The legal profession is facing a flurry of changes in the way it conducts business. We think we are used to change because that is the nature of the law. We live in the changing world of courts, business, technology, and law. We are now also experiencing a world where books are being replaced by e-books, where DVDs are being replaced by live streaming, hotels by renting out rooms in people’s homes, taxis by Uber, and bank loans. for loans between peers.

What is changing for lawyers?

The following five trends are impacting the legal profession:

1. Outsourcing: This trend has already impacted other professions such as accounting and is now impacting the legal profession. Some paralegal and litigation support tasks, like coding and document review, are outsourced, saving you time, money, and the need for some skills.
2. artificial intelligence: Legal research has been done online for some time and already reduces the amount of time it used to take to research. But the quality of what is available to us in terms of legal research is about to change exponentially with the advent of artificial intelligence. Legal software will only get smarter at predicting failure, conducting investigations, and recommending courses of action. While it will make our roles much more efficient, it will also come with a whole new set of challenges in how we bill clients and how we ensure that the advice we provide is correct and up to date. We will still need to know if anything has changed in the last few days that has not been incorporated into the predictive software at the time we give advice.
3. social media: It has now become part of how we market our legal services, how we hire, how we research the people we hire, and how we gather evidence to support our client’s position. It will only be more so in the future.
4. A multigenerational workforce: For the first time ever we now have four generations working side by side in the legal workplace. We have traditionalists, baby boomers, Gen X and Gen Y working together. Now people are working longer and that means that in some places there is a generation gap of more than 50 years between the youngest and oldest employees. This requires levels of tolerance, understanding and communication that we may not be used to.
5. Alternative billing models: The traditional billable hours model was not popular with our clients and was seen as rewarding inefficiency. As smart software becomes more common, more changes to the traditional billable hour model will come. The value of our advice will no longer have much to do with the time it took us to provide it.

Global research by Deloitte has found other issues from a global survey of legal clients. Nearly half of all legal service providers interviewed indicated that regulatory compliance, mediation, arbitration and litigation were growth areas in their businesses. However, the same researchers also found that loyalty to a law firm was not guaranteed. More than half (55%) of those interviewed said they had recently reviewed their agreement with their legal provider or would do so within 12 months.

Deloitte also found that what people wanted from their law firm was now changing. Rather than pure legal advice, clients also wanted their lawyers to have more industry experience, commercial or non-legal. They thought it would be helpful if they had digital, data, privacy and cyber security skills and were more proactive with knowledge sharing. Eventually, this may result in law firms having partnership agreements with other professions so that client needs can be more fully served.

Interesting changes that have already occurred

What changes have I already seen professionals undertake? Here are a few:

• A non-profit family law firm where profits are donated to an appropriate charity or given back to the organization or staff, rather than paid to partners as profits.
• A law firm’s use of emoticons in correspondence because putting a happy face at the end of an email ensures that the other party knows you are not looking to escalate a dispute.
• The formation of solid networks with other professionals who could recommend work to you or vice versa. These networks can contain anyone from accountants, bankers, financial planners, stock and insurance brokers to healthcare professionals. You can form these networks informally or with regular monthly meetings where everyone invites their customers to meet and greet.
• A company holds a ‘digital festival’ every six months to keep customers up to date on relevant technology and any relevant legal issues or risks associated with its use or non-use.
• Apps that help people track what stage their file is in (for example, text alert when the search is sent to a government department or when the lease is sent to the tenant), when their next meeting is, the government agencies that they should contact for different problems, etc.
• Strategic positioning of law firms in non-traditional physical locations, such as health or innovation centers.

How do we consciously cope with this amount of change?

Lawyers are traditionally conservative. We have a way we’re used to being perceived, a way we dress and talk, a way we expect our office furniture to look, and a standard approach to how business is done…sort of, the way it’s always been. Now we are being asked to shake things up and make changes to the way we do business if we want to stay relevant.

Change can be a good thing. If you’re old enough to remember black-and-white television, cassette tapes you had to wind up with a pencil when they broke, floppy disks, or fax machines, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Have you ever sold your house? Did you get involved in a frenzy of cleaning, throwing out, moving furniture to new places, and repairing things that you had put up with for years? After everything was ready, did you step back and look at this sparkling house and wonder why you ever thought selling and moving was a good idea? Your law practice could probably benefit from a similar cleanup, repair, and reorganization. Instead of seeing these changes as a disruption, what if you saw them as an opportunity to upgrade?

Our very human reaction to change is to see it as bad or threatening. After all, that’s what kept us safe when we were evolving. Every change in our environment was a potential threat to our existence. Mindfulness asks you to see the change, just like the change. It’s neither good nor bad, it’s just a change.

Mindfulness also asks you to recognize that change is required and to accept what that will mean. Acceptance means not railing against the need for change, but accepting it and determining step by step what can be done about it.

Starting with small changes will make it easier. Pick something relatively easy, like building your referral network by one person a month, and start there. Every step you take will count. After you’ve done a couple of smaller steps, you could tackle something bigger, like social media for your business, if you haven’t already.v

The changes that are coming are neither good nor bad, they are simply an opportunity for us to do better business.