No option for Law Firm

Come on you’d turn away if I said this was another “Tesco Law” will change things forever story. I read this post last Friday on the Guardian website and the part where it talked about brands got me thinking.

The Legal Services Board and its consumer panel are looking at the problems consumers have in identifying quality in legal services – research shows that people focus on service levels, which they can understand, rather than the ability of the lawyer to do the job, which is much harder to judge. They have a degree of respect "bordering on awe" for lawyers, the panel reported recently, and trust that the lawyer knows what he or she is talking about.

It is into this void that solicitors fear brand names will come and offer a consumer-friendly service that will win the loyalty of a public intimidated by the legal process. A recent survey by YouGov found that 60% of people would consider buying legal services from one of 16 named brands, from Barclays to Kwik-Fit, indicating interest in the concept but also a certain doubt at such a radical change in the traditional model.

It got me thinking about the big supermarket brands foray into the banking world. The Sainsbury and Tesco brand certainly shifted accounts of a number of their customers. I’m sure that customers of NatWest and HSBC when asked in 1996 whether they would consider banking with Sainsbury’s were equally sceptical, but Sainsbury’s Bank  now has around 1.5m customers.

But look behind the banks and you’ll see the banking powerhouses, Sainsbury’s is a 50:50 venture with Lloyds Banking Group and Tesco for ten years until 2008 was 50:50 with the Royal Bank of Scotland.

What about in 2022 looking back at a “Sainsbury’s Legal Services” venture and seeing how the successful 50:50 joint venture between Sainsbury’s and Eversheds became a respected brand across consumer legal services? Should the high street lawyers be turning from worrying about the high street brands and look to see if BigLaw is about to move in on their territory to expand?

Have you ever thought that everything clients want from a law firm are things that our fee earner want from the Legal IT dept.?

I hadn’t thought of it this way until a colleague raised a number of points that were raised by some senior people from large global organisations at a recent conference.

"We want consistent service from a global service provider, even if it isn’t in the home market, we still want the same good service in a distant geography"

"We want a legal services team that really knows our business"

"Don’t do what we tell you, do what we need"

“We don’t want academic legal answers, we want relevant business explanations and solutions”

Change the wording slightly.

"We want consistent service from the central IT dept., even if it isn’t in our office, we still want the same good service in a distant geography"

"We want a legal IT team that really knows our business"

"Don’t do what we tell you, do what we need"

“We don’t want technical answers, we want relevant business explanations and solutions”

Makes sense doesn’t it!

Now I’ve been pondering how to sum this post up. Is there an answer to all the problems of delivering a great service in those points raised? I couldn’t come up with a nice black and white answer, but then maybe this is a case of a problem shared is a problem solved?

p.s. thanks must go to my colleague in Asia for this post, the points are plagiarised from him. cheers Andy!

I read a couple of articles last year, one on the demise of corporate IT and another on how corporate IT has the same reputation as Carol Beer (the bank manager in the BBC’s Little Britain hit sketch show, “computer says no”). I agree with some of the sentiments in both of these articles, but not in the conclusion, that this is going to lead to the end of corporate IT in the former article or that this is generally the case that “IT says no” in the later. Here’s my response as to why.

Does the Corporate Legal IT dept need to be dragged into the future?

I spoke to one board level client who was stunned when he moved to his new company that he was unable to use his own laptop and iPad. The IT department instead set him up with a desktop that made him feel like he had been transported five years back in time.

But then I could as easily quote from an article like this one:

A company that runs two law centres has become one of the first two organisations ever to be fined for data protection breaches, after personal details of 24,000 clients were lost when an unencrypted laptop was stolen.

There are reasons that your work PC can be a pain compared to your modern quad core home laptop. But often there are very good reasons for this based on decisions that have been taken by the firm as a whole. It’s a balance and although I would wholly agree with the sentiment that corporate IT has to “say yes”, I’d also argue that it’s the business as a whole that needs to be dragged into the future as well and see IT once again as an enabler for the firm rather than just a utility service. See it as a former and you start to make joint decisions on what you want from IT for the firm, as the later it just becomes something you use.

So what about the End of the Corporate Legal IT dept?

Certainly Legal IT will change due to the three factors outlined in the article: 

• The corporate acceptance of SaaS
• The explosion of consumer technology
• The economy

But it will change rather than die. Much as I’m sure that from the outside it can look like corporate IT is a dinosaur waiting for extinction, this is a generalisation. Most Legal IT depts are very used to change (they’ve been through enough of them in the last 10 years! Mergers, Growth, Recession, Globalisation etc) and so these factors will lead them to change yet again.

• SaaS, yes it’s great but it still needs managing, it still needs analysis of the business needs/requirements, it still needs project management for implementing the service.
• Consumer technology, Apple stuff still breaks you know and needs tech support.
• The economy, if there’s one department that knows how to cut costs it’s IT!

So that’s my thoughts on these articles, what’s yours?

No I didn’t stop blogging over the last three weeks to spend the time on the campaign trail for the Computer Weekly blog awards! I’ve just had too much on in and out of work to come up with something to blog about (which reminds me of a previous post!)

I’ve had in mind a post about the mergers in legal this year. A follow up to the post I put up in July 2009 titled “Consolidation within the UK 200?” in which I predicted a series of mergers outside the top 20. I thought at the time that the competition in the legal market due to the downturn would force a squeeze in the mid-sized firms, but it looks like the consolidation has been nearer the top. There have been a number of transatlantic mergers within the top 20 (well top 25), not the “magic circle” but in those firms just below (in fact those below the transatlantic trailblazer DLA Piper).

We’ve had Denton Wilde Sapte and Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, Hammonds and Squire Sanders & Dempsey, Lovells and Hogan & Hartson and SJ Berwin in talks with Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe and then Proskauer Rose.

Norton Rose has taken a slightly different route into North America with it’s merger with Canadian firm Ogilvy Renault. It’s almost a shame UK law firms aren’t listed on the stock exchange as I’d be hedging a bet and buying up some shares in Herbert Smith!

So the consolidation is happening at a pace, but rather than on a national level it’s the globalisation of the larger law firms that’s leading the way.  I don’t think it’s over, there is still a mixed market out there. Some firms are now posting a rise in turnover, yet there are others that are posting an equal percentage drop.

I therefore stand by my earlier post. The consolidation at the top will only strengthen the brands of the large law firms, allowing them to hoover up more of the big (and medium) plc work. The mid sized firms will be subject to a pincer movement from the “big brand firms” above and also from the new firms that will emerge on the back of the Legal Services Act 2007.

What will the mid sized law firm look like in 5 years time? Will the £75m turnover “Jones, Jones and Smith” still exist or will they be background engine rooms for “Tesco” and “Sainsbury’s” in a legal world that has a few global big brand firms and household name branded legal services?

Whilst writing this post I came across a great document on the upcoming “Big Bang” for legal, it’s called “The Big Bang Report – Opportunities and threats in the new legal services market”.

Oh and no I didn’t win the IT professional (male) blogger award unfortunately, but it was great to be recognised by Computer Weekly and short-listed. Maybe next year!

I sometimes think international law firms are a little like sheep, one sets up in a country and many more follow. But I suspect this is the same in any industry when new markets open, someone is first in but the others soon follow.

The current trend is clearly the BRIC (Brazil Russia India and China) economies, with many firms already established in China and Russia it was Brazil’s turn to be the current destination of choice.

That was until last week when the Brazilian Bar ruled against associations with foreign law firms. This decision isn’t the eviction of all the international firms yet, but it’s a possible step in that direction. As with the continued block on foreign law firms praticing in India it seems a tale of two halves in BRIC. China and Russia happy to accept the foreign law firms, India and Brazil not.

So who’s got it right?

Clearly from a free market point of view, China and Russia are right. And it’s suggested that merger activity in the trans-atlantic market is being driven by the lure of China. But clearly India and Brazil are using the infant industry argument for protectionism. Can this work though for a service firm? In a globalised world won’t business in these countries suffer through lack of access to the global reach of international law firms?

My personal view is that the markets need to open up.

The main asset of a law firm is the lawyers, whichever market the big law firms go into they will need lawyers and most of the time it’s local lawyers that will be used along with a few lawyers transferred to the country. So I think that the access to knowledge in these global firms will accelerate the development of the local lawyers in these markets. And eventually lead to experienced local lawyers leaving and setting up their own Indian and Brazilian firms. Using the knowledge of global markets they have gained they will be better prepared when they decide to expand and set up shop in London and New York.

India should really look at their own IT industry as an example, it’s now the development centre of many global IT organisations (Microsoft employs about 5000 people in India and even Legal IT provider Autonomy has an R&D centre in Bangalore). This has led to a rapid growth in the IT sector in India, not just in global firms but home grown enterprises.