Introduction
Despite the changes and challenges of the past year, the legal industry has remained resilient and adaptable. The pandemic brought about shifts between remote and in-person work, as well as changes in education delivery. However, legal professionals have consistently risen to the occasion, embracing new ideas and leveraging technology to meet the demands of their work. Legal Lab 2021 emphasized the need for both alternative approaches and standardization, recognizing that they can coexist and drive more efficient and effective service delivery. The discussions focused on talent, service delivery, and technology, offering valuable insights for those seeking to create standards and explore alternative paths in the legal field.
Industry trends: transforming service delivery
Reimagining support services
One of the ways both law departments and law firms are transforming service delivery is a reevaluation of support services functions. While some departments and firms had begun this change before the pandemic, the pandemic-triggered remote environment accelerated those efforts. Following are some of the areas legal organizations are examining:
Technology
Law departments and law firms have been investing in technology to support their service delivery transformation, from the perspective of improving workflow and processes, digital transformation, and data and analytics-related investments. For example, according to the 2020 Survey, law departments were considering implementing these technologies the next one to two years:
- Artificial intelligence: 35%
- Legal service request: 23%
- Contract management: 19%
- Document management: 16%
- Workflow: 16%
- Legal RFP tools: 15%
Other areas of law department innovation included legal data/spend analytics, collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, and records management.
Data strategy and analytics
Both law firms and law departments are investing in data strategy and analytics, but law firms probably have further to go in this area, as well as more to offer. A winning data strategy equips a law firm to make data-driven operational business decisions, as well as enables attorneys to demonstrate proprietary insights and capabilities that can positively impact clients.
Talent: a common vocabulary strengthens relationships and accelerates progress
The discussions highlighted the need for a common vocabulary and shared metrics to strengthen relationships and drive progress. The focus was on creating alternative career paths, equitable mentorship, and training opportunities, as well as expanding and diversifying the legal industry to provide lawyers with versatile competencies and opportunities for underrepresented groups.
Creating common standards unified by a common language
- The legal industry lacks consensus on the core skills and competencies required for lawyers, leading to challenges in hiring and developing talent.
- Nonlegal skills like problem-solving are often undervalued despite their importance in daily legal practice, while traditional skills like memo writing may be outdated.
- Standardizing metrics, such as quality evaluation and diversity assessment, can help the industry make measurable progress in areas like diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Replacing the ladder of career success with a lattice of alternative career paths
- The traditional measure of success for lawyers, becoming a partner, is evolving as the legal profession recognizes the importance of nonlegal competencies like agility and flexibility.
- Successful law firms are adopting flexible career lattices instead of rigid partner tracks, offering opportunities for associates who don't aspire to become partners and allowing employees to advance at their own pace.
- Additional classifications, such as practicing lawyers, nonpracticing lawyers, and allied professional roles, create alternative paths for associates and provide space for employees with nontraditional skills to thrive. However, firms must ensure these paths are not undervalued or subject to biases and should design fair compensation packages that reward value and contributions rather than solely focusing on billable hours.
Broader skillsets and opportunities provide a way to attract more diversity
- Greater diversity in the legal profession requires attracting more diverse students to law schools and creating equitable structures for advancement in law firms.
- The focus on diversity should start at the college level, encouraging diverse students to consider law school as a stepping stone to various rewarding careers.
- Law schools should prepare students with extralegal competencies and technical skills, while law firms need to move away from relying solely on traditional credentials and demand a broader set of technical and soft skills.
- Law firms should ensure equal opportunities for success by providing inclusive training, leveling the playing field through assignments and mentorship, leveraging technology platforms for transparency and diversity goals, and fostering a culture of mentorship and feedback that includes diverse professionals beyond just lawyers.
Service delivery: aligning on common measures to enhance efficiency and promote value
In our service delivery discussion, we considered the problems that this lack of standardization causes, the areas that are most in need of standardizing, and the inhibitors preventing the industry from creating standards. Finally, we pondered who would lead the charge to produce a standard vernacular for the legal ecosystem.
Service delivery challenges that standarization could help
- The lack of standards in discussing legal work leads to communication barriers and inefficiencies within and between law firms and law departments.
- The absence of a shared language hinders the reliable pricing of legal work, impedes the creation of alternative fee structures, and prevents meaningful comparisons between law departments and firms.
Areas that are ripe for the creation of uniform standards
- eBilling: Participants struggle with billing codes, leading to inefficiencies in translating bills between clients with different expectations and a lack of clarity on matter definition, particularly for "advice" categories.
- Outside counsel guidelines: Law firms struggle with clients' outside counsel guidelines, which are often cumbersome and lack distinctiveness, while corporate counsel sees potential for standardization with CLOC's billing guidelines, but adoption remains limited.
- Quality of legal work: Participants agreed that the lack of standard for defining "good" legal work hinders benchmarking, value optimization, and improvement for law departments and firms.
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion: Firms define and count diversity differently.
Inhibitors to the creation of standards
- Lack of awareness and motivation hinders the creation of standardized language or metrics in the legal industry, impeding the adoption of clear standards for billing and legal work.
- The decentralized nature of the legal ecosystem, perception of exceptionalism among lawyers, and data availability issues pose significant barriers to establishing unified standards and terminology.
- The reliance on the billable hour as the primary measure of value in law firms hampers progress towards standardization, preventing the assessment of value beyond billable hours.
Who leads the charge?
- The legal industry needs to align around a common champion, likely to be found among in-house counsel and clients, to drive progress toward standardization of language and metrics.
- Law schools could play a role in introducing a common vernacular through clinical classes, and industry groups like SALI Alliance or CLOC could lead the way in establishing standard approaches and terminology for legal work.
Technology: finding alignment around standards for technology and security
Where can we create uniform standards around technology?
- Standardization in the evaluation of new technology is needed to save time and enhance efficiency in assessing tools' suitability and compliance with data privacy and security requirements.
- Participants expressed interest in creating a single security standard to ease transaction costs, and adding standardized data privacy and security addenda to CLOC's outside counsel guidelines.
- Challenges exist in standardizing communication platforms, with email remaining the preferred method due to consolidation and retention systems, while videoconferencing platforms present the need for an independent system accessible from various devices.
Inhibitors to uniformity
- Too much standardization could be restrictive, limiting firms and vendors from differentiating themselves, and lawyers' risk aversion and perfectionism mindset hinders technology adoption.
- The traditional billing structure based on billable hours discourages technology adoption, and law firms need to create a culture where higher efficiency leads to opportunities for higher value work rather than reducing billable hours.
Should there be an ethical requirement for digital fluency?
- Thirty-nine states require lawyers to meet a basic standard of technological competence for ethical recertification, and there is a suggestion to expand this standard to include digital fluency as a core skill for legal professionals to stay current with technology.
- Creating meaningful standards for legal technology requires an industry-wide coalition of law department leaders, stakeholders, law firm partners, vendors, and IT professionals, but overcoming barriers to standardization, especially the traditional billing structure, is crucial to its success.
Conclusion
Despite the physical distance, participants in Legal Lab 2021 developed a deeper understanding and appreciation of their shared humanity, leading to enthusiasm for creating a common language and standard metrics for legal talent development, service delivery, and technology security. While uncertainty remains for 2022, the legal industry remains committed to meeting challenges through talent development, service focus, and embracing evolving technology, with Legal Lab continuing to be a platform for exchanging perspectives and advancing the industry.
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- Business operations
- Digital roadmap
- Diversity
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