Processes for At-Scale Capability

September 26, 2022

A Nixon-to-China Move: Denton’s Chair Admits Law Firms Lag in Process-Based Solutions, Saddling “Young Lawyers” w/ “Soul-Crushing” Grunt Work

shutterstock_1456360541-300x175

The Point

The conventional law firm — to maximize revenue — bills client companies hundreds per hour for the work of recent law graduates who are not yet capable of doing legal work unsupervised. (See here, here, and here.)

Accordingly, conventional business law firms — despite showcasing “innovation” specialists — actually resist cost-efficient, fast, and accurate process solutions and their enabling technologies to do routine, recurring, and lower-skill legal work. (See here and here.)

In commenting last week on EY’s incipient split (subscription) into distinct audit and consulting arms, Denton’s chair Joe Andrew offered three revealing observations (subscription) about deficiencies endemic to conventional law firms:

(1) Law firms as a category lag significantly in process-based solutions for client companies’ routine, recurring, and lower-skill legal tasks,

(2) This deficiency causes law firms to assign such routine, recurring, and lower-skill tasks to “young lawyers” as labor-intensive, “soul-crushing” work, and

(3) Law firms will not adopt needed process solutions on their own; only competitive pressure from outside the legal profession will bring this about (Mr. Andrew believes that it will come from the Big Four). Continue reading

July 11, 2022

ALSPs & Law Companies Offer Savings, Speed, and Accuracy in Routine, Recurring Legal Tasks — Bloomberg Law Survey: They are Underused

by Joel A. Webber

shutterstock_1456360541-300x175

The Point

Last Friday, Bloomberg Law reported survey findings supporting the same conclusion I reached in a post two weeks ago:

“While these results indicate that most respondents are using ALSPs [“alternative legal services providers”, or “law companies”], it’s interesting that they’re being used for a relatively small proportion of an organization’s workflow, despite the specialized services and cost-saving potential ALSPs offer.” Continue reading

June 28, 2022

ALSPs & Law Companies Offer Savings, Speed, and Accuracy in Routine, Recurring Legal Tasks — But Are Underused by In-House Counsel and Law Firms

by Joel A. Webber

The Point

Too often, in-house law departments and law firms use licensed lawyers (Category #1 below) to perform routine, recurring tasks that an alternative legal services provider (ALSP) or law company (Category #2 below) could do more cheaply, faster, and with higher accuracy.

CFOs and others in the C-suite should take a hard look at using ALSPs and law companies for routine, recurring legal tasks. Because in-house law departments and law firms, for the most part, are not doing so. Continue reading

June 16, 2022

As Legal Demands Skyrocket, Process-Based Systems are Needed for a Response At-Scale — Axiom Law’s Licensed Attorneys / Part III of III

by Joel A. Webber

shutterstock_1456360541-300x175

The Point

Recently the Arizona Supreme Court granted Axiom Law authority to provide licensed lawyers and their legal advice directly to businesses that do not have a general counsel or other full-time attorney on their payroll.
This matters because attorneys’ bar regulations in the U.S. (except in Washington, D.C.) have prohibited such a direct offering by any entity owned by persons who have not been licensed to practice law.
In over 20 years of providing qualified attorneys to businesses that do have full-time in-house counsel, and currently generating in excess of $1 billion in annual revenue, Axiom Law is renowned for two traits:

1. The high quality of the lawyers it provides to companies; many of whom have practiced law with prestigious traditional law firms or Fortune 500 general counsel offices, lots of them with Ivy League pedigrees, etc., and
2. Fair charges to their corporate clients. Unlike traditional law firms, Axiom Law does not bill by the hour.

June 15, 2022

As Legal Demands Skyrocket, Process-Based Systems are Needed for a Response At-Scale — Elevate Services’ Multidisciplinary Firm / Part II of III

by Joel A. Webber

shutterstock_1456360541-300x175

The Point

Corporate law functions perennially experience chronic shortfalls between the capabilities they have and the ones they need. Meeting these shortfalls requires Legal capability increases at scale. But, as illustrated by Microsoft’s / Jason Barnwell’s experience described in Part I of this two-part series, most law firms resist cooperation with “law companies” or “alternative legal services providers” who provide the software, data analysis, and business process expertise needed to do routine, recurring “process work” (or “efficiency work” as Elevate Services’ Liam Brown refers to it below) at-scale.

Elevate Services is an outlier among U.S.* legal services providers which has organized itself to offer corporate clients both (1) legal advice of licensed attorneys like that found in a traditional law firm, and (2) software, data analysis, and business process expertise offered at the high standards offered by law companies or alternative legal services providers.

The result: Elevate Services offers its corporate clients at-scale responses to skyrocketing legal and regulatory demands at lower cost, greater speed, and greater accuracy than a traditional law firm can offer. Continue reading

June 9, 2022

As Legal Demands Skyrocket, Process-Based Systems are Needed for a Response At-Scale — But Most Law Firms Won’t Help / Part I of III

by Joel A. Webber

shutterstock_1456360541-300x175

The Point

1. Corporate law functions perennially experience chronic shortfalls between the capabilities they have and the capabilities they need. Absent an unlimited budget that can simply add lawyers in response to each new legal and regulatory demand, Legal must increase its compliance capabilities at-scale just to keep up.
2. In a recent series (Parts I, II, III, and IV) I explained that process-based systems are necessary to achieve such at-scale increases in Legal’s compliance capabilities. Again, just adding lawyers is not sustainable.
3. But the legal profession’s still-dominant billable hour business model impedes Legal’s adoption of the modern automated systems needed to scale Legal’s capabilities.