That—Standing at the Precipice—being the title of a short video our friends at Axiom have put together in hopes of informing the conversation about how we got here and what some of the actual underlying stats and figures are in the evolution of law to this point.
What it’s not:
- dry or dull
- long (barely three minutes)
- an ad for Axiom (in fact their name isn’t mentioned, not even in credits).
What it is, among other things, is never before released publicly: Yes, you’ll be seeing it here first.
You don’t have to agree with all of it, and they don’t pretend to have the answers, but it’s a refreshing and engaging reminder of how far we’ve traveled in just a couple of generations. Were we right then, or are we right now?
(Or neither, which is entirely possible.)
Great post Bruce. I have seen many posts discounting disruption innovation coming to the legal industry. When people talk about it though they focus to much on technology replacing lawyers and not on the principles of disruption. Which are lower margins than the incumbents and delivery of a similar service/product through a different process. The technology aspect of disruption only allows the scale needed to maintain the lower margins but it is not pivotal to disruption. I would regard Axiom Law and the LPO’s as disruptive to the US legal industry. Along with others companies that have utilized the managed services approach.
The LPO’s disruptive nature comes because of the currency disparity but also in some cases choosing not to go with the best and brightest. Instead opting for the good enough to get it done, an approach many law firms find deplorable. Hopefully the LPO’s can maintain this approach and adopt more technological solutions that will bring down costs to their clients further, like the accounting industry has been doing.
Attorneys could actually learn a great deal from the accounting industry. They have their problems too but they seems to be a few decades ahead of the lawyers in the delivery of their services. Which is likely why the Bar Associations and Biglaw do what they can to prevent full partnerships between the Accounting Networks and the Law Firms. I expect though over the next 20 years that Biglaw will need to become much more like the accounting networks and adopt similar approaches in their service practices.
Maybe in a future post you could discuss Managed Service Providers. They are the indirect method of investing in the US legal industry, which Clearspire and Axiom Law clearly establish. You could also discuss Profit Sharing Agreements with non-lawyer employees, as noted in Model Rule 5.4.3. They also seem like a method for non-lawyers to form a type of partnership with lawfirms in the US.