Unlike many other countries, in the United States, the legal profession is generally uncompetitive. However, this is beginning to change as technology advances, and our world is rapidly changing in unprecedented ways; currently, the primary driver for change in the U.S. legal market revolves around the need for advancements in legal technology. So, while around forty states require legal professionals to be “competent in the use of relevant technology,” that provision may as well be saying something as nebulous and out of date as “surfing the world wide web from an internet cafe is hard without your own floppy disk...” For starters, what constitutes “competency?” and what is “relevant technology?” Is it the basics, like a word processor or filing system, or the newly relevant technology, like emergent AI drafting technologies?
Advancements in culture and technology are typically the ire of the artisan. We fear that anyone with an iPhone can become a photographer or anyone with a laptop can become a music producer, and that skill will lose meaning, and eventually, so will humanity. It does not have to be this extreme. Just because anyone CAN have the starting tools like a cellphone with a camera or a laptop with GarageBand, there is still plenty of training involved with perfecting mastery of the technology and synergizing this with individualized skill. This framework also aptly applies to the new legal ecosystem.
While the large-scale change will likely continue to unfold over the next generation, a recent development has been related to the rise of alternative legal service providers, known as ALSPs for short. These companies offer some legal services by non-lawyers with relevant experience and business backgrounds to do work for cheaper and faster than many law firms are able to output work. Recently, abroad, the “big four” (PWC/KPMG/DELOITTE/EY) have begun acquiring lawyers and increasingly practicing law in countries with decreased strictness around law firm ownership. All of this development has been contemporaneous with the rise of the “NewLaw firm.” NewLaw is known for “disruption” in terms of embracing emergent technology, having more diverse or creative staffing and company models (such as 100% WFH), alternative billing, and beyond. NewLaw firms tend to be driven mostly by capital investment into NewLaw start-ups that typically have alternative structures and are generally marked by their incorporation of technology to mitigate any basic legal work, for efficiency.
If I were to imagine a NewLaw model firm that I would like to work for, I would be pretty picky in terms of structure. The rapid rise and fall of Atrium, along with similar stories of companies like Theranos, serve as examples to me of what can happen when things go wrong in the mercurial world of start-ups. While I’m an avid believer in innovation and a lover of technology, I would want to work in a firm that holds fast to some traditional elements as backup, and certainly a firm that does have a physical office space and isn't 100% WFH. I would be most interested in a firm with what's been called a “horseback model” in the NewLaw world. This is a model where a client pays for subscription service on behalf of their product or sales team, and the lawyer “rides up,” assesses the issues, offers feedback, and then moves on. I believe this would allow me greater flexibility in my scheduling and a diverse portfolio of clients while maintaining the intimacy of the relationship between the smaller client teams and myself as their attorney.
I believe the horseback model combines some of the tasks of in-house counsel, with those of a traditional firm but under the umbrella of NewLaw it would also incorporate entrepreneurial lawyering as well as the embracing of available emergent technology and an “outside of the box” approach to the practice of law. I believe that my skillset best matches unconventional work spaces and this is a practice I would be eager to have a go at.
