P2P

54 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 U M M E R 2 0 2 1 (gulp!) years I've been following this industry. Clients don't push for change. They complain about the current state. With deepest apologies to Aaron Sorkin, deep down in places they don't talk about on panels, they want their firms on that wall, they need them on that wall. What I mean is, GCs are not that interested in changing either. I used to be in the "why are firms not listening to their clients" camp. But then I realized they are listening, but not to what their clients are saying. They are reacting to what the clients are doing – which isn't much. I've already abused Sorkin once in this paragraph, so I may as well go all in, this time from the criminally underrated Charlie Wilson's War. Why are clients saying one thing and doing nothing? Well, tradition mostly. I do see some outside forces potentially at play here. In the long term, alternative business structures may have an impact and there will be more traction from alternative providers and especially the Big 4. And I'm going to ask you what CIOs need to do to prepare for the long term in each of your four buckets. But before I do that, I'd like to get your take on a shorter-term trend I think may drive firms into buckets three and four a whole lot faster: We are seeing incredible demand for legal services right now, and I think we all expect that trend to continue. Firms are turning away business that they never would have even a year or two ago, just due to capacity issues. Now, tech can be the solution for a lot of those capacity issues – tech that has been resisted in part because it's inconsistent with an hourly billing model. So my question is this: Do you think that previously recalcitrant law firm partners will turn to tech rather than disappointing clients by not being able to deliver in a timely manner or at all? Jae: So before I answer your question, I have one disagreement on the practitioner's toolbox. It may sound like splitting hairs, but it's not. I think there's an important debate to be had about where the final decision rights should reside on what tech legal teams use: CIO or the practitioners themselves. This is especially germane because the market- wide drive to consolidate legal tech has largely benefited vendors (by helping them meet ARR targets) sometimes at the expense of users (because that ARR often comes from bundling a ton of bloated shelfware). For my part, I think the decision rights question will look and feel differently depending on the size and shape of the firm. Also the answer should probably vary across categories of legal tech. Yes, most practice management tools benefit from or require firmwide adoption. For very specialized tooling or for document-adjacent utilities, I don't think that's always the case. Absolutely agree the CIO needs to be clear-eyed about what tech will get used, which is to say the CIO needs to get and stay closer to the internal user base of the law firm. But I don't take it for granted that the CIO can or wants to keep track of the exploding legal tech landscape E X T R A S "We are seeing incredible demand for legal services right now, and I think we all expect that trend to continue."

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