Do the New Business Models Provide 'Justice' to Legal Services?

Do the New Business Models Provide 'Justice' to Legal Services?

Advances in technology offer new capabilities for all the professions and the lawyers are not the exception. Nowadays, ICT is used not only to enhance efficiency, access, timeliness, transparency and accountability, helping the lawyers to provide adequate services. Now, we are in the midst of a new revolution driven by the power of digital technology. These developments have enormous implications for every aspect of law. Traditional law companies have built themselves on leverage and hierarchy depending on billable hours by more junior associates and staff. Now, they are facing a new economy that includes competition from machines and global outsourcing. Unless they fundamentally change their revenue and employment models, more efficient automation can destroy these law firms. Business models have to cope with the external changes and to be adapted to innovation. They exploit technology and globalization by matching consumers' needs with tied-up services and products. Factors such as global competition, legal process outsourcers, changing regulatory requirements, rapid mergers and dissolutions, and alternative fee arrangements have shifted the legal marketplace into one of seemingly constant evolution. The new models are reducing costs, breaking away from old patterns of fee arrangements, and increasing efficiency through unique structuring and use of technology. Disruption is the shaking up of existing markets, mainly because of innovations. This study ascertains the digital disruption in the law profession taking into account three entities: technology, lawyers' profession and business models. The fields of business models in legal services are analyzed and an innovative application of SWOT analysis is proposed. The perspectives of the study may trigger future work in the rapidly developing landscape of digital disruption in the lawyers' profession.

___

  • Annodata, (2014). https://www.annodata.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/ 123946_Annodata_CS_Stewarts_Law_V4_ Final.pdf
  • Bosman, J. (2015). Death of a Law Firm. JBLH, The Hague, the Netherlands.
  • Brescia, R. H. (2016). The Downside of Disruption: The Risks Associated with Transformational Change in the Delivery of Legal Services. Browser Download This Paper.
  • Breuker, J. (Ed.). (2009). Law, ontologies and the Semantic Web: Channelling the legal information flood (Vol. 188). IOS Press.
  • Christensen, C. (2013). The innovator's dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail. Harvard Business Review Press.
  • CobraTop10. (2010). http://cobralegalsolutions.com/pdf/cobraTop10.pdf.
  • Deloitte, (2016). https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/Legal/dttl-legal-future-trends-for-legal-services.pdf
  • Dertouzos, J. N., Pace, N. M., & Anderson, R. H. (2008). The legal and economic implications of electronic discovery: options for future research. Rand Corporation.
  • FLIP, (2017). The Future of Law and Innovation in the Profession, https://www.lawsociety.com.au/sites/default/files/2018-03/1272952.pdf
  • Frey, C. B., & Osborne, M. A. (2017). The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerisation?. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 114, 254-280.
  • Galanter, M., & Palay, T. (1994). Tournament of lawyers: The transformation of the big law firm. University of Chicago Press.
  • Ghazinoory, S., Esmail Zadeh, A. & Memariani, (2007). A. Fuzzy SWOT Analysis. J. Intell. Fuzzy Syst. 18, 99–108. 12.
  • Harvard Law, (2018). https://hls.harvard.edu/academics/curriculum/catalog/default.aspx?o=72216
  • Helms, M.M. & Nixon, J., (2010). Exploring SWOT analysis—Where are we now: A review of academic research from the last decade. J. Strateg. Manag. 3, 215–251.
  • Humphrey, A. S. (2005). SWOT analysis. Long Range Planning, 30, 46-52.
  • Jomati Consultants, (2012). http://jomati.com/articles_reports_files/LBR_03_2012_Williams.pdf
  • Josten W. & Turvill I., (2016). Reinventing the Law Firm Business Model: Making the Most of Business Development Opportunities and Driving Long-Term Growth, Thomson Reuters.
  • Joy, B. (2001). Why the future doesn't need us. Ethics and Medicine, 17(1), 13-36.
  • Karoussos, H. F., (2017). Law & The Digital Disruption: The Impact of ICT and AI on the Legal Profession.
  • Kiškis, M., & Petrauskas, R. (2004). ICT adoption in the judiciary: classifying of judicial information. International Review of Law, Computers & Technology, 18(1), 37-45.
  • Kraakman, R., & Hansmann, H. (2017). The end of history for corporate law. In Corporate Governance (pp. 49-78). Gower.
  • Lamont, J., (2017). AI Takes Hold in the Legal Profession., KM World, vol. 26, no. 2, Feb. 2017, pp. 12-14.
  • Law Tigers, (2017). https://www.lawtigers.com/about-us/
  • LegalZoom, (2012). https://www.legalzoom.com/country/gr
  • LexisNexis, (2012). http://www.lexisnexis.com/pdf/intelligence/ 2012%20PROFITABILITY%20AND%20PRICING%20MODELS% 20WHITPAPER.PDF
  • Markoff, J., (2016). Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software. The New York Times, October 30 2016, https://nyti.ms/flpugc.
  • McGinnis, J. O., & Pearce, R. G. (2013). The great disruption: How machine intelligence will transform the role of lawyers in the delivery of legal services. Fordham L. Rev., 82, 3041.
  • Noronha, E., D’Cruz, P., & Kuruvilla, S. (2016). Globalisation of commodification: legal process outsourcing and Indian lawyers. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 46(4), 614-640.
  • Osterwalder, A., & Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business model generation: a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers. John Wiley & Sons.
  • Pistone, M. R., & Horn, M. B. (2016). Disrupting Law School: How Disruptive Innovation Will Revolutionize the Legal World. Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.
  • Pradhan, R. (2016). The regime of Amalgamation of law and technology" Boon or Bane".
  • Ribstein, L. E. (2010). Death of Big Law, The. Wis. L. Rev., 749.
  • Rimon, (2017). https://rimonlaw.com/disrupting-the-law-firm-model
  • Riordan, C., & Osterman, P. (2016). Externalization of work by corporate law firms: Implications for careers and the profession. In The structuring of work in organizations (pp. 333-361). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
  • Robertson, G. (2013). Crimes against humanity: The struggle for global justice. The New Press.
  • Schwab, K., (2016). The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Geneva, World Economic Forum.
  • Seyfarth, (2014). http://www.seyfarth.com/dir_docs/publications/LMJanuary%202014Innovationarticle.pdf
  • Sheppard, B. (2015). Incomplete innovation and the premature disruption of legal services. Mich. St. L. Rev., 1797.
  • Simpson, B. (2016). Algorithms or advocacy: does the legal profession have a future in a digital world?. Information & Communications Technology Law, 25(1), 50-61.
  • Stampfl, G. (2015). The process of business model innovation: an empirical exploration. Springer.
  • Stampfl, G., & Prügl, R. (2011). Business models in context: conceptualizing the environment of business models. In Academy of Management Annual Meeting.
  • Stanford Lawyer, (2016). https://law.stanford.edu/2016/09/26/184188/
  • Susskind, R. E. (2008). The end of lawyers?: rethinking the nature of legal services (p. 29). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Susskind, R. E. (2017). Tomorrow's lawyers: An introduction to your future. Oxford University Press.
  • Susskind, R. E., & Susskind, D. (2015). The future of the professions: How technology will transform the work of human experts. Oxford University Press, USA.
  • The American Lawyer, (2014). https://www.law.com/americanlawyer/almID/1202676968148/?slreturn=20180517005108
  • Thoben K.D., Wiesner e S. and Wuest T., (2017). Industrie 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing – A Review of Research Issues and Application Examples, International Journal of Automation Technology, v.11
  • Tiersma, P. M. (2010). Parchment, paper, pixels: Law and the technologies of communication. University of Chicago Press. Williams, J. C., Platt, A., & Lee, J. (2015). Disruptive innovation: new models of legal practice. Hastings LJ, 67, 1.