Law firm CIOs who think strategically need to understand the where the legal market and large law firms are heading.
Large UK law firm Eversheds recently released its Law Firm of the 21st Century report. I found it provocative and had hoped to comment about it but too much time has elapsed, so let me point you to two good commentaries on it.
Eversheds Brings Us “The Law Firm of the 21st Century” by Adam Smith, Esq., provides both a summary and trenchant comments, including “My take on it is that the changes expected are both more and less radical than we have imagined.”
Ed Poll of Lawbiz.com, a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and legal consultant, posted The Future of the Law Firm – A report prepared for Eversheds law firm at the College’s blog. He offers an excellent analysis and historical perspective on the issues in the report. Poll examines the “disconnect between lawyers and their clients in large corporate enterprises.”
For just the most recent evidence of that “disconnect,” see The Rating Game in the July issue of Inside Counsel (follow link to PDF of article). The disparity between inside and outside counsel views are quite evident.
In my own view, many of the problems the Eversheds report raises and the commentary on it stem from my thesis in my recent “Modest Proposal” posts, that the underlying problem of the legal market is that customers do not exercise their market power.