Peer to Peer Magazine

PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGA ZINE OF ILTA 32 building. They should identify and track the individual tasks involved in different matters, the time spent on those tasks and the outcomes of the matters in terms of success, payments, settlements and client satisfaction. In turn, firms should want to invest in technologies that make such models usable and understandable to both the clients and the professionals who serve them. WHY LAW WILL REMAIN A PROFESSION DESPITE TECHNOLOGY One frequently expressed concern about everything I have written here is the sentiment that the law is a profession, not a business. How can technology truly replace the independent judgment that clients hire lawyers to provide? The answer is, it can't. But it can provide lawyers with powerful information to inform that judgment. In a world drowning in information, lawyers can determine which data matter most. Lawyers should examine the essential value they bring to client service and work closely with knowledge management professionals to make that added value scalable and replicable. Savvy knowledge managers can create models, but experienced lawyers must prioritize what is important to both lawyers and clients. Just as with any other valuable colleague in your firm, technology isn't your replacement, it's one of your greatest partners. SMART MOVES how the nature of a case, a region or type of law will affect costs and outcomes. Lawyers and knowledge management professionals must work collaboratively in teams not only to serve clients, but also to develop new, powerful products. With technology acting more as a partner than a tool, law firms will also need to re-examine their business models. There has been much discussion lately about the evolution of the traditional pyramid model — where a large base of associates supports a relatively small number of partners — to a diamond, with partners at the top, a small group of associates at the bottom and a middle layer of consultants, counsel and LPOs also serving clients. In this model, law firms must consider new issues, such as offering significant incentives to knowledge management professionals whose innovations give their firms a competitive edge in client service. For example, the recent deregulation of United Kingdom firms that allows for non-lawyers to hold equity in a firm has led several firms to offer a stake to business services personnel who enhance the firm's bottom line. In the future, firms might want to liberalize ownership structures or create new business units to provide the equivalent of stock options or equity for non-lawyers. Finally, and not surprisingly, firms should look at making greater investments in technology. Big data must be good data. Knowledge management teams must consider what data are most useful for model Predicting Outcomes: Perhaps most important, clients continue to pressure firms not only for reliable costs but anticipated outcomes on which to base their cost benefit analysis of legal strategies. Big data, coupled with increasingly sophisticated analytic tools, can greatly enhance the accuracy of this analysis and, perhaps, offer even more strategic options. Lowering Costs: Firms are seeking savings by consolidating business and legal support functions in a low-cost model. New legal services providers are competing directly with firms or working in concert with them to offer e-discovery, due diligence and automated document generation through the application of proprietary software. Meeting Client Expectations: Clients are demanding more for less. Pricing pressure is leading to an increase in flat fee and alternative fee arrangements. Firms seeking to meet those expectations must have internal technology capable of analyzing the tasks essential to serving a client, attaching costs to those services and developing models that meet both the client's and the firm's financial needs. Law firms will need to consider new issues, such as offering significant incentives to knowledge management professionals whose innovations give their firms a competitive edge in client service.

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