Some of the recent change in the way the law is practised has been accelerated or even created by technology, but much has been created by a shifting set of client focused needs, and the ability of lawyers to grasp a different way of working.
The traditional method of working had the client-lawyer relationship between the lead partner and general counsel, or maybe the chief executive, with the work being done in the office of the lead partner by a variety of team members – from trainees to subject experts. That model led to time-related billing, a structure that lasted happily into the past decade.

Catalysts

But what have been the catalysts for change, and how do they impact on our standard model?
It is easy to say price is the sole driver behind the evolution – and indeed the need for a reduced cost model for the client cannot be underestimated. However, there are other, more subtle, factors at play.
We live in a changing social world – where once one shared holiday snaps and stories only occasionally and only with those you felt you could justify boring with the view from your hotel window – we now share them in an instant with a global population of possibly interested parties. We also share information about what we are doing, minute by minute, with whoever may wish to know.
We are used to managing that multi-faceted approach to living – or at least we are getting used to it for those of us old enough to regard this as a change.
Crowd sourcing has also become a new metaphor – who would have imagined that a movie could be killed by the power of seemingly random comment – or indeed that a book could succeed by just the same power? Who would have thought that Wikipedia would become more relied on than accredited academic resources?

Not so far-fetched

How do these factors link to a different model for legal work?  Firstly, much of this change is a product of our increasingly connected technological world.
The concept of posting pictures to all and sundry or gathering a mob to march in protest is dependent on connectivity and random interest – it only works if people look at what is being broadcast, and experience tells us they do. Transfer that into the workplace by broadcasting throughout your global practice the documents for review – and harness the random amounts of free time to review, and then post the responses to ‘the due diligence wall’. Is that so far-fetched?
Maybe we have not quite managed that yet – although it is tempting to think we should and could. What we have achieved is the ability to dissect the work we are doing into component elements, distributing these to a global group of providers – in house, in another office, outsourced off shore or near shored – it does not matter. Pull back the resulting work – and effectively re-aggregate it and present the finished whole to the client.
Unquestionably, cost is the key driver here and results can often be achieved by either a remote population in a cheaper jurisdiction or a preliminary review of the underlying technology itself. This satisfies, to a degree, the need to reduce the cost model for the client, but calls into focus different skill-sets in the lawyer.
Project management becomes a key skill, but it is more than that – it is managing the multiple parties, many of whom may be remote and reassembling their work into a single finished whole that is the focus of attention for a lead lawyer on the team. This may not be the client relationship partner, it may not be the rain maker, but it is an equalled skilled and equally important member of the client support team.

New skills

Lawyer skills and the way we practise law are changing. It is not just managing a team that has become disparate, lawyers also face having to deal with technology rather than individuals. That initial analytic phase allows the breaking down of the work into component elements – which can be done independently but still effectively. That process has allowed lawyers to develop new skills.
Technology provides the communication mechanism and the speed of information exchange, but the final assembly phase is still where legal expertise and presentation skills come to the fore.
Where next? Take a look at the changes occurring in our social interaction to think about how legal work may look – maybe even as soon as tomorrow.

Janet Day is the director of technology and infrastructure services at London-based international law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner