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An early example of where things are headed.

In Post 228, Paula Doyle, Chief Legal Innovation Officer at the World Commerce and Contracting Association (WorldCC), made the claim that inefficiencies in the current commercial contracting process likely cost the global economy more than $1 trillion annually. We reach this figure by adding up the massive second-order effects caused by excessive contract complexity and poor process:…
Continue Reading Case study: impact of AI and Big Data on low-risk contract negotiations (236)

Big data insights on tap, just like water, gas, or electric.

Every day of the year buyers and sellers enter into millions of contracts covering the purchase and sale of billions of dollars worth of goods and services.  Each one of these transactions requires each party to analyze the governing agreement to assess whether the agreement fits within its risk profile.

This analysis commonly is performed in one of two ways: (1) the party accepts whatever risk may be in the contract with no real analysis, or (2) a legal expert conducts an unstructured review and issues his or her opinion regarding the agreement.…
Continue Reading Can contract analysis operate like a utility? (225)

Photo Credit: ESA/NASA
The 4th Industrial Revolution is here (even for lawyers).  A look at what digital transformation actually means for legal markets — and the investments tomorrow’s winners are making today.

Today’s post is the final part in the 5-part series #GreatExpectations for the #GreatReset.  (Like the vaccine rollout 💉 and my workout plan 😁, this post is a bit delayed 🥺.  A million thanks to Bill and the Legal Evolution audience for the patience!)…
Continue Reading #GreatExpectations, Part V: Cloudy with a Chance of Digital Disruption (220)

Photo by BP Miller via Unsplash / Clear-sighted & pragmatic teams will win the day.
Talk of disruption dominated the last decade.  In 2021, widespread change in legal markets appears elusive.  Will this time be different?

Today’s post (219) is Part IV of #GreatExpectations for the #GreatReset, a 5-part series on…

Position isn’t destiny — especially times of turmoil.  Eight charts illustrate the true extent of volatility underlying apparent stagnation in legal markets and give an advance peek at the state of play for 2021.

This post is the third in a 5-part series, #GreatExpectations for the #GreatReset.  The aim of this series is to provide a shared foundation of fact and data to help envision the market dislocations likely to occur in the current economic downturn and recovery.…
Continue Reading #GreatExpectations, Part III: As the Mighty Fall, New Challengers Rise (218)

Photo by Markus Spiske via Unsplash
A dozen charts shed light on how a K-shaped recovery widens the distance between the haves and the have-nots.

Part I (216) of this 5-part series (#GreatExpectations for the #GreatReset) provided a broad retrospective on the last downturn for both BigLaw and corporate clients, with emphasis on the socioeconomic context around the legal market.  The next two posts comprise an experiment in format.  Parts II (217) and III (218) are snack-sized posts 🍙🍿 (at least for me 😇), each covering a handful of charts 📊 as background for long-form posts in Parts IV (219) and V (220).…
Continue Reading #GreatExpectations, Part II: Some Play to Win & the Rest Fight to Survive (217)

As the legal services market becomes more competitive, law firm strategy—or lack thereof—will have real consequences.

If we polled business school professors, all would agree that long-term strategy beats short-term strategy, at least over the long-term.  If true, the following two statements ought to be in tension with one another:

  1. The traditional law firm operating

…

Photo by Mark König on Unsplash

Transparency is coming to B2B commercial contracts

Markets have evolved dramatically over the centuries with the world moving from traditional markets like souks and bazaars to eCommerce.  The differences in efficiency between the two are staggering with buyers and sellers now enjoying faster transaction cycle times, lower administrative costs, and, most important, greater value derived from their purchases and sales.  A number of factors contribute to this development.…
Continue Reading Competition based on better commercial contract terms (211)

Legal professional skepticism of the future value of change investment leads to underinvestment.

A first-pass look at our future.

In earlier Legal Evolution posts, I’ve shared reflections upon my career journey (080), professional evolution (143), and current area of focus (159).  This article describes an investment hypothesis for the upcoming decade focused on building the future of the practice of law [hereafter,…