The price of legal services is increasing faster than the CPI’s basket of goods and services. Perhaps that is not surprising to those of us working in the legal sector. However, legal services are also losing wallet share. In 1987, legal services made up 0.435% of the CPI-U basket. By December 2016, the proportion was
Successful technology adoption: David Cambria (ADM) and Eric Elfman (Onit) discuss their collaboration (041)
When David Cambria sat down with Eric Elfman to discuss his willingness to try Onit software, he stated that if ADM in-house lawyers were required to engage “in a single unnatural act,” the implementation would fail.
Cambria elaborates, “Why are we all so comfortable with Word, Excel, and Outlook? Because these tools don’t have an
“The Lawyer Theory of Value” by Casey Flaherty (040)
In a recent post at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, Casey Flaherty puts his finger on a big problem. The opening paragraphs are too funny not to quote in their entirety:
My friend John Grant [of Start Here HQ] made a mistake.
Many moons ago he was consulting on process improvement for a
Can Intrapreneurship Solve the Innovator’s Dilemma? Law Firm Examples (039)
If a successful large law firm faced an Innovator’s Dilemma, what would it look like?
On the one hand, the firm has a wonderful set of endowments: (1) longstanding and lucrative relationships with industry-leading clients; (2) a business that requires very little operating capital yet generates significant cash and profits; and (3) an established
Student Capstone Presentations: Visitors Welcome (038)
On Wednesday, November 29 from 6 to 8 pm at Northwestern Law, student teams in my “How Innovation Diffuses in the Legal Industry” give their capstone presentations. Topics include Everett Rogers’ rate of adoption model (see Post 008), the role of change agents (see Post 020), and crossing the chasm (see
The Decline of the PeopleLaw Sector (037)
The graphic above tells a simple, painful, and important story about the U.S. legal profession that we can’t afford to ignore. The graphic compares the receipts of U.S. law firms in 2007 and 2012 based on “class of customer” data from the Economic Census, the U.S. Census Bureau’s official five-year measure of American business.
A Deep Dive Into Axiom (036)
In writing up the week 4 summary of “How Innovation Diffusions in the Legal Industry,” I discovered that it is near impossible to write about Axiom without referencing a larger change narrative.
Founded in late 1999, Axiom was likely the legal industry’s first venture-backed start-up. Now, 18 years later, with over 2,000 employees
“The State of Technology in the Law,” Mark Chandler speech from January 2007 (035)
On the occasion of his Lifetime Achievement Award, Legal Evolution is pleased to republish Mark Chandler’s 2007 speech, “The State of Technology in the Law.” This speech arguably marks the beginning of the current era of law practice in which large corporate clients assert more power and authority within the relationship.
At the time
Consultative Sales and Distribution Channels: How and Why it Matters to Legal Innovation Diffusion (034)
Week 3 of my “How Innovation Diffuses in the Legal Industry” class focused on the crucial role of consultative sales and established distribution channels in the diffusion of innovation. The success was entirely due to our guest lecturers from Thomson Reuters, pictured above.
The value of this class, however, will not make sense
The 2017 Forum on Legal Evolution (033)
Several years ago, I was part of an experiment to bring together legal industry innovators and early adopters. To carry this off, Dan Katz, Bruce MacEwen and I pooled our rolodexes to identify folks we thought would be interested in the science of diffusion theory and its application to the legal industry. The experiment/event was the called The Forum on Legal Evolution. The name was very deliberate, as we were trying to break from the “disruptive” innovation rhetoric of the time, which we believed was neither accurate nor helpful.
Continue Reading The 2017 Forum on Legal Evolution (033)