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82 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S P R I N G 2 0 2 1 • The Big Four - the largest accounting and audit firms in the world, which have successfully added legal business services to their accounting and other audit services. They are now deriving significant revenue from their legal business services. • Captive LPOs (legal process outsourcing) - a subsidiary wholly- owned by a law firm, created to handle legal process work (repeatable work which can be performed efficiently, effectively, and less expensively through the application of streamlined processes, project management, and technology). These are often located in lower-cost regions. • Independent LPOs - Outsourcers that work for corporate legal departments and law firms; often matter- or project- based engagements, again focused on repeatable work that can be automated to reduce the labor costs. • Managed Services - Providers that contract for all or part of the function of an in-house legal team. They typically focus on ongoing legal work. • Contract & Staffing Services - Provide lawyers on a temporary basis to cos. & law firms. These ranges from entry-level document review to skilled specialists. History of Technologies in Legal On average, legal has been 10 years behind mainstream adoption of new technologies. We are slowly catching up and even jumping ahead in a few areas. Between 1960 and 1980 in the world, the 1st LED was developed ('62), eCommerce was pioneered ('64), the 1st moon walk ('69), compact discs were invented ('60s), computer mouse invented ('60s), the ethernet was invented ('73), Apple launched ('76). In law firms, the Typewriter was still the main piece of equipment, while telex, fax, photocopiers (B&W) and financial system spreadsheets were mainstream. The big new thing was Wang Word Processors and B&W printers. By the turn of the century, laser eye surgery had been developed, as had the Sony Walkman, the world-wide web, Linux, VoIP, HDTV, WiFi worldwide standard and the BlackBerry had been released. In legal, hardware had progressed to stand-alone IBM PC, wired networked (Novell) photocopiers, pagers and PalmPilots. Legal software consisted of DOS, a few word processors (MultiMate, WordStar, DisplayWrite, Wang, WordPerfect), along with rudimentary library/know-how databases, Windows, Novell, Mosaic/Netscape and Explorer as browsers, deal rooms, Microsoft Office and the first document management systems. In the first 20 years of this century, Nanotechnology became a thing and quantum supremacy was achieved. Legal technology vendors created bespoke legal financial systems and document management systems, started embracing cloud-hosted applications and stuck their toes into artificial intelligence and blockchain. Legal Technologies Today There are many tools developed for legal and run on top of what would be a "normal" set of office applications - complex numbering, indexing, Tables of Content, templates, comparison, redlining, pdf creation, digital dictation to name a few. This makes for a very complex legal desktop. Add to that document management and knowledge management integrations and you've got a party! All that data needs to be governed – there are information storage, management, control, monitoring and re-use policies and challenges, which are often dealt with using other technologies. And of course there are the security concerns, so another layer of technology to protect the data held by law firms. Consumerization of Technology With so much technology available to individual consumers, there is often pressure within a law firm to develop the perfect technology or app where the off-the-shelf legal products aren't a perfect fit. It's hard to understand the hours of development that goes into the creations of apps. When that is compared to buying something generic that is an 80% fit, more decisions seem to be going the direction of generic and "make do". We all face "New Shiny Toy Syndrome", where someone else has something that is seen as the PERFECT FIT, until of course you dig under the hood and find out what it really does or doesn't do and how it fits for your firm. Doing a well- A S K I N G T H E R I G H T Q U E S T I O N S

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