The Business of Law
As a business lawyer, I am often boggled at the audacity of how the business of the legal industry operates. From marketing, to product/service development, internal business process, technology use, real estate, to billing, law firms are generally far behind most other businesses across industries. The industry professes to give strategic growth advice to growing businesses, while the industry as a whole is stagnant, notoriously slow to innovate, and regulation remains horribly outdated.
There seems to be a pervasive feeling of “if it’s not broken, why fix it.” But – it is broken for the clients, the businesses. And, it is broken for innovative attorneys and young attorneys. Client dissatisfaction is rampant. Attorney job satisfaction is low. A regulatory environment that discourages innovation and disruption and the general fear and unknown of legal risks causes the industry to maintain its billions of dollars of revenue, but to be clear, this is an industry ripe for change. Change that forces law firms to operate as better, more efficient and practical businesses.
Marketing channel strategy and business development should be implemented and supported by a structure for providing services that is flexible and adaptable to the client needs and keyed to providing value.
Legal services should be packaged and provided in various structures to provide value to each specific consumer group. A startup should not consume legal in the same structure as a Fortune 100 company.
Law firms are located in expensive half empty buildings with unused equipment and offices. Workspaces should be and can be remote, flexible, and lean.
Dictaphones, file rooms… lots and lots of paper. Time to go.
As a Auxana outsourced General Counsel, my office consists of my laptop, my mobile phone, a small grid notebook and some erasable pens. Let’s get to work.