Find out where your clients are spending money
other than traditional law firms and what they're buying there, and figure out whether and how you might offer that as well.
2) «lawyers still have outstanding value to offer in certain quarters, but we need to concentrate our market offerings around that value, and we need better platforms for our
services than traditional law firms provide.»
Couple all of this with the fact that we give back to the consultants a very high percentage of what they earn, as our overheads are
lower than a traditional law firm, and everyone is a winner.
Slater and Gordon probably isn't for everyone, but I think that it offers many more opportunities to
lawyers than a traditional law firm, where your options are usually limited to either becoming partner or not.
Adjedj's comment about the ability of a commercial company to respect ethical obligations ignores the fact that since 2000 in Australia and since 2012 in England & Wales, commercial companies have offered legal services in full respect of the ethical obligations applicable to lawyers (at least, in no less a
manner than traditional law firms).
Technology is not replacing lawyers, but it is changing the tasks they perform; the delivery models they operate in; performance and reward structures - output (results) rather than input (hours billed); where and for whom they work — agile, increasingly «gigs» instead of jobs, and for legal services organizations
rather than traditional law firms.
A 21st Century development has been the appearance of the virtual law firm, a firm with a virtual business address but no brick & mortar office location open to the public, using modern telecommunications to operate from remote locations and provide its services to international clients, avoiding the costs of maintaining a physical premises with lower
overheads than traditional law firms.
One option could be to formalize other legal avenues for young lawyers (female / male alike)
other than the traditional law firm structure: non-profits, inhouse, and teaching are some options.
They will have to be very sure that the faceless monolith of a financial services company or service conglomerate purporting to offer a better
service than a traditional law firm is going to be able to meet that challenge.
Uebergang urges lawyers and firms to act now, believing the main threat to the legal profession comes from clients seeking advice from sources other
than traditional law firms, due to convenience and cost.