Peer to Peer Magazine

WWW.ILTANET.ORG 43 are predicting the end of lawyers and the demise of law firms. But is the future for lawyers grim? Do the changes yet to come over the next five to 10 years portend the end of lawyers? I doubt it. I believe we are nowhere near the end, but rather on the horizon of a rebirth for lawyers. If we seize the opportunities and make the most of what technology provides, the future could bring about the advent of real lawyering and the best of times for the profession. TIME BETTER SPENT Much of the gloomy forecast for lawyers and firms comes from the misconception that efficiency translates into lower revenue: If lawyers complete work more quickly, they bill fewer hours and make less money. Even with traditional hourly billing, this logic is flawed. In fact, tasks eliminated by efficiency — largely fueled by technology and client demand — are not lawyering tasks. Freeing lawyers from mundane tasks leaves more time for strategy, analysis, interpretation and applying the law to achieve better results. More time to practice law, which should mean delivering greater value and exceeding expectations, is precisely what most clients are happy to pay top dollar for. As a practicing lawyer, I was in a continuous race against time, facing deadlines, court dates, limitations periods and the like. Even with successful results, many lawyers have the nagging feeling that with just a bit more time, things might have gone even better. One would think that lawyers with more time — because they no longer spend hours looking for information, revising documents and waiting for others to respond or complete their own tasks — will devote this time to critical components of clients' matters, aspects requiring legal acumen, analysis and creativity. Lawyers may or may not bill fewer hours, but they will bill better hours. RE-ENGINEERING REVISITED Firms today have acknowledged process improvements as critical to remaining profitable, so re-engineering projects are on the rise. On a fundamental level, doing any job efficiently as possible makes sense. While external drivers, such as client demand and cost pressures contributed to this, internal drivers have also played a major role. As already observed, lawyers can always use more time to hone their craft and do the work that matters most to clients. These process improvements within firms will continue. This raises the question: Will we reach a point where this flurry of activity ends because all critical processes have been improved? Not likely. In the coming decade, process improvement will take on a greater and more strategic role in legal practice. If you have ever re-engineered a process, you know firsthand that as soon as a new process is implemented, ideas for how to streamline it further surface. Because processes can always be fine-tuned, especially with new and better technology continually entering the scene, law firms will see the value of entrenching into their organizations people skilled in mapping, constructing and deconstructing both business and legal processes. A NEW BREED OF SPECIALISTS Along with more process-focused personnel, law firms will likely increase the ranks of other non-legal professionals. Law firms have traditionally operated with minimal separation of the business and practice of law. Recognizing that lawyers BACK TO THE FUTURE Looking forward to 2020, I cannot help but look back to when I entered the legal profession in the mid-1980s. Law schools had just started to teach computerized research, typewriters were giving way to word processors, and fax transmissions remained a marvel. Legal teams were mainly lawyers and their secretaries, at times augmented by paralegals. As lawyers, we were always searching for information, and being pressed for time instilled a gnawing fear that we would miss something crucial. By 2000, much had changed. Lawyers had computers on their desks, email replaced fax, and document management systems made organizing and finding content easier. Constant connectivity and mobility blurred the line between work and home, and the legal team expanded to include knowledge management lawyers and legal technology specialists. Online legal research from the lawyer's desktop became the norm, and the Internet opened access to all kinds of information. We suddenly suffered from information overload, and — still pressed for time — ours fears shifted to missing something crucial buried in all the information we had to sift through. As we approach 2020, the legal profession has witnessed transformative change. Access to the law has become ubiquitous, with much of it now available to nearly all for free from home computers. Online legal services are becoming more prevalent at a time when virtualization, client dashboards and secure collaboration portals are undercutting the importance of personal contact. Many legal services have been commoditized or can be provided by non-lawyers. With the entry of logic-based engines and artificial intelligence, some About the Author Ginevra Saylor, National Director of Knowledge Management at Dentons, develops the firm's knowledge management strategy and initiatives, and leads the practice support lawyers and business intelligence, information services, information resources, business process and intranet teams. Ginevra designs new projects and practice tools to leverage and build the firm's knowledge base, supervises and enhances established knowledge management programs and databases, and works with the firm's practice groups and administrative departments to enhance their business processes, matter management and overall efficiency and effectiveness. Contact her at ginevra.saylor@dentons.com.

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