Law new is a catchall industry term linked to such buzzwords as “legal tech,” “legal ops,” and “ALSP’s.” It refers to any change that legal consumers, the business of law, or the legal profession itself experience. This change process can produce anything from internal efficiency, to new delivery methods, to innovative client engagement strategies. But, the most significant changes produce a paradigm shift from provider to customer impact and enhancement.
In the legal industry, this paradigm shift focuses on human adaptation and the resulting increase in net promoter score. It replaces outdated legal education, self-regulation, and fee structures with a customer-centric model that delivers on legal promises and outcomes. It includes a broader scope of work, greater use of technology, and an emphasis on the value-based billing method.
The law new paradigm shift requires the creation of a diverse, integrated, legal industry workforce that more closely mirrors its corporate customers and society at large. It is cognitively, demographically, and culturally diverse; it is creative, empathetic, and collaborative. This workforce is technologically proficient and focused on providing accessible, affordable, on-demand, legal products that help meet challenges and capture opportunities at the speed of business and society.
Collaboration is a requirement for survival and success in the modern world. This is particularly true of the legal industry, which must meet a variety of complex, global challenges that cannot be mastered by any single person, function, enterprise, or stakeholder group. The legal industry has a unique role in facilitating this collaboration by serving as a trusted and secure repository of information, ideas, knowledge, and collective experiences.
The law new paradigm also involves a consolidation of the industry by horizontal and vertical integration, joint ventures, and managed services. Law firms and in-house legal departments remain the industry’s dominant provider sources, but they operate from different economic models, cultures, remits, and technology platforms. In the future, legal providers will integrate a platform-based delivery structure from which agile, fluid, on-demand resources with verifiable material expertise and experience can be quickly sourced. This will eliminate artificial, lawyer-created distinctions between providers and erase legal supply chain siloes. This will create a seamless, transparent, and affordable legal service ecosystem that meets the demands of today’s and tomorrow’s clients. Lastly, the law new paradigm will incorporate the use of technology and data to improve legal service outcomes and reduce costs. This will be a significant shift from the current reliance on manual processes, self-regulation, and traditional dispute resolution mechanisms. This will result in a more efficient, predictable, cost-effective, and client-centric legal delivery model that produces high net promoter scores. This will make the legal industry competitive with its business and consumer markets in every way that matters to people and companies.