"Where We Purchasers of Legal Services are looking for something really disruptive is in the area of cost," Say In-House Attorneys

In-house attorneys have been reading the posts here on disruptive law firms and shrugging.  They inform me, "Where we purchasers of legal services are looking for something really disruptive is in the area of cost." 

They view much of what is being positioned and packaged as disruptive as smart promotion.  Not that they're critical of this way that some firms are putting themselves out there. 

As one General Counsel puts it, "Every day I receive a flood of sales materials from law firms which want to assist me with, for example, e-discovery.  The pitches are boring and predictable.  I toss them.  So, I have to credit the so-called disruptive players you 'hail' as mavericks as being savvy about how to get prospects' attention." However, this General Counsel wants the paradigm shift in what these law firms want to offer his company to be a radical change in how and what they bill.

To summarize what the in-house counsels have told me, I will provide excerpts from a conversation I had last week with one who spoke off the record.

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"Yes, Jane, a revolution is happening.  But it's happening on the client side.  And it's in a stealth mode.  There will be no announcements, advertisements, or trumpeting of these changes from legal customers such as my company [with the possible exception of periodic pronouncements from CISCO GC and Wal-Mart's Legal.] For the most part, it will happen without any proclamations or manifestos.  And it will take the form of more in-house lawyers, more outsourcing of routine tasks to lower-cost providers around the world, more automation, more streamlining.

"Jane, you and your readers seem to have an ironic sense of humor so you will probably appreciate this.  As most of us had read in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Law Blog, a firm had laid off a bunch of people.  It's downright funny - all that angst about what firm is next, what practice is next, what group of associates or even partners are next. I couldn't resist adding a comment to all the posts by worriers. In that post I detailed how purchasers of legal services viewed the situation.  Think about it, Jane:  Here is a client, telling the law firms why fewer of them are being hired.  And yet no one picked up on my comment.  No one rebutted it.  No one agreed with it.  All the activity was focused inward - on if their jobs were safe at that particular law firm or that particular practice.

"Over the next few days after I left my comment, I thought about this state of high agita among law firms and how it's focused on nothing - nada - that will fundamentally correct the situation.  Those wringing their hands were preoccupied about how they could and would re-arrange things - think the analogy of re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

"Another apt analogy, of course, is in your world, Jane, of communications.  Many mainstream journalists and editors loudly proclaim how they are re-arranging their publications or their approach to work. This gets them ink in their trade press. But, all these proclamations and all this trade-press coverage miss the basic reality that the world is changing.  One change is that their services are increasingly in less demand and will never be paid the big money they used to command.  Digitalization has truly made the communications era flat.  There is no price to entry.  There is no way to charge the prices which advertisers used to willingly pay.

"My advice to attorneys who are struggling to create a paradigm shift: Focus on the cost equation. What if a big, name-brand law firm re-priced its services down 1/3rd?  What if it figured out how to have discovery done inexpensively but well, somewhere in the world, and passed the savings through to its clients?  What if it used paralegals like departments - as inexpensive lawyers - rather than pushing tasks up to the most expensive lawyer the client will bear?

"In short, there is a huge opportunity out there, ripe for the taking.  But, counterintuitively, it will require short-term, self-inflicted economic pain.  Most in my profession lack the vision or the will to take advantage of it, and so they will instead just keep sailing into the headwinds until they are going backwards at a fast clip."

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Response from in-house attorneys and law firms is certainly welcome - and wanted.  Please leave a comment or contact me at Mgenova981@aol.com.

Comments

[Carolyn Elefant]

I'm hoping that law firms don't try to find ways to lower their prices or I (a solo) will find myself out of business. But your point is well taken.