As law firms and corporations begin to embrace a new legal model and assess more effective ways to better serve their clients, they are constantly looking at new technologies and different ways to deliver services. Panelists discussed e-Discovery technologies, contract management platforms, alternative fee models and expanding in-house bandwidth through LPOs.
David Kinnear (Greenpoint Legal) and Laura Kibbe (Morgan Lewis Bokius LLP ) shared their insights on how successful law firms have adapted their profit models mostly because the clients are demanding it, but also because it is the only way to keep costs down and continue to build the firm’s business. In today’s marketplace, partners have to look at law firms as a business and use resources that help that business run effectively.
“…there are some tasks that you cannot perform inside a firm setting cost-effectively, time-effectively and client-effectively, so there is an inevitable marriage of convenience or necessity brewing here which was just unheard of – you did not reference this at polite parties only 2-3 years ago, but it is clearly here and I think that will be one of the yardsticks of the next 3-5 years for sure. I suspect it is much closer than that, where there is a realization that what was, was great, but now there is a new reality where we have to mash it together a bit and we accept that you are not what we are and we’re not what you are, and all that kind of thing. When the client is paying the bill we kind of have to figure it out. To the extent that law firms really robustly change to meet that challenge and invest in technology and resources, and effectively back office, that could be an approach to it.” David Kinnear said.
“We approached it, when I joined Morgan Lewis five months ago, the ‘crazy idea’ lady said ‘hey, we need to set the trend; we need to do this’ and we issued our press release two weeks ago that Exigent is officially our back office for reviews that make sense, so we can provide an end-to-end service, all transparent to the client, but let the client decide. If the client says listen, ‘I love it here but I don’t need my review done in NYC’ or ‘I need this custodian done in NYC and these are not important custodians’, or ‘less risky’ or however you draw the line, the ability to bring to the client the opportunity to do things and put the pieces together the way they want instead of the way the firm thinks they should want, I think is going to be the way of the future, or at least that’s what I told firm management (laughter)… so we’ll see.” Laura Kibbe commented.
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Author: Keisha N. Carter, Esq. – Vice President Business Development at Exigent Group Limited.
