‘Fundamental shift’ is transforming the delivery of legal services, new report concludes — from abajournal.com by Debra Cassens Weiss
Excerpt:
“Revolutionary changes are afoot” in the market for legal services, according to a new report.
Clients are actively managing their relationships with outside counsel, nonlaw competitors are gaining ground, and law firms are responding to market changes in innovative ways, the report says.
The 2020 Report on the State of the Legal Market was released Monday by Georgetown Law’s Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession and Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute. It is available for download here.
However, taking that view is seeing only one side of the story. Over this same period, there has been mounting evidence that the underlying model itself is changing, that clients, non-law firm competitors, and even many law firms are now operating with very different assumptions about the role law firm services should play in the legal ecosystem and how such services should be delivered. In the past year or so, this evidence has grown to the point that it seems apparent that a fundamental shift is now well underway.
Also see:
- A Future Focus: The Success of Legal Tech Depends on Transformation, Not Automation — from law.com by Zach Warren
Legal technology has incrementally shifted law in recent years, but true transformation isn’t incremental. The next decade has the potential to change that. - Legal Tech’s Predictions for Legal Innovation in 2020 — from law.com by Zach Warren
From blockchain and cryptocurrency to new skillsets for lawyers, here’s what lawyers and technologists see as the future of law—coming in 2020.
Lori Lorenzo, research and insights leader of chief legal officer program, Deloitte: “Catching-up and keeping-up with tech advancements for the legal function will remain a top goal for chief legal officers in 2020. Of course, addressing legal team tech skills gaps may drive inclusion of professionals with diverse skillsets, like data scientists, automation experts and the like, into the legal function.”
