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I L T A N E T . O R G
W
hat do law firms look like in
2025? Technolo has moved so
rapidly it's been hard to predict
the magnitude of changes we'll
see in the legal market in five
years. It seems like such a short period of time, but just four
years ago, Aderant released "Your Firm 2020", a seminal
thesis encompassing predictions for what law firms would
look like and what technolo they would be using at the
start of the new decade. Many of these changes came even
quicker than we initially predicted.
Back in 2016, as firms were emerging from the Great
Recession, we saw a bright future, growth, and arrival of
new technolo in the post-recession world, brought on by
need but certainly also by the changing dynamic of who
was working in law firms. We've seen and helped firms
work through these challenges on their way to 2020 –
mobility, automation, and collaboration. These were the
biggest ideas changing the legal space four years ago. Most
firms will have tackled these, and based off our finding in
the Aderant 2019 Business of Law and Legal Technolo
Survey and other observations we've made; we believe the
next steps in law firm evolution are:
• The Millennial Effect
• Substantial Changes in Business-to-Business
Collaboration
• Increase in Adaptive Experiences
• Moving Completely to the Cloud
Surprised? We're not. These four cornerstones are
the future of law firms, and legal technolo – they all go
hand-in-hand, with number one – the millennial shift.
We've seen a histrionic movement around who is working
– both in and out of law firms – millennials now make up
the largest generation in the workforce (in 2017, it was
reported that 35% of the workforce and 25% of lawyers
in the U.S. are millennials). And they've brought the
technolo they use in their every day lives with them –
they have expectations that increased collaboration (both
internally and externally), emerging adaptive experiences,
and access to the cloud will be readily available to them at
the touch of a button.
How will this unfold? Let's peek into the future and
how we see legal technolo shaking out over the next five
years.
The Millennial (and Gen Z) Effect
In 2017, millennials became the largest generation in the
U.S. labor force, with 56 million millennials working or
looking for work, according to the Pew Research Center –
that breaks down to 35% of the U.S. labor force. They are
leading the charge on technolo, and within the next five
years, 75% of the workforce will be millennials. This
year, millennials are predicted to overtake Baby Boomers
as the largest living generation – they've already beat Gen
Xers.
No one should be surprised that this generation
is bringing about massive change to the workplace.
Millennials have shaped technolo dramatically –
pushing ideas that they've become accustomed to with
consumer technolo into their workspaces – and that
includes in the legal space. However, they won't be doing
it alone for much longer – by 2020, 20% of the workforce
will be Gen Z – meaning, if you add up the numbers, over
55% of the U.S. workforce will be made up of Millennials
and the Gen Z kids.
Both generations are extraordinarily tech-savvy
– and they bring that to law firms. Earlier generations –
both Baby Boomers and Gen Xer are experiencing a fear
of missing out (or FOMO) when it comes to the efficiency
that the two younger generations bring. We see the earlier
