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The changing legal profession
Richard Susskind
4 October 2011
the future
clients
commoditisation
multi-sourcing
technology
the market
lawyers?
four models
the future
power drill and hole
automation vs innovation
clients
most in-house departments
face a dilemma in three parts
pressure to reduce
internal headcount
pressure to reduce external spend
and yet …
they have more legal and
compliance work then ever
before (and it is riskier too)
something has to give
more for less
two strategies
the efficiency strategy cut the costs
moving along the path towards commoditisation
multi-sourcing
the collaboration strategy share the costs
harnessing the collaborative power of IT
online community
commoditisation
Bespoke Commoditised Standardised Systematised Packaged
The path to commoditisation
Bespoke Commoditised Standardised Systematised Packaged
First impressions
‘our firm does mainly bespoke work
and that is it how it should be’
Bespoke Commoditised Standardised Systematised Packaged
Challenging first impressions
• rethinking client work
• market pull to the right
decomposing
Decomposing
• legal matters are not indivisible blocks
• they can be broken down into tasks
Multi-sourcing
1. in-sourcing
2. de-lawyering
3. relocating
4. off-shoring
5. outsourcing
6. sub-contracting
7. co-sourcing
8. near-shoring
9. leasing
10. home-sourcing
11. open-sourcing
12. crowd-sourcing
13. computerising
14. no-sourcing
document review
legal research
project management
litigation support
electronic disclosure
strategy
tactics
negotiation
advocacy
due diligence
legal research
transaction management
negotiation
template selection
bespoke drafting
document management
legal advisory
risk assessment
Multi-sourcing
1. in-sourcing
2. de-lawyering
3. relocating
4. off-shoring
5. outsourcing
6. sub-contracting
7. co-sourcing
8. near-shoring
9. leasing
10. home-sourcing
11. open-sourcing
12. crowd-sourcing
13. computerising
14. no-sourcing
technology
e-mail in 1996
Exponential curve
Time
‘the knee of
the curve’
am I exaggerating?
according to Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman:
every two days now, we create as much
information as we did from the dawn of
civilisation up until 2003
Online community
• blogging
• mass collaboration – Wikipedia
• social networking – Facebook and LinkedIn
• Neopets
there is no finishing line in IT
what does all of this
mean for lawyers?
sustaining
disruptive
ten disruptive legal technologies
closed client communities
online dispute resolution
automated drafting
electronic legal marketplace
the market
work can be decomposed onto this grid –
on a task-based and not a matter-based approach
lawyers?
what parts of lawyers’ work
could be undertaken differently
– more quickly, cheaply,
efficiently, or to a higher quality
- using alternative methods of
working?
expert trusted
adviser
routine work by
junior lawyers
new ways of
sourcing
four models
Target
Doughnut
Glazed Doughnut
Cog
two final
thoughts
Phase Three Computerisation
Phase Two Re-sourcing
2007 - 2012
2013 - 2015
2016 - 2017
• Firms – working differently
• GCs – Re-thinking in-house
• Alternative sourcing & BPO
• intelligent discovery
• automated document production
• electronic legal marketplace
Phase One Denial
• Firms – AFAs/redundancies
• GCs – Re-tendering
• Hoping for no real change
Mainstream
‘The best way to predict the future…
… is to invent it’
