Book review: New Horizons for Lawyers and Legal Services Providers

Mapping the changing profile of the legal landscape to 2015

By Damian Griffiths

On your list of pressing issues to worry about, IT may not be near the top. You may indeed already be peeping at the next article, looking for a good excuse to turn the page and worry about IT…well, tomorrow.

And if I tell you now that this is a review of a fairly hefty report commissioned by the Legal Software Suppliers Association (LSSA), arguably a group with everything to gain from pushing IT to the top of your agenda, then that page will surely be turning already.

And that would be a great shame and a missed opportunity. New Horizons for Lawyers and Legal Services Providers: Mapping the changing profile of the legal landscape to 2015 is one of the most comprehensive reviews and surveys of immediate influences upon the legal profession, and the requirement for genuinely effective IT, ever written. Frank at times, relating those influences and IT to firms of every size, the report’s authors, Practical Solutions and Baker Tilly, dare go where most have only ever skirted.

If you are looking for a 200-page report that will leave you with a warm glow, safe in the knowledge there are no scary monsters knocking on your firm’s door and that all is safe and well for the future, then look elsewhere. Instead, the report is the smooth salesman on your doorstep with a pleasant smile and clean shoes, who has clearly taken the time to understand what your business is facing.

Statistics, surveys, facts and figures

Crammed with comprehensive statistics, it will let you know that 36.9 per cent of solicitors are employed by just 1.5 per cent of practices; that the number of solicitors working in industry has more than doubled over the past ten years (now more than 18 per cent of all solicitors, and rising); that the criminal justice IT programme expects to spend £1.95bn in 2007/08; and that 91 per cent of firms see IT as essential or important. This, in spite of the fact that IT budgets have fallen an average of 3.5 per cent of fee income across all firms, with no plans to increase them. The conclusion is that IT training is generally significantly undervalued. Meanwhile, the impact of Clementi, intermediaries, virtual law firms, law-firm collaboration and the threat of so-called ‘Tesco law’ are laid out with a cool, slightly passionate style akin to a scientist setting out the running order of Armageddon.

You might choose to disagree with the facts, of course, but the salesman has already spoken to clients, surveyed 317 firms and interviewed more than 70 people in detail. Many sections of the book present the survey findings and the unaltered opinions of managing partners, clients, marketing directors, IT directors and industry commentators, covering firms of all sizes and legal services across the board.

Pulling no punches

But just as the report’s velvet tongue steadily raises your anxiety levels, its velvet glove hits you hard, unafraid to confront you with some of the greatest challenges facing your firm. These include culture – “being a lawyer can no longer be the comfortable hobby that many have played in the past”; that the impact of commercial reality will take many firms by surprise – “we already have superfirms sucking up vast quantities of business”; and that commoditisation and offshoring will have an impact – “…12,000 legal jobs in the US had already moved to low-cost countries. This number is expected to grow…to 79,000 by the end of 2015.” That 79,000 looks like a big number, especially considering the 96,757 solicitors practising in the UK now.

The report isn’t all grim reading, of course, and the salesman clearly has a product to sell. The LSSA surely wouldn’t have spent a considerable sum on a survey that would yield them no return. And therein lurks the book’s greatest surprise. Like a book with the final chapter ripped out, reading leaves you with no obvious and immediate conclusion. The case for exploiting IT more effectively is made in a pragmatic way, but no IT magic bullets are presented (although several technology areas for the future are clearly set out). Practical, straightforward observations are made, such as the shortfall in IT training, the need for IT to support more flexible working and the need for IT people to talk business.

Focus on your firm

However, the book’s greatest strength is that, used properly, it is essentially the story of your firm. This is not a mere reference tool to sit in the library. Pick it up, work through it with a marker, and highlight the parts of the book that are pertinent to you and your firm.

Then review those sections and prioritise what you are going to change. You certainly won’t want to do nothing – and you’ll feel you’ve seen many or most of the facts, benchmarked your own opinions alongside hundreds of others, and then set out on a well-informed path to change your business over the coming ten years.

The final chapter is your own. Every IT partner and legal IT manager should read this book, and every managing partner with time should at least thumb through it.

It’s not perfect – quite why one of the appendices presents the case for e-mail management alone completely escapes me – but it is far and away the best reference of its type out there at the moment. 

Damian Griffiths is a former IT director of Eversheds and Addleshaw Goddard, and is now an independent IT consultant. He can be contacted at damian@eurocracy.com.