Can law firms afford to keep their pace with technology?
The Law Society reports that overall employment in the legal sector is likely to decline, partly as a result of “increasing adoption of new technology and new working methods”. Deloitte reports 100,000 legal roles will be automated by 2036.
This is not a surprise. The legal sector is a mature industry, conservative in nature, and has been working fine for a long time without technology. This, however, makes it a great target for disruption by technologists.
COVID and the lockdowns also have put the industry in the spotlight as the courts, conveyancing services and many other aspects of the legal sector had to go virtual and use technology in ways previously unimaginable.
The disruption is happening now
The legal sector is not immune while other industries are being disrupted by technology.
The disruption is happening now, from systemisation and automation to completely changing the way the sector works by implementing emerging technologies.
This evolving change will not only impact how the lawyers (and other legal workers) do their jobs, wiping out any role that the computer will do a faster and more accurate job of, but also it will change what their customers expect.
As a result, the cost of legal services will drop and the industry will shrink to the very expert people who can solve complex cases. And no, it will not create long queues to use their services as they will be assisted by many intelligent agents (machines) to maximise their capacity.
More than 28% of people who would like to take legal advice do not do so because they believe they cannot afford it.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) reports that over one-third of people who are in need of legal help try to resolve it without actually seeking legal advice.
What will happen to the legal sector soon, is what has already happened to the entertainment industry by the arrival of Netflix, Amazon movies, Spotify …
Is my firm too small or too late to survive this?
To be able to not only survive this tsunami but also thrive in it, you don’t have to be an international Law firm with a hefty innovation budget. In reality, being an SME legal firm is a big advantage to make some serious market share expansion in the next 5 years.
The key to doing this successfully is to think strategically about technology, and not try to shoehorn the latest trend just for the sake of it. Developing the right roadmap, that is objective, data-driven, and based on the specific opportunities that your firm has, will put you in the right direction.
At times systemisation and automation will have a superior ROI than the latest emerging technologies such as AI.
Eliminating the repetitive work done by paralegals and support staff, which are time-consuming and normally result in a poor customer experience, can help the firm’s operations reach new levels of productivity while improving the customer experience, resulting in increased capacity and increased market share.
Doing this right will put the firm in a position to have some breathing space to tackle some more advanced and sophisticated areas such as the use of AI in document processing, or intelligent upselling of the services, again resulting in another level of increased capacity and increased market share.
It’s a journey. Being on the right path, at the right pace, means you will never reach the end, you will just go onwards and upwards.
If you are asking “is it for me?”, the answer is “yes”
I don’t think anyone can ignore it anymore, but some firms may decide to “play safe” and take their time, and opt for not changing their established practices or processes. However, they need to be prepared to be eliminated from the market, by losing market share to the new or established but ambitious digital-first legal firms that they will not be able to compete with anymore. This might not happen as famously as Blockbuster got destroyed by Netflix, but does it really matter?
While the threat of being eliminated is definitely real, there is so much optimism to be had too. there are so many untapped opportunities that can transform the firms who make the right move.
There is an unmet market need for more affordable, faster, and more transparent legal services.
With the improved efficiencies which can be brought by technology and reduced costs, the ambitious players will seek to capitalise on this opportunity and capture a larger portion of the market.
Finally, the Gen-Z is arriving in the job market, as the first generation of “digitally-native” lawyers, the first generation that cares more than all of us for the work-life balance and will not accept the long hours 7 days a week for years to reach the senior level, the generation that is climate change concerned and will not be happy handling hundreds of printed pages every day. With the Gen-Z, the firms that embrace technology will undoubtedly be able to attract the next generation of high-calibre legal experts.
So if you are still asking “Is this for me?”, the answer is “Yes”!!
