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A New Day Dawns: No Turning Back Now!

8/12/2016

6 Comments

 
"The future is not going to wait on us. We have to go with it."
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Who said that? Steve Jobs? Peter Diamandis? Elon Musk? Richard Susskind?

None of the above.

Those were the words of the American Bar Association Immediate Past President this week in San Francisco on the day she relinquished the mantel for her year of service. On passing the gavel to her successor, Paulette Brown was responding to the two years of work by the ABA Commission of the Future of Legal Services. The Futures Commission was established in 2014 by then ABA President William Hubbard to explore how the future of law should be expected to develop.

Its Report on the Future of Legal Services in the United States is a 100 page tour d' force review and set of recommendations for the legal profession. It is a no holds barred assessment of the challenges, failures and opportunities faced by lawyers to narrow the access to justice gap in the US.

How did the new ABA President respond?

In her own words, Linda Klien congratulated the Futures Commission as a "silo-busting" force and observed:

“It’s neither easy nor comfortable to embrace change. But we’ve got to do it and we’ve got to do it now. It’s clear that lawyers have so much to offer to those who need help, but millions can’t access our services. This has to change, and we must be the drivers of innovations so others don’t do it for us. “
The report was approved by the ABA Board of Governors.

A close reading of the Futures Commission report is warranted by anyone in the business of law. No segment of the legal services industry escapes scrutiny. Courts, bar associations, law schools, BigLaw, solo's, legal tech and clients alike are encouraged to abandon their silo mentality and embrace innovation, change and collaboration.

The call for change is not simply for the benefit of the impoverished, but for an under served community of individuals, businesses and organizations unable to access legal services because of cost, inconvenience and barriers to entry,

As much as we would like to hide from this disruptive reality, technology, artificial intelligence, new service models and alternative providers are lowering the barrier to entry and the costs of legal services. These are not forces to be resisted, but embraced . . . for the benefit of clients.

Project management, process improvement and Lean operational methodologies apply as much to the delivery of legal services as they do to manufacturing and software development. The annoyingly familiar phrase "better, faster and cheaper" has as much to do with law as it does with consumer products. After all, the legal services industry exists to provide service to its consumers.

The Report painfully observes that the legal profession has lost the public trust by its elite, discriminatory and exclusive approach to its business and services. Only by placing client interests first will our profession regain that trust. Only by working with other disciplines and experts can the fleet be turned in a new direction. The silos must fall.

The Futures Commission makes 12 all encompassing recommendations for our profession's future. Each recommendation undercuts the status quo and requires rigorous innovation, creativity and courage.

For many this report is a startling call to action. For others it is "too little, too late."

For all, there is no turning back.
6 Comments

Are you bad enough to be good enough to succeed as a lawyer?

9/17/2015

0 Comments

 
Ken Grady of Seytlines posts an excellent analysis of how lawyers who need to be good at everything are prevented from serving their clients well. Being good at only what the client needs most and mediocre at everything else is what clients expect from their lawyers.

Check out: http://bit.ly/1LiJl3z

Among many great points, Ken notes:
Legal services delivery has been trapped in a one-size-fits-all-this-is-the-only-way-we-do-it phase since the early 1900s. As competition has increased, lawyer’s have responded by trying to maintain the fiction that they can do all aspects of legal services delivery exceptionally well. Of course, that fiction has butted heads with reality. Lawyers, the same as anyone else, cannot provide excellence in all aspects of legal services delivery. More to the point, those who try to do so, though they may not recognize it, end up being mediocre.
Lawyers' fear of being bad at anything (or the dreaded "F" word - failure) prevents them from being the best at the few things their clients hire them for.

Ken continues:
The trick in services, it turns out, is to start with what your client values. Lawyers often don’t know what their clients value. For some clients, it may be timeliness, for others cost, and yet others may value a comprehensive scope. Whatever the client values, that is where the lawyer should seek to excel in her services. To do so, the lawyer must accept that she will need to be bad in some other aspect of services. Note, I didn’t say that the lawyer should accept average, mediocre, or fair-to-middling in areas the client doesn’t value; I said bad
The simple truth is that without understanding the problem the client is trying to solve, lawyers can't be of much service at all.

Let's learn to embrace the apparent oxymoron: To be really good, I must be really bad.
0 Comments

Disruption in the Law is Here, It's Not Just Coming

9/9/2015

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    W. Edwards Deming protege and marketing guru Jay Deragon (@jderagon) has posted an an authoritative review of the state of the law and its ripeness for disruption. https://lnkd.in/e2iy_-P A "soup to nuts" survey of why and how the status quo state of the legal service industry is crumbling at its foundation and what is being done about it.
    Among many other evidences of change, Deragon notes:
Legal-project management is becoming increasingly common, especially in law firms working under alternative fee arrangements such as fixed or flat fees, cost limits, and success bonuses. Such cases require management of schedule, risk, and cost in a more rigorous and measured manner than firms have practiced in the past.  Professor Larry Bridgesmith, of the Vanderbilt Law School, has developed an enterprise digital application, called Lean2Legal®, which enables project management, and all the participants, to effectively and efficiently apply the tools and techniques of lean thinking to legal practices. The client outcomes are faster, smarter and at lower cost.
    Of course, the harbinger of change in law for almost twenty years has been Prof. Richard Susskind of Oxford Law who has stated:
The future of legal service will be a world of virtual courts, Internet-based global legal businesses, online document production, commoditized service, legal process outsourcing, and web-based simulated practice. Legal markets will be liberalized, with new jobs, and new employers, for lawyers.
    Those who are creating this disruption (corporate clients, legal process outsourcers and legal tech startups) are benefiting greatly by the innovations they are bringing to law.
    Those who resist are being swept out to sea by the tsunami.
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Lawyers in the Gigging Economy

9/7/2015

2 Comments

 
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    Like the handy Gig2Go USB flash drive which provides a temporary and portable file sharing tool when most needed and least expected, jobs are becoming Gigs to Go as well.
The notion that employment has entered a disappearing act phase and some form of temporary independent contractor arrangements are growing exponentially is a threat to some and an incredible opportunity for others.
    It is astounding how many Uber drivers used to be taxi drivers working a "steady" job for an established company. The new brand of Uber drivers using their own vehicles and working when and where they want speak to me of being far more satisfied as their own independent business, than as a dispensable employee never more than five minutes away from a pink slip.
    Indeed, the social contract of "permanent" employment died in the last century as wave after wave of "reductions in force" and "corporate re-sizing" instructed all of us that employee status was the most impermanent of all economic conditions.
    Recent analysis of the global transition to a Gigging Economy (by which growing numbers of individuals only work from gig to gig or at many gigs at once) reveals this is more than a temporary aberration, but a permanent trend. The digital, on demand and sharing economy has fueled this new workforce of workers working on their own time and in response to market needs.
    None less than the Harvard Business Review posted a searing criticism of the lack of regulatory awareness of this new economic opportunity in The Dawning of the Age of Flex Labor. The authors conclude:
Flexwork is an idea whose time has come.
Societal, technological and global business interests all indicate this is an irreversible path exponentially empowered by the Internet of Things. Among the factors precipitating this change in the employment relationship include
  • The relative ubiquity of broadband connections
  • Collaboration tools like Dropbox and Evernote
  • Continued improvements to services like Skype and Google Hangouts.
  • Software-driven marketplaces such as HourlyNerd, UpCounsel, and Behance that are facilitating the fast and accurate match of the supply and demand for high-quality, experienced talent
    However, laws and economic expectations are not catching up as fast as the opportunities arise.
    As the U.S. celebrates Labor Day today (and as a career labor and employment lawyer) the status of work is of immense importance to us. In recognition of this pervasive movement toward "freelancing" employment, the New York Times editorial board today offered its opinion that we need Help for the Way we Work Now.
    It should seem inescapable that the period of stable "employee" relationships with trustworthy employers for a lifetime of secure employment has gone the way of the cathode ray tube.
    However, there is nothing new in this paradigm to lawyers, especially outside lawyers. Over 35 years of legal practice has taught me that my economic security is only as strong as my last engagement and the potential for the next one. Outside lawyers have been Giggers all our careers.
    It seems a bit oxymoronic to suggest that the exponential sharing and on demand economy will subject lawyers to threats of extinction. The best and the brightest always have adjusted to the changing economies.
    At least on this score, the Gigging economy is no different than whatever preceded it in the delivery of legal services.
     
2 Comments

    Larry Bridgesmith J.D.

    Over 35 years of delivering legal services now teaching, writing, speaking and bringing Lean2Legal.

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