The recent comments by NZLS President Chris Moore in Lawyer numbers soar as the law becomes more complex highlighted some significant trends in New Zealand’s legal profession.
Trend one: “Commercial lawyers are valued by clients for their strategic and tactical business advice, and are spending some portion of their working week providing services that were not strictly speaking legal services.”
This is not only true and increasing, but reflects where commercial lawyers should be putting their long term focus. As more of the document drafting and other traditional aspects of their jobs are sped up by automation or done by clients themselves or by non-lawyers, commercial lawyers will need - and want - to do other work. Strategy, negotiation, project management and other business disciplines will be areas where commercial lawyers can add real value.
This is supported by Chapman Tripp’s Managing Partner Andrew Pool’s recent comments to New Zealand Lawyer Magazine:
“When I started my career…we gave legal advice. We told clients what the legal answer was; what the latest case law was; what the legislation says. But all of that stuff can be found online now and increasingly what our clients are coming to us for is our judgement, our expertise, our wisdom, if you like, and they want a law firm that really understands their business; really understand their sector, or industry, and really delivers service as well as quality advice, and those are quite radical changes and ongoing significant challenges for all of us.”
The great thing is that these new areas are far more interesting than document drafting, and largely occur in front of and with the client. It will be much easier to build relationships, demonstrate the value being added, and differentiate from competitors.
You only have to look at the shifts accountants have made following the introduction of Xero to see what a positive change this can be for those who are prepared to make the significant investments to do these things well.
Richard Susskind in “Tomorrow’s Lawyers” emphasises the need for real investment in these new disciplines, and notes that what he terms the “legal hybrids” of the future will have to undertake comprehensive and rigorous training. As a result, they will be “formidably schooled and unarguably expert in their related disciplines and, in turn, will be able to add considerable value to the legal services they offer to clients.”
Hopefully the days of lawyers opening negotiation meetings by saying “Shall we just turn the pages” will soon be a thing of the past!
Trend two: “There may also be an argument that as the number of laws continued to grow, so the number of lawyers needed also continued to grow”
There doesn’t appear to be any sign of the amount of law and regulation decreasing anytime soon, while the penalties for non-compliance with many laws have increased substantially and really focussed the minds of business leaders (the soon to be enacted Health and Safety at Work Act being the latest example). However, whether it’s more lawyers we need, or more effective use of time by existing lawyers, is more debatable. Lawyers certainly can, and will, become more efficient and focussed.
Given that half the profession are sole practitioners, and that 85% of all law firms have five or fewer lawyers, staying on top of all those law changes and ensuring they are reflected in precedents and other knowledge management resources could be a real challenge. Fortunately, in addition to the substantial resources which are available from the traditional legal publishers like LexisNexis, ADLS, Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwer, there’s a rapidly emerging number of ancillary support organisations such as ConnectWorks (who provide Trustworks and Companyworks) and LawHawk who can support lawyers in these areas. With cloud technology, collaboration and sharing of knowledge and resources is only getting easier.
Trend three: “There had been a rise in the number of specialist lawyers as a result.”
This trend will only continue. With the substantial rise in in-house legal teams, the pressure has been on law firms for some time now to become more specialised. Many in-house lawyers have come from firms and are very good lawyers with a diverse range of skills. With limited budgets for external work, when they go external it is often because they are seeking specific expertise.
At the other end of the market, with new non-lawyer providers offering wills and contract reviews cheaper than many law firms, members of the public will increasingly be able to do or source more basic legal work themselves. Lawyers will need to be able to demonstrate that they have expertise which cannot be obtained elsewhere and that they can add specialist value.
Trend four: “Moore praised the small town "generalist" expected by their clients to help them with all their legal needs. The rising complexity of law meant they had to be talented individuals, he said.”
When viewed against the trends outlined above, it is particularly challenging for the small town “generalist” to cover all of a client’s legal needs, and it’s actually not required. With greater connectivity and collaboration facilitated by technology, it is easier for more generalist lawyers to locate specialists (who aren’t a threat to the wider relationship because of their specialisation) and outsource key components of the job (effectively unbundling and project managing it, while still retaining overall responsibility for the client relationship and delivering an outcome that the client needs). An example of this trend is specialist employment barrister, Mark Donovan, who blogs regularly on employment law issues and is using technology to make it easy for people to engage him, wherever they are. Interwoven is another good example of specialist firms working together to serve clients better.
Public Trust’s offering of “Executor Assist” to law firms to work with them to manage estates demonstrates the shift in mindset that is occurring. As Public Trust note, they are aiming to move from “arch enemy” to ally.
A collaborative approach, as required, may in many cases be better than trying to maintain an in-house capability, just in case.
In addition, a range of technology tools – many cloud based - do enable the generalist lawyers to do a broader range of work faster and better – with more time to research and check to ensure that the end product is as good as it needs to be.
Whether it’s accessing technology tools, or forming networks and alliances with other professionals, collaboration is much easier for the small firms, and lack of size is no longer the disadvantage it once may have been.
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