The Great Legal Reformation

Book excerpt: Few can doubt that the Great Legal Reformation is under way. It is refreshing that this book does not simply look to advances in technology and artificial intelligence as the cause or the future. Instead, an evolutionary combination of falling demand from clients wanting more for less, an over-supply of lawyers, and a rise in the number and influence of in-house lawyers using outsourcing and managed legal services is changing the face of legal practice. Organizational and regulatory change, declining motivation and increasing stress among lawyers, as well as technological development, are all making law firms more challenged and challenging places for the practice of law. And yet, paradoxically, unmet legal needs persist throughout the market and the world over. Thankfully, a few trailblazers are breaking the mould. They refuse to muddle through, carrying on as though a return to 'business as usual' and 'the good old days' is just around the corner and will be their salvation. They are willing to turn their backs on long-standing traditions and practices, and prefer to place their faith and future in the long-term rather than the short, on value, capital and investment rather than charging for time and income extraction, and on engagement, success, development and alternative career paths for their employees rather than on employee churn and all-or-nothing tournaments. Through in-depth case studies and vignettes, Mitch Kowalski takes us on a tour to meet the innovators and to eavesdrop on his conversations with them. This is not a glimpse into the future of how he and others might see the legal world developing as the Great Legal Reformation unfolds. This is an insight into the here and now?into what these innovators have already envisioned and achieved. These are the platforms from which yet further innovation and re-formation of the market will be driven, and which those who are stuck behind?whether practitioners or regulators?are in danger of struggling to reach.