Abstract
The fundamental change in the legal industry is often called the end of an era. While this accurately reflects the gravity of the impact, it disguises the huge opportunity this holds for our function. Building on our intrinsic capability of creating trust and stability in business, legal can and should look into the future—as unknown as many things may be—with an optimistic mindset.
Traditional boundaries in our industry and around our function collapse. They are torn down by the new types of services offered by legal process outsourcers (LPO’s), the new ways services are being offered by LPO’s and also law firms, and of course the radically new opportunities that legal technology brings about.
The new landscape and the new horizons created by the changes open the way for legal to rethink modus operandi. We can and must break free from our self-referential system and find a new balance between our interdependence, i.e. how we relate to the company as a whole, and our independence, i.e. our own self. This will enable us to recalibrate ourselves and strive to create business value straight by our own work and by how we go about it.
As we think about the creation of value and as we embrace the vast opportunity that legal technology holds for us in that respect, our approach to both, primary legal data, and, legal analytics will change. As we introduce smart legal technology to our work that supports our processes on primary legal data, we will automatically be able to generate legal analytics that create unique insights for the company.
In LIQUID LEGAL, collaboration is the new paradigm! Forward looking non-profit organizations will drive us forward; open exchange between inhouse departments will create ideas and confidence when stepping onto unknown territory; academia has a wealth of guidance to offer and legal education an opportunity to adapt to a rapidly changing profile of lawyers that must be reflected in the curriculum.
The law of gravitation in legal has changed. Maneuvering requires a new vision and new strategies. Leadership is required throughout and leaders need to rethink their traditional approaches and need to welcome the new talent, skills and roles that come into being in legal. We need to run our function with business discipline.
If everything flows, we better change our state of aggregation and become LIQUID LEGAL and, in the spirit of collaboration, continue to share what we learn—to create and add new value.
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Notes
- 1.
Ismael et al., Exponential Organizations—Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it), New York, 2014, p. 7.
- 2.
Susskind and Susskind (2015), p. 104.
- 3.
Susskind and Susskind (2015), p. 105 (rearranged as a list for ease of reading).
- 4.
Strathausen, “Masters of Ambiguity: How Legal Can Lead the Business”, p. 13.
- 5.
Mucic, “Foreword: Bridging the Gap—The New Legal”, p. v.
- 6.
Strathausen, “Masters of Ambiguity: How Legal Can Lead the Business”, p. 31.
- 7.
Fawcett, “Foreword: Creating Your Path—Building Towards Liquid Legal”, p. ix.
- 8.
Cummins, “Foreword: Need a Lawyer? Use a Robot Instead!”, p. xiv.
- 9.
Brown, “Running the Legal Department with Business Discipline”, p. 403.
- 10.
Brown, “Running the Legal Department with Business Discipline”, p. 405.
- 11.
Bassli, “Shifting Client Expectations of Law Firms: Morphing Law Firms into Managed Services Providers”, p. 59.
- 12.
http://www.corpcounsel.com/id=1202755396452/Theres-an-Explosion-of-Legal-Startups?slreturn=20160609061123—while there are also voices that rationalize the hype—see the insightful blog at http://associatesmind.com/2016/04/20/not-explosion-legaltech/ that seeks to add clarity to the facts around number of legal startups, the venture capital they get etc.
- 13.
The one in Munich was co-founded by one of our authors, Dr. Sven von Alemann, meets live in a 6–8 week cadence and is attended in average by 30 people—and that is “just” legal tech based in Munich.
- 14.
An even nearly complete overview goes far beyond this article; instead let me point to a very insightful blog on work done at Cornell university, by Costantini (2016).
- 15.
Matthaei and Bues, “LegalTech on the Rise: Technology Changes Legal Work Behaviours, But Does Not Replace Its Profession”, p. 91.
- 16.
Brenton, “CLOC: Joining Forces to Drive Transformation in Legal: Bringing Together the Legal Ecosystem”, p. 304.
- 17.
Of course, the legal operations role is much broader than taking care of legal technology—please see the article of Brenton for a detailed outline of it.
- 18.
Jacob, “Legal Information Management (LIM) Strategy: How to Transform a Legal Department”, p. 312.
- 19.
Dun&Bradstreet, p. 4.
- 20.
See the broader context provided to that aspect by Brenton, “CLOC: Joining Forces to Drive Transformation in Legal: Bringing Together the Legal Ecosystem”, p. 305.
- 21.
Strathausen, “Masters of Ambiguity: How Legal Can Lead the Business”, p. 31.
- 22.
Brenton, “CLOC: Joining Forces to Drive Transformation in Legal: Bringing Together the Legal Ecosystem”, p. 303.
- 23.
Brenton, “CLOC: Joining Forces to Drive Transformation in Legal: Bringing Together the Legal Ecosystem”, p. 306.
- 24.
Cummins, “Foreword: Need a Lawyer? Use a Robot Instead!”, p. xiii.
- 25.
Bassli, “Shifting Client Expectations of Law Firms: Morphing Law Firms into Managed Services Providers”, p. 60.
- 26.
Ross, “Legal Process Outsourcing: Redefining the Legal Services Delivery Model”, p. 84.
- 27.
Ross, “Legal Process Outsourcing: Redefining the Legal Services Delivery Model”, p. 84.
- 28.
Susskind and Susskind (2015), p. 109.
- 29.
Strathausen, “Masters of Ambiguity: How Legal Can Lead the Business”, p. 31.
- 30.
Pauleau et al., “Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Run Legal with Business Metrics: Will the Legal of the Future Measure Everything It Does?”, p. 124.
- 31.
See for more detail Susskind and Susskind (2015), p. 122.
- 32.
Welpe and Tumasjan, “The Legal Entrepreneur: When Do Corporate Lawyers Act Entrepreneurially?”, p. 135.
- 33.
Matthaei and Bues, “LegalTech on the Rise: Technology Changes Legal Work Behaviours, But Does Not Replace Its Profession”, p. 107.
- 34.
Rhodes (2013), p. 1.
- 35.
Haapio and Barton, “Business-Friendly Contracting: How Simplification and Visualization Can Help Bring It to Practice”, p. 376.
- 36.
Cummins, “Foreword: Need a Lawyer? Use a Robot Instead!”, p. xxii.
- 37.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_the_Younger.
- 38.
Pauleau et al., “Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Run Legal with Business Metrics: Will the Legal of the Future Measure Everything It Does?”, p. 113.
- 39.
In business reality, the lines blur very often between vision, mission, strategy—they get very easily confused; Hambrick and Fredrickson (2005) provide a very good guide on how to detect when this is happening and how to prevent this, taking the element of “strategy” as the center point.
- 40.
Pauleau et al., p. 9/10 look at this aspect into the performance perspective: “The legal performance of a company can be understood in two different ways. In a narrow sense, it refers to the performance of its LD, in other words the capacity of that department to achieve its own missions and objectives. This aspect is at the core of the present Chapter. A broader – and perhaps more appropriate – understanding is to see legal performance as the company’s ability to deploy legal resources […] and combine them with the other types of resources at its disposal in order to achieve its objectives, in particular its strategic objectives. In this sense, legal performance can be considered as an important factor in the overall performance of the company.”
- 41.
As Strathausen puts it: “Trust is the ultimate legal currency, and the greatest value delivered by law!”, Strathausen, “Masters of Ambiguity: How Legal Can Lead the Business”, p. 31.
- 42.
Markfort, “Legal Advisor–Service Provider–Business Partner: Shifting the Mindset of Corporate Lawyers”, p. 56.
- 43.
Brenton, “CLOC: Joining Forces to Drive Transformation in Legal: Bringing Together the Legal Ecosystem”, p. 304.
- 44.
Fawcett, “Foreword: Creating Your Path—Building Towards Liquid Legal”, p. xi.
- 45.
Escher, “Building a Legal Department in a Metrics Driven World: A Guide to Finding the Best Candidates for the Legal Departments of the Future”, p. 369.
- 46.
Haapio and Barton, “Business-Friendly Contracting: How Simplification and Visualization Can Help Bring It to Practice”, p. 385.
- 47.
Chomicka, “A Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet: The New Legal Pro-Occupations in the Construction Sector”, p. 141.
- 48.
This definition is also provided at http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_business_discipline?#slide=1.
- 49.
Markfort, “Legal Advisor–Service Provider–Business Partner: Shifting the Mindset of Corporate Lawyers”, p. 49.
- 50.
Meyer and Gupta, (1994), p. 309/310 provide very good insight, based on research the paradox of measuring performance without exactly knowing what performance is.
- 51.
Brown, “Running the Legal Department with Business Discipline”, p. 398.
- 52.
Hartung and Gärtner, “The Future of In-House Legal Departments and Their Impact on the Legal Market: Four Theses for General Counsels, and One 4 for Law Firms”, p. 283.
- 53.
Attributed to Heraclitus—see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus.
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Schindler, D. (2017). LIQUID LEGAL Manifesto: Changing the State of Aggregation in Legal. In: Jacob, K., Schindler, D., Strathausen, R. (eds) Liquid Legal. Management for Professionals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45868-7_26
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