Law new is more than fresh icing on an industry’s stale cake. It’s about providing legal help that enables businesses to focus on core objectives and meet growing cost takeout targets while meeting customer needs at speed. It’s about delivering accessible, affordable, on-demand legal products and services – at scale – that are the legal equivalent of software, a product and service that legal consumers and society at large now expect from most other sectors.
Legal buyers and the wider business community are increasingly embracing alternative legal services providers (ALSPs) in search of cost savings, quality, consistency, speed, agility, and other capabilities. Legal departments at enterprises also are exploring horizontal and vertical integration, shared services, joint ventures and managed service agreements.
The legal industry needs to do the same if it wants to survive. It needs to embrace a new paradigm and produce change that delivers significant value to legal consumers and society at large.
It needs to produce the equivalent of software – an integrated platform-based delivery structure from which agile, fluid and on-demand resources with verifiable, material expertise and experience can be sourced. It needs to move from an economic model driven by inputs, such as billing rates and profits per partner, to a purpose-driven, customer-centric and data-backed, tech-enabled model that is fueled by outputs like net promoter score and client satisfaction.
The new law will also be more holistically diverse – cognitively, demographically and culturally – with a customer-centric and collaborative workforce that is highly creative, tech and data-proficient, empathetic and flexible. It will be built upon a clear, defined and consistent set of principles, values and behaviors. It will offer accessible, affordable, on-demand legal products, services and solutions that are the equivalent of software – a product and service that all other sectors, including those traditionally considered ‘hard’ such as construction and manufacturing, now expect from their legal providers.
One Piece fans know that the character Law is not just one of Oda’s best creations, but also a symbol of what is to come for the legal industry. First introduced in the Sabaody Archipelago arc, Law has quickly established himself as an essential part of the story. During the Wano Country arc, fans got to see Law demonstrate the awakened powers of his Devil Fruit, the Ope Ope no Mi, allowing him to create massive ROOMs and manipulate everything within them – including people. It’s a powerful and terrifying ability that will likely only grow stronger as the story continues.