Extract from Kenzo Tsushima, Rico Burnett & David Malkinson’s article “Law Firms and ALSPs Share the Same Destiny”
If you were going to create the law firm of the future, what would it look like? Would you hire a group of associates out of law school? Perhaps you could partner with a couple of senior attorneys and create the classic three-named firm.
However, chances are that in 10 years, law firms and Alternative Legal Service Providers (“ALSPs”) are going to converge under a technological strategy that ALSPs are already leveraging. Increased legal complexity, budget pressures, staff shortages and advances in technology will catalyze this eventual consolidation. Top-tier expertise fused with technology-driven legal services will ultimately deliver greater value to clients. This shift will ultimately have huge implications and upend what we now think of as “traditionally legal”—from education, to the types of jobs and support necessitated in the new realm of client-service delivery.
Alternative Models
Currently, many law firms operate using the same service models they have relied on for decades. Research, document review, due diligence, and initial contract and motion drafting are handled by a large team of junior attorneys and paralegals, which are then delegated to mid-level staff. If valuable enough, these tasks are sent to the firm’s partners who are billing $1,000 or more per hour for their review and approval. With the amount of manual effort required for the initial research and drafting, law firms have leveraged this model in order to maximize both profit and client-service delivery.
