Let’s get one thing straight: I’m an online-eyeglass-ordering, hybrid-driving,
Internet-CEO hipster. I will be the first in line
for a driverless car. And, as someone who
has worked with thousands of small law
firms, I predict there is no major disruption
coming. Small law firm attorneys will not
be traveling to the courthouse via jetpack
anytime soon.
I see evolution, not revolution, coming
with technology- and workflow-driven
changes, mostly with the end result of
more profitable firms that can handle more
cases per attorney. But if you’re expecting
fantastic changes like Uber’s disruption of
taxis or Amazon’s upending of bookstores,
I simply don’t see it in the cards.
In the future, small law firms will look
much like the firms they are now. Humans
will continue to find themselves mired
in intractable, suffocating problems that
need solving by brilliant attorneys. In the
future — as in the present and past — small
firms must serve their clients, and they will
differentiate themselves by their success or
failure in doing so. In that sense, nothing’s
changing: good attorneys will prosper, and
bad attorneys will languish or move on.
From a process and business
perspective, though, small law firms must
change or likely go extinct. If you want a
glimpse of how the future for small law
firms will be different, just look at what early
technology adopters are up to today. It turns
out it’s quite easy to predict the future of
small law firms, because the profession as a
whole has been slow to adopt technology.
Change is afoot in dynamic but gradual ways,
for the benefit of most, though certainly not
all. This change has four aspects:
1) ON THE ONE HAND, AUTOMATION MIGHT KILL YOUIf a cheapskate business owner or consumer
can already theoretically replace a lawyer
with an off-the-rack form, expect the future
to be a lot worse. If I, as a business owner,
can obtain a commodity legal service and
have confidence (justified or not) that I will
not get in trouble later on, small firms might
want to come up with a contingency plan.
Small law firms that help people in simple,
transactional ways (e.g., with simple wills or
creating LLCs) will have big problems.
The LegalZooms of the world will
continue to pop up and improve with
increasing rapidity. Resourceful law firms
of all sizes will use contract attorneys to
help with lower-priced, cookie-cutter work.
Software automation will make document
production easier than ever. These forces of
commoditization will continue to increase
until rival brick-and-mortar legal service
providers are no longer able to compete.
They will either leave the law and choose
another career (Uber is looking for drivers,
by the way) or have to migrate their activities
to another specialization altogether, such as
cleaning up the mess made by these off-the-
shelf legal services.
FEATURES
©iStockphoto.com/CREATISTA
This article was first published in
ILTA’s Summer 2014 issue of Peer
to Peer titled “Law2020: Future
Horizons” and is reprinted here with
permission. For more information
about ILTA, visit www.iltanet.org.
peer topeer
SUMMER 2014Issue 2 Volume 30
Peer to Peer Magazine is the quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association. Find out more at iltanet.org.
Read this issue on the go! A digital version is available for your tablet, smartphone and computer. Find more information online at iltanet.org/p2p.
ILLUSTRATION BY THOMAS BOUCHER, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
FUSION = INNOVATIONHOW TO ALIGN YOUR FIRM’S IT AND BUSINESS STRATEGIES 50
ALL EYES ARE ON THE TECHNOLOGY HORIZONEXCERPTED FROM ILTA’S LEGAL TECHNOLOGY FUTURE HORIZONS REPORT 44
FUTURE SCENARIOS FOR IT | MANAGING A VIRTUAL WORKFORCE | RETHINKING YOUR BUSINESS MODEL | BREATHING LIFE INTO INNOVATION | TEACHING TECHNOLOGY TO TOMORROW’S LAWYERS | AND MOREMA
GAZIN
E
peer topeer
SUMMER 2014Issue 2 Volume 30
Peer to Peer Magazine is the quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association. Find out more at iltanet.org.
Read this issue on the go! A digital version is available for your tablet, smartphone and computer. Find more information online at iltanet.org/p2p.
ILLUSTRATION BY THOMAS BOUCHER, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
FUSION = INNOVATIONHOW TO ALIGN YOUR FIRM’S IT AND BUSINESS STRATEGIES 50
ALL EYES ARE ON THE TECHNOLOGY HORIZONEXCERPTED FROM ILTA’S LEGAL TECHNOLOGY FUTURE HORIZONS REPORT 44
FUTURE SCENARIOS FOR IT | MANAGING A VIRTUAL WORKFORCE | RETHINKING YOUR BUSINESS MODEL | BREATHING LIFE INTO INNOVATION | TEACHING TECHNOLOGY TO TOMORROW’S LAWYERS | AND MOREMA
GAZIN
E
LAW2020Future Horizons
LAW2020Future Horizons
2) ON THE OTHER HAND, AUTOMATION WILL ALLOW YOU TO THRIVEIncreased automation — for producing
documents, generating invoices and more
— reduces errors and saves time each
month that can be devoted to more client
activity and billable hours. Technology is
now so powerful and affordable that firms
that successfully wield it greatly outperform
those that don’t. A small, paperless law firm
with a mobile practice management system
can compete just as effectively as any large
law firm. An attorney with boxes full of
documents is no match for an attorney who
can use an Evernote offering to pull up any
file ever needed anywhere, at any time.
For most small law firms, the fabric of
their reality is so tightly woven that life is
unthinkable without filing cabinets, 15-minute
searches for documents and two-day billing
marathons in which invoices are reconstituted
from legal pads. Highly automated firms do
not share these tribulations and inefficiencies.
They also use document assembly software
to produce fresh and accurate new
documents that don’t need to be proofread
for embarrassing mistakes. And as powerful
document generation tools become less
expensive, easier to use and integrated
with existing tools like CRMs, their use will
become more prevalent across the legal
spectrum.
The digital divide between small firms
that access and utilize technology and those
that don’t will become more pronounced in
the future. The divide will only widen as time
goes on and laggards continue to refuse to
embrace technology (or join the party with
the late majority).
3) THE BILLABLE HOUR WILL NOT DIEAs someone who works with thousands of
small law firms, the predicted demise of the
billable hour will not happen. Flat fees might
be appropriate in some instances, and it’s
entirely possible more work could be billed in
an alternative fee arrangement. But litigation
has too many unknowns and wild twists,
and even the firms with the most advanced
knowledge of their billing practices are
vulnerable to a bad pricing decision.
All cases have similarities, and litigation
goes through the same stages every time.
But well-meant theories and data from
previous cases will not work for small law
firms. In a large law firm, more volume
will mitigate the risk of inaccurate pricing,
much as insurance companies can employ
actuaries to win more times than they
lose. Even then, the advantage of moving
exclusively to flat-fee billing is dubious.
Litigation is a lot more dynamic with many
more pieces of data than the vital statistics
actuaries use to calculate insurance risk.
Small firms do not have the volume of
work to compensate for statistical outliers
that will wreck their alternative fee models,
and a single large loss could cause them
serious economic damage.
4) THE FUTURE IS NOT ROSY FOR SUPPORT STAFFIf you were starting a law firm today with
two attorneys, would you hire a receptionist
or bring on an associate or paralegal?
Would you invest in on-premise software
and servers? Or would you purchase cloud
software that doesn’t require servers or
IT support, use a virtual service like Ruby
Receptionists and minimize payroll with
contract attorneys?
New tools and technologies do not
bode well for office support positions.
Services like Ruby Receptionists thrive
because of easily configurable VoIP
systems and call forwarders, providing a
law firm with a friendly person who is 100
percent reliable (no sick days) and quality
controlled. Fully reliable support personnel
are otherwise rare, golden hires for busy
attorneys. Solo and small firm attorneys
can manage billing without an in-house
specialist thanks to easy mobile time-
capture on smartphones. These systems
integrate directly with invoicing; the lack of
hardware saves attorneys the expense of IT
support. In addition, robust reporting tools
available through the cloud reveal clearly
which employees are especially profitable.
Just as market forces dictate the
difficulty of tossing out the billable hour,
firms weighted down with support staff will
not be as profitable, reliable or nimble as
those with a tighter payroll.
LET THE FUTURE UNFOLDIt’s true that when the singularity hits and
we have artificially intelligent attorneys
and judges, we might need to step back
and reassess things. But we’ll merely have
bigger fish to fry as our flying, driverless
cars evacuate us to the hilltops to avoid
coastal flooding from the melted polar ice
caps. Until then, small firms can evolve with
changing workflows and technologies to
remain competitive.
About the AuthorLarry Port, CEO and Founder of Rocket Matter, helps brings the business of law into the 21st century by
breaking down complex business processes and arcane technology concepts into easy to understand, humorous
and engaging sessions. He emphasizes a pragmatic approach to efficiency, simplicity and productivity for
legal professionals. At the crossroads of the legal profession and cutting-edge technology, Larry has published
extensively in legal publications, conducts free monthly webinars on emerging topics for attorneys and speaks
at bar association CLE’s around the country. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter @larryport.