As the New Year began, hundreds of state laws became effective in different parts of the country. The laws range from quirky to serious, but all impact the respective states’ citizens in some way. Some of the laws address issues that are dominating American discourse, such as marijuana legalization, gun control, and abortion. Others take a more practical approach to life in the modern economy, such as establishing minimum wages and updating rules about worker classifications. Some of the laws also tackle less prominent but no less important topics, such as a requirement that businesses with more than 20 employees disclose data breaches to affected individuals.
Law new is an idea that legal firms are increasingly embracing in order to better serve their clients. This approach involves finding innovative ways to offer help without compromising other areas of practice that may be a firm’s primary focus. It’s an area of growth that all firms should be aware of and consider exploring.
The concept of law new is about bringing a broader perspective to the industry and leveraging it for success. It involves utilizing different approaches to offering help that can be utilized as a stand alone means of creating revenue for a firm. It’s an idea that all legal firms should embrace to the best of their ability and understand how it works in order to create maximum benefit.
Legal delivery will more closely resemble its corporate customers and society-at-large. It will be fluid and collaborative and integrate seamlessly with business and other enterprise functions. It will have a diverse workforce that is cognitively, demographically, culturally, and experientially diverse, and it will include more non-lawyers than ever before. It will possess data agility that enables it to identify, manage, mitigate and eliminate risk, capture business opportunities, and free up management to focus on core goals. It will use technology to deliver on-demand, scalable, and transparent legal products and services at the speed of business and society.
It will consolidate the industry by horizontal and, to a lesser extent, vertical integration that leverages infrastructure, shares data, pools expertise, minimizes costs, mitigates risks, and meets cost-takeout targets. It will do this through joint ventures, managed services, and other integration mechanisms. It will erode artificial, lawyer-created distinctions between provider sources and eliminate siloes within the legal sector. The result will be a legal supply chain that is integrated, erasing the artificial, lawyer-created distinctions between outsourcing providers and in-house lawyers; between the legal department and its internal and external service providers, including allied legal professionals; between different firms and in-house departments; and across industries. It will be purpose-driven, focused on customer impact and value, and driven by collaboration, innovation, and agility. It will produce sustainable profit not through adherence to a legacy economic model based on input but by delivering measurable and meaningful value at the speed of business and society. It will be law new.