putting all the NewLaw entities I could find into two broad categories and six sub-groups:
1. Aligning Human Talent with Legal Tasks
- New-Model Law Firms
- Project/Flex/Dispersed Legal Talent Providers
- Managed Legal Support Services
2. Applying Technology to the Performance of Legal Tasks
- Tools To Help Lawyers Do Legal Work Differently
- Tools To Help Clients Resolve Disputes Directly
- Tools to Help Clients Conduct Their Own Legal Matters
Of course, many of the tools and enterprises listed below overlap to some degree with other sub-groups and categories. There are very few NewLaw human enterprises that don’t make use of technology and very few NewLaw technologies that don’t involve human application; I tried to position each entry under the heading that made the most sense. (The one-line descriptions are taken from the entities’ own websites or materials; the parenthesised jurisdiction is where the entity is headquartered.)
1. Aligning Human Talent with Legal Tasks
A. New-Model Law Firms
- Brilliant Law – “Legal advice and expertise you can trust, at prices your business can afford – the fixed price legal services solution for you and your business.” (UK)
- Clearspire – “We offer a complete, value-driven solution for outsourcing complex legal matters … a radically new and efficient law firm for the 21st century.” (US)
- Cloudigy Law – “A cloud-based intellectual property & technology law firm.” (US)
- Co-Op Legal Services – “Our legal team provides confidential help, exactly the level of advice and support you need with fixed fee pricing for most services.” (UK)
- Gunner Cooke – “A boutique corporate law firm with one, clear vision: to challenge, improve and evolve the way legal services are provided.” (UK)
- HiveLegal – “Law firm which improves the experience for our clients, our team and our network.” (Australia)
- Hunoval Law – “A premier law firm for default servicing clients. Our dynamic leadership leverages cutting-edge proprietary technologies and Six Sigma process analysis.” (US)
- Jacoby & Meyers – “It’s our goal to make the legal system more accessible and more affordable for everyone, and we’ll evaluate your case or legal matter for free.” (US)
- Justice Cafe – “We are striving to bridge the justice gap by dishing up affordable legal help in our communities.” (US)
- Keystone Law – “A dispersed business model, with senior solicitors working from satellite offices, supported by a central London office.” (UK)
- LegalForce – “A modern progressive law firm based in Silicon Valley with over 23,000 clients worldwide.” (US)
- Marque Lawyers – “We started our firm with the desire to practise law in a new and better manner, and in particular to do away with the business of charging for legal services on the basis of the time spent doing it.” (Australia)
- Potomac Law – “We are able to offer clients exactly what they are seeking: sophisticated legal advice from knowledgeable attorneys at attractive rates.” (US)
- Quality Solicitors – “A group of modern, progressive law firms spread across the UK, each one chosen because their clients tell us that they deliver great customer service.” (UK)
- Riverview Law – “We deliver fixed-fee legal advice for businesses of all sizes. We are changing the way businesses use, measure and buy legal services.” (UK)
- Salvos Legal – “We provide quality commercial and property law advice on a paid basis. However, all of our fees fund our ‘legal aid’ sister firm. Both are wholly owned by The Salvation Army.” (Australia)
- Seyfarth Lean – “A distinctive client service model that provides a different way of thinking about and delivering legal services.” (US)
- Slater & Gordon – “A leading consumer law firm in Australia with a growing presence in the UK consumer law market. We employ 1,200 people in 70 locations across Australia and 1,300 people in 18 locations in the UK. ” (Australia)
- VLP Law Group – “We provide sophisticated legal advice in a wide range of practice areas, but our overhead is low, our staffing lean, our fees flexible and value-driven.” (US)
- Winn Solicitors – “We are national road traffic accident specialists. With Winns, you have no excess to pay.” (UK)
B. Project/Flex/Dispersed Legal Talent Providers
- Advent Balance – “A firm that combines the expertise of outside counsel with the best qualities of a sophisticated in-house team.” (Australia)
- Avokka Virtual GC – “Virtual counsel. Real results. Shift your thinking about legal counsel. Change the way you do business.” (Canada)
- Axiom – “A 1,000-person firm, serving nearly half the F100 through 12 offices and 4 centers of excellence globally.” (US)
- Bespoke Law – “A network of experienced lawyers who are available to provide clients with tailored support without watching the clock.” (Australia)
- Cognition – “A team of highly experienced and skilled lawyers offering first-class business legal counsel either on-site or off-site, on a flexible, as-needed basis.” (Canada)
- Conduit – “We pride ourselves on providing knowledgeable and effective legal counsel to address your needs as they emerge within your business.” (Canada)
- Custom Counsel – “We are a nationwide collective of over 100 experienced attorneys who provide project-based legal services to other attorneys.” (US)
- Daily General Counsel – “We come to your place of business for a full day and help you to solve your most pressing legal-related business problems.” (US)
- Delegatus – “We have reinvented the law firm business model for you.” (Canada)
- Eversheds Agile – “We meet a demand by clients for temporary, high-quality legal professionals that provide peace of mind and a link to an international law firm.” (UK)
- Fondia – “A strategy that breaks with traditional law firm culture to transform the experience of clients and staff.” (Finland)
- Halebury Law – “Your external in-house lawyers – offering clients senior ex in-house lawyers on a flexible basis.” (UK)
- Intermix Legal – “Experienced freelance attorneys providing project-based legal support services to law firms & solo practitioners.”
- Lawyers On Demand – “You can flex the size and capability of your team just when you need to.” (UK)
- Paragon – “We provide embedded attorneys on a project basis to assist with overflow work, hiring gaps, interim backfills and special projects.” (US)
- Pinsent Masons Vario – “We are a hub of freelance legal professionals who are not just technically skilled, but have the personality and drive to ‘fit right in’, to add value from day one.” (UK)
- The Posse List – “We post document reviews, paralegal positions, forensics positions, litigation support positions, project management positions, compliance positions, general counsel/assistant general counsel positions – pretty much everything across the legal employment field.” (US)
- Project Counsel – “We post European, Asia Pacific and Persian Gulf based document reviews, paralegal positions, forensics positions, litigation support positions, project management positions, compliance positions, law firm associate positions, and general counsel positions.” (Belgium)
- Proximity Legal – “A leading provider of onsite legal, procurement and work health and safety services to the government sector.” (Australia)
- VistaLaw – “A global team of former in-house attorneys with broad experience in providing legal support and advice to international companies.” (UK)
C. Managed Legal Support Services
- Elevate Legal Services – “A global legal service provider helping law firms and corporate legal departments operate more effectively.” (US)
- LeClair Ryan Legal Solutions – “We provide a wide range of support services and incorporate best-in-class technology and quality control processes which will be uniquely integrated into the law firm’s litigation and transactional practice areas.” (US)
- MiamiLex – “A revolutionary alliance of the School of Law at the University of Miami and UnitedLex, a leading global provider of legal support and technology services.” (US)
- Novus Law – “We provide legal document management, review and analysis services for lawyers that are measurably more accurate, faster and less expensive.” (US)
- Obelisk Legal Support – “We provide flexible, affordable and quality support for in-house legal teams and law firms.” (UK)
- OnRamp Apprentice – “We hire recent law grads to work on large scale ‘contract genome mapping’ projects.” (US)
- Pangea3 – “The global leader in legal outsourcing. Our LPO provides comprehensive legal services to corporate lawyers and law firms.” (US)
- Radiant Law – “Outsourcing, IT, commercial contracts from negotiations to disputes. We bring together legal judgement, process and technology. ” (UK)
- United Lex – “The global leader in legal services outsourcing, provides litigation, contracts and IP services to corporations and law firms.” (US)
2. Applying Technology to the Performance of Legal Tasks
A. Tools To Help Lawyers Do Legal Work Differently
- AAA ClauseBuilder – “‘Designed to assist individuals and organizations develop clear and effective arbitration and mediation agreements.” (US)
- BrightLeaf – “A technology-driven service that automates the entire process of abstracting information from all your contracts for upload to your CMS or for use with our abstraction analysis tool.” (US)
- CaseText – “Judicial opinions and statutes are annotated with analysis by prominent law professors and attorneys at leading firms, giving you unique insight. And everything is 100% free.” (US)
- DealStage: “Enables attorneys and transactional professionals to better manage the deal process lifecycle from drafting to closing.” (US)
- ClearAccess IP – “Serving the patent marketplace by lowering transactions and streamlining data management at the prosecution level.” (US)
- Diligence Engine – “Technology-enhanced contract review: faster and more accurate.” (Canada)
- Judicata – “Mapping the legal genome to help you better understand the law.” (US)
- Jurify – “We harness the collective genius of legal titans to deliver a complete set of resources on legal topics in one quick search.” (US)
- KM Standards – “Our patented software allows you to build model forms from your own agreements, audit entire contract sets, and quickly review incoming contracts.” (US)
- Koncision Contract Automation – “A subscription-based service providing lawyers with document-assembly templates for business contracts.” (US)
- Legal Systematics – “We deliver automated document drafting programs and other advanced knowledge tools for making legal work more efficient.” (US)
- Lex Machina – “We provide legal analytics to companies and law firms, enabling them to craft successful strategies, win cases, and close business.” (US)
- Littler CaseSmart – “A case management solution that combines a Littler-developed proprietary technology platform with rigorous quality assurance measures.” (US)
- Mootus – “We help law students and lawyers build skills, reputation and knowledge for free through open, online legal argument.” (US)
- Neota Logic – “We transform expertise into answers and action.” (US)
- Ravel Law – “Data-driven legal research and analytics.” (US)
- Sky Analytics – “Helps reduce legal spend, control legal costs and benchmark legal spend.” (US)
- TyMetrix – “The leader in bringing advanced technologies to critical dimensions of legal transactions and analytics.” (US)
B. Tools To Help Clients Resolve Disputes Directly
- CleanSplit – “An easy-to-use tool that allows divorcing couples to divide their property without confrontation while saving time and legal fees.” (US)
- Fair Outcomes – “Provides parties involved in disputes or difficult negotiations with access to newly developed proprietary systems that allow fair and equitable outcomes to be achieved with remarkable efficiency.” (US)
- Fixed – “The easiest way to fix a parking ticket.” (US)
- Modria – “The world’s leading Online Dispute Resolution platform.” (US)
- Picture It Settled – “Using neural networks to examine the behaviour of negotiators in thousands of cases, we can predict what an opponent will do, thereby saving time and money while optimizing settlements.” (US)
- Rechtwijzer – “Rechtwijzer 1.0 was … an appropriate, trustable legal helping hand that would assist people throughout their conflicts. [Rechtwijzer 2.0] enhances its services from diagnosing and referral into dispute-solving.” (The Netherlands)
- Resolve Your Dispute – “A self-help online tool for consumers to settle disputes with a business.” (Canada)
- Road Traffic Representation – “We provide you free expert advice to help you with your motor offence, from speeding fines to driving without insurance.” (UK)
- WeVorce – “Divorce is more than a legal problem. … You’ll come out with the necessary legal documents as well as a lifetime of tools, knowledge and agreements as you begin again.” (US)
C. Tools to Help Clients Conduct Their Own Legal Matters
- A2J Author – “A software tool that delivers greater access to justice for self-represented litigants by enabling non-technical authors from the courts, clerk’s offices, legal services programs, and website editors to rapidly build and implement customer friendly web-based interfaces for document assembly.” (US)
- Docracy – “The web’s only open collection of legal contracts and the best way to negotiate and sign documents online.” (US)
- EverPlans – “We provide guides, resources and a platform to help you create a plan that contains everything your loved ones will need if something happens to you.” (US)
- Fair Document – “You get all your necessary estate planning documents completed quickly, and our streamlined process of working with an attorney affords peace of mind.” (US)
- Iron Tech Lawyer – “A competition held at Georgetown Law, where student teams show off apps built in our Technology Innovation and Law Practice practicum.” (US)
- Law Help Interactive – “Helps you fill out legal forms. Answer a series of questions and print your legal form. The forms are free and have been created by nonprofit legal aid programs and courts.” (US)
- Lexspot – “Our online platform … makes the convoluted and expensive immigration process easy and affordable. ” (US)
- Peppercorn – “Create legal agreements, in multiple languages, in just minutes.” (Italy)
- Probate Wizard – “Probate is daunting. We make it simple. … the most advanced DIY probate system in the UK.” (UK)
- Shake – “We strive to combine the simplicity, convenience, and collaborative spirit of a handshake with the protection of a legal agreement.” (US)
- Smart Legal Forms – “Designed for US consumers and small business who want to resolve their legal problems at the lowest possible cost.” (US)
Some closing observations:
1. A disproportionate number of new legal talent arrangements are found outside the US (especially in England & Wales), while a disproportionate number (nearly all of them, in fact) of technology solutions are found inside the US. I attribute the former to more liberal regulatory regimes in other jurisdictions and the latter to the enormous amounts of venture capital available within the United States. (Conceivably, the restrictions on American law firm ownership help drive more resources towards tech solutions.)
2. When I started this inventory, I expected the tech entries to outnumber the talent entries, and I was surprised to see the opposite result. That might be purely a function of what I found, rather than what’s actually there. But I do take it as evidence that many more lawyers have seen and responded to the changes in how clients are buying legal services and engaging legal professionals than we generally credit. If anyone within your organization wants to reject change on the basis that ” no one else is doing it,” show them this post.
3. A lot of these companies and products might want to reconsider the fad in branding that creates a name by joining two related terms together to make one word. (Says the guy with a blog called “Law21.”)
So there you have it: my incomplete inventory of this indeterminate thing called “NewLaw.” It’s good enough for my presentation; hopefully, with your contributions and observations, you can make it even better.
Jordan Furlong is a lawyer, consultant, and legal industry analyst who forecasts the impact of the changing legal market on lawyers, clients, and legal organizations. He has delivered dozens of addresses to law firms, state bars, law societies, law schools, judges, and many others throughout the United States and Canada on the evolution of the legal services marketplace.
Mandy Woodland
Thanks for this Jordan – an excellent inventory, and quite useful as a reference!
I’m a Canadian small (solo) firm pricing with fixed fees, online delivery, and flexible arrangements (like sitting in-house for some clients at times), and loving every minute of the opportunities NewLaw provides. Being able to provide certainty in cost to clients is making legal services more accessible.
Rachel Rodgers Law (rachelrodgerslaw dot com) helped guide me (and many other lawyers) on the path towards fixed fees and online delivery, and is an excellent resource in the U.S.
George Beaton
Jordan, this work is a very useful contribution to furthering the exploration and understanding of what constitutes the NewLaw business model. Thank you for using the neologism we coined correctly, i.e. one word with a capital N and a capital L.
NewLaw is shorthand for the essence of the emerging business model being adopted by an increasingly large and diverse range of providers. The notion of a business model is the same as Peter Drucker’s ‘theory of business’. As Drucker once wrote: “In times of turbulence the biggest danger is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
This quote pretty much captures the dilemma of BigLaw business model (i.e. traditional) firms. For as long as these firms remain trapped in the consequences of a partnership structure and culture, they will struggle to innovate in ways that are disruptive (a la Clayton Christensen).
In our opinion there is hope for BigLaw firms which grasp this challenge – which some are a;ready successfully doing.
Thank you again for citing my Book ‘NewLaw New Rules’; it aims to make a contribution to the discourse and to stimulate clients, BigLaw and NewLaw firms alike.
Regards
Wesley Todd
Jordan: all I can say is thank you for your hard work with this. I greatly appreciate the time you took to put this together. If only we could get a copy of this in the hands of every corporation in the country so that they could know their rights and opportunities to obtain innovative legal services.
Wes
Jayne Navarre
Jordan, excellent list! Thanks. As a marketer, this list makes me want to dig deeper into that aspect of what each is doing to gain exposure. If it’s okay with you, I’d love to take on that challenge. My guess is that their approach is non traditional too.
On another note, I had cause to use Legal Zoom just yesterday and the experience was terrific. I thought it funny that I know so many attorneys but chose to go that direction. I did so because I needed it quickly. Had I gone the traditional route with my small need, I’m pretty sure I would be at the back of the line and would have taken weeks! The service is technology and yes, there are real lawyers involved.
Thanks again!
Ann Lee Gibson
Jordan, this is a great post. Thanks for your scholarship. Get ready for additional traffic to your blog, because many will be linking to this post and bookmarking it.
Denise Nurse
Thanks Jordan, I very much agree with your observations on how the legal market is changing and how new players in the market are shaping the future of legal services. I really appreciate the work put into pulling this together. There is so much changing and it’s not easy to find central places that logically collate the “New”. We at Halebury fall under two categories: New Model Law Firm and Project/Flex/Dispersed Legal Talent Providers. We position ourselves as “Your external in-house lawyers – offering clients senior ex in-house lawyers on a flexible basis”.
Best wishes
Denise Nurse, CEO Halebury
Russell Hallam
I am a keen reader of your blog and rate most of what you say, but, call me cynical (lawyer after all) but a lot of the so-called new law models are also largely based on marketing. yes, technology and costs savings are important, but the essence of legal services and advice remains that most clients want value, they want experience, they want to be protected. The big change, in my opinion, is that clients now call the shots, not lawyers. Lawyers, to change, whatever then model they use, must offer what clients want. The evidence so far in the UK is that the template suppliers are not being as successful as you might think. Clients are confused but not stupid, they know that a template comes with dangers. Adaptable and flexible firms will prosper, it’s definitely not all about mode;ls and cutting costs.
Nancy Myrland
Jordan, this is what I meant last week when I said that your word is golden. The research and time that you put into putting this together is both impressive and to be applauded.
I often wonder if law firms would take the time to assemble a mastermind including CEOs, CFOs snd CMOS from their top 10 clients, bringing them in to help them craft a new business model of their own, what they would come up with and how surprised and motivated they would be at how their clients run their businesses, thus allowing them to model some of the best practices in business that exist out there.
Jeff Carr
. Let me take a minute of your time to describe the market from my perspective (that of the true customer). In my view, the VC’s in this space and the start-ups are still looking at the periphery – the “what can be outsourced that lawyers now do” model — not the new platform that destroys the traditional model of what lawyers today do. The true gist is:
• “Big Law” or “Old Law” (aka a traditional law firm) is not in the business of solving legal problems – it is in the business of billing hours to solve legal problems.
• “New Law” (e.g., LPO’s, Axiom, Huron, etc.) is in the business of billing lower cost hours to solve legal problems.
• “Enlightened Law” (e.g., Riverview, Valorem, etc) is in the business of solving legal problems effectively and efficiently.
• “Next Law” is the business of preventing legal problems from ever arising.
In-house counsel teams are uniquely situated to understand and deliver on the prevention focus – precisely because that’s what a high performance legal team does. The problem is that most in-house teams are just as risk-averse as outside counsel and generally overwhelmed with reactive work. As such, I think very few are actually focused on my vision of Next Law. The most interesting thing about Next Law is that it co-exists with Big, Old and New Law – as providers for reactive services when legal problems do arise – but the focus of Next Law is on prevention and proactive law and therefore cost reduction by limiting the incidents giving rise to the need for the high cost remedial and reactive legal services. We’ll never eliminate fires and as such will always need firefighters – but we can drastically reduce fire incidents and therefore leverage the costs over fewer incidents. The truly interesting thing is that I believe that large segments of the legal market are going unserved today precisely because the cost of delivery of legal services is prohibitively high. Many small and mid-size companies “go naked” and then when they are embroiled in a legal issue, they have no recourse but to react – and that means even higher costs.
If you wonder whether I have any basis for these views, let me draw your attention to our track record from the time of our spin-off from FMC Corp in 2001 until now: 2001 — $1.8B sales, $14.8 total legal spend; 2013 — $7.5B sales, $9.8M total legal spend — and 7% average bonus to legal service providers.
Unless you change how you provide legal services, you can’t get metrics like those below in a world where law firm rates go up 10% a year, my internal costs go up 5%-8% annually, the company has tripled in size, the regulatory burden has grown significantly – while at the same time paying your law firms more than they bill you!
Via la (R)evolution! I use that phrase because the legal industry fights change and innovation at every turn – That said, whether Revolution, Evolution or Foreverlution, I believe the tipping point has been reached – it’s just that many of the players don’t see, or don’t want to see the comet coming.
Douglas William Vitt
Dear Mr. Furlong,
Thirty-one years ago next week when I graduated from law school what folks now call the innovation of working for a “fixed fee” was called “being on salary”. I am also old enough to remember carbon paper and how the IBM Selectric and then the Wang Word Processor were going to revolutionize the legal industry. In America now for decades Lawyers (aka Solicitors) have gotten to charge Attorney (aka Barrister) fees due to our nation’s single licensure system. The public has caught on; so while there is what I call a “Great Contraction” in the legal industry with regards to the employment of Lawyers due to the LPO’s and Non-Lawyer’s pushing inside “the Box” that use to be protected by “the Bar” there is still a critical shortage of Attorneys in America. All that has happened since the Recession of 2008 is that there is now a critical shortage of easy Lawyer work for which one can charge clients Attorney’s fees. Lawyers will just have to start doing the hard work of being an Attorney if they want to make a “NewLaw World Order” living.
Best,
DWm Vitt
Laura Vickers
Hi Jordan
Nest Legal is a new model law firm in Australia, offering fixed-fee services in estates, conveyancing and unbundled coaching for self-represented litigants online and after-hours. Our clients are people whose caregiving and work responsibilities do not allow them to visit a lawyer during the day but who want an ongoing personal relationship with a known lawyer. Our prices are all listed on our website. 5% of our profits are reinvested in other women’s businesses via Kiva.
Cheers, Laura.
Carolyn Elefant
Great list, Jordan. But I would argue that some of the companies classified as NewLaw are really Law 2.0. For example, I am not sure how companies that place freelance lawyers in various positions are all that different from Robert Half or Kelly, the placement agencies that have been around for at least 20 years. Likewise, I am not sure how many of the cloud-based or virtual firms are different from Greg Siskind’s immigration law practice that was launched when the web was in its nascency. Legal Zoom is really just Nolo on steroids. To be sure, there have been changes – but it is in the receptiveness of the profession to these models rather than the models themselves. That said, I do think we will start to see new iterations of these former models – the way that Axiom has gone from being a high end temp agency to a law/business consultant or that Daily General Counsel has riffed on the “outside counsel” services model with a one-day offering. But I think we are going to see many more copycats of the Law 2.0 before we get to the good stuff.
Reed Jessen
Great list, I have a lot of research to do on all these companies. Thanks.
Did you happen to take a look at IP Street? http://ipstreet.com/ If so, what do you think?
Anatoly Dvorkin
Jordan, what a great list! A helpful resource for anyone interested in legal innovation. It is an exciting time to be an owner of a law firm. Technology (legal and mainstream) has made the cost of entry so much more reasonable and has provided the ability to provide legal services in a more efficient, effective and client-centered manner. I look forward to being part of this industry for decades to come and to be one of the players in legal innovation.
Patrick J. McKenna
Jordan: Absolutely BRILLIANT! Not only a thorough inventory but a nice job of organizing the players. I’m sure that this listing will be widely referenced.
Gina Minton
This is an amazing list. Applying technology makes things easier and simpler. Thanks.
Nathan Wenzel
I’ll add SimpleLegal to your list. We’re an eBilling and Matter Management platform built for companies spending under $20M/yr in legal fees.
Salesforce was a new platform for VP of Sales. WorkDay was the new platform for VP of HR. SimpleLegal is the new platform for the GC.
Like other true cloud-based software providers, we have a free plan to make it easier for companies to get started.
Nathan Wenzel
CEO
SimpleLegal
Molly Porter
As someone relatively new to NewLaw, this is an invaluable resource! Thank you!
Mark Keenan
I was surprised that Divorce-Online was not mentioned. A pioneer in the delivery of online legsl services. We started in 1999 and have saved consumers millions of pounds in unneccessary legal fees all deliver to the client how they want it.
Harriet
This a brilliant compilation, a very impressive piece of work which I have marked as a first rate reference.
Linda
This is great piece of work, research and presentation. The changing face of the law profession in the Western world is there for all to see and feel. IT, media, marketing and government cuts and perhaps the acceptance that what the clients wants what he is going to pay for, not what you the lawyer, want him to pay for.
Kim Verska
You have forgotten Culhane Meadows, a New Law type firm. We hire only 10+ years’ experienced attorneys with Big Law or equivalent backgrounds, and then put them in an ultra low-overhead environment. We have no building, no associates, no W2 staff — just have laptop, will travel. We are replicating the services offered by BigLaw on a low overhead foundation and have a huge range of Fortune 500 clients. We are in 6 cities and growing quickly. Attractions for recruits include no face time, no billable quotas, and formulaic compensation that is superior to ANY law firm competitor of ours. We are currently looking for new attorneys in DC, Texas, Illinois, and New York. Practice areas include all the usual suspects from the BigLaw world. Please write with inquiries!
Skye Burne
Thanks for this Jordan – an excellent inventory, and quite useful as a reference! this work is a very useful contribution to furthering the exploration and understanding of what constitutes the NewLaw business model.
divorceonlineutah
Thanks, really useful listing! There’s so many legal companies now, so picking one is rally big problem for a customer! I would also be very grateful if you included more law schools into that list.
onlinedivorcer.com
Analytics becomes more and more essential when we talking about legal technology. Many government courts already supports electronical filing of document, so I hope life will became easier because of impact of technologies on law practice.
Ben Lore
Thank you for an interesting article. I think that technology will prevail around the world, even in legal