16. Law firms as businesses

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Slorach ◽  
Judith Embley ◽  
Peter Goodchild ◽  
Catherine Shephard
Keyword(s):  
Law Firms ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Legal Market ◽  
Set Up

This chapter first discusses the business aspect of law firms. Law firms have the same financial motivations and pressures as any other business. They need money (investment) to set up, and then to survive and grow. Law firms need to make a profit, attract clients, and stay ahead of other law firms. They operate within the legal market, producing a product—legal services—the ‘consumers’ of which are the clients. The chapter considers who those clients are, and why they chose a particular firm.

20. Law firms as businesses

2020 ◽  
pp. 623-652
Author(s):  
Scott Slorach ◽  
Judith Embley ◽  
Peter Goodchild ◽  
Catherine Shephard
Keyword(s):  
Law Firms ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Legal Market ◽  
Set Up

This chapter first discusses the business aspect of law firms. Law firms have the same financial motivations and pressures as any other business. They need money (investment) to set up, and then to survive and grow. Law firms need to make a profit, attract clients, and stay ahead of other law firms. They operate within the legal market, producing a product-legal services-the ‘consumers’ of which are the clients. The chapter considers who those clients are, and why they chose a particular firm.

The re-landscaping of the legal profession: Large law firms and professional re-regulation

2011 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 507-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Flood
Keyword(s):  
Self Regulation ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Legal Market ◽  
The Uk ◽  
City Of London ◽  
Global Law ◽  
The City ◽  
The Eu

The size and scope of global law firms has made them difficult to encompass within a single regulatory jurisdiction. As the UK government sought to take control of the legal profession and market by removing self-regulation and introducing external regulation under the Legal Services Act, the large law firms were able to countermand the new regime. Through a combination of associations like CityUK, the City of London Law Society, as well as through individual firms, large law firms lobbied successfully to reinstate a new form of self-regulation known as AIR. The elites of the legal profession constructed a new logic of professionalism that accorded with the firms’ ideologies and government’s market-oriented objectives. Further attempts to consolidate their position at the EU and at the GATS levels are still in negotiation. Despite the legal market shifting to a more diffuse combination of actors, of which lawyers are only a segment, elite law firms have apparently strengthened their hold.

Imperfect Duty: Lawyers’ Obligation to Foster Access to Justice

2008 ◽  
pp. 107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Woolley
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Imperfect Duty ◽  
Special Obligation ◽  
Legal Market ◽  
Integral Component

Access to justice is an integral component of the legal system. However, the question of upon whose shoulders the obligation of ensuring this access should fall has been widely debated. In particular, do lawyers, as part ofthe legalprofession, have a special obligation to foster access to justice? In this article, the author explores the legitimacy of various arguments with respect to whether lawyers should carry this obligation to a greater extent than other members of society. The author begins by critiquing the traditional arguments related to imposing such an obligation on lawyers — for instance, the refined monopoly arguments. She then goes on to critically consider an alternative argument: that imperfections in the marketfor legal services justify the existence of a special obligation for lawyers. An examination of the limitations of this justification follows. Overall, the author concludes that while the arguments arising from imperfections in the legal market offer the best justification for seeing lawyers have a special obligation to ensure access tojustice, the claims from the argument are modest ones, and any policy response in furtherance of such an obligation should be similarly modest.

Knowledge as a Revenue Driver, Not a Cost Centre: the LexisNexis GLP and How to Use Market Intelligence to Make Knowledge a Vital Growth Engine for Law Firms

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 213-218
Author(s):  
Christopher O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Measure ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Market Intelligence ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Marketing Team ◽  
Virtual Conference ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Individual Metrics ◽  
Legal Product

AbstractThis article by the LexisNexis Segment Marketing team explains the approach, methodology and findings of the LexisNexis Gross Legal Product (GLP) report, first presented at the BIALL's Virtual Conference in June 2020. The GLP is a quantitative measure of underlying demand for legal services in the UK, comprised of 250 individual metrics which serve as proxies for legal activity. The article outlines the methodology and sources used to build the GLP; headline findings for Q2 2020 YTD; and provides suggestions for how firm leaders and knowledge professionals could use the information in their work. The GLP Q2 model found that demand for legal activity has declined by 7% since the start of 2020.

Knowledge Management in Law Firms

2011 ◽  
pp. 1818-1840
Author(s):  
Petter Gottschalk
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
Law Firm ◽  
Social Community ◽  
The Creation

Law enforcement is of concern to law firms. A law firm can be understood as a social community specializing in the speed and efficiency in the creation and transfer of legal knowledge (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). Many law firms represent large corporate enterprises, organizations, or entrepreneurs with a need for continuous and specialized legal services that can only be supplied by a team of lawyers. The client is a customer of the firm, rather than a particular lawyer. According to Galanter and Palay (1991, p. 5), relationships with clients tend to be enduring:

Facings

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-130
Author(s):  
Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen
Keyword(s):  
Peer Interactions ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Gender Parity ◽  
Women Lawyers ◽  
Advantageous Position ◽  
Female Professionals ◽  
Mixed Gender

This chapter discusses the ways in which relationships between female professionals and their clients, peers, and mentors help create and reinforce interactional hierarchies in these spaces. Certainly, professionals in these firms have been socialized to be comfortable in mixed-gender settings. But although supportive peer interactions are necessary to create an environment of gender parity, women in elite law firms also are especially backed by an important external audience that does not actively discriminate on the basis of gender — their clients. Elite law firms in India, unlike their traditional counterparts, retain a “sophisticated” client base of international and high-end domestic clients. This setup affords a comparatively advantageous position — especially for women lawyers — for a range of reasons. First, many clients are comfortable with women in their workplace and as allies in transactions. Second, the nature of the legal work handled by these firms does not prime gender frames in lawyer–client interactions. Third, the closed market for legal services offers another interactional advantage — retained and repeating clients.

scholarly journals Corporate Support for Legal Services

Daedalus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-139
Author(s):  
Jo-Ann Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Large Firm ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Business Experience ◽  
Pro Bono ◽  
Corporate Support ◽  
Corporate Lawyers ◽  
The Impact

The gap in pro bono legal services provided by corporate legal departments and large private law firms is not surprising: The formalization of pro bono work by large firms has been underway on a significant scale for far longer than it has within corporations. This process has made large firm pro bono efforts more efficient and effective through improved practices. It has also led firm leaders and lawyers generally to expect more volunteerism of this sort. Companies that apply their resources, business experience, or other assets have successfully expanded the impact of their pro bono hours. Because of the scale of this need, and because legal-services lawyers have specialized expertise that corporate lawyers can't easily replicate, corporate pro bono efforts will not, on their own, close the justice gap. But these efforts have the potential to contribute significantly more to the ability of legal-aid organizations to serve their clients, and to help close this gap.

Legal Systems & Skills

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Slorach ◽  
Judith Embley ◽  
Peter Goodchild ◽  
Catherine Shephard
Keyword(s):  
Research Problem ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Legal Service ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Business Economics ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Finance Law ◽  
Core Areas ◽  
Essential Knowledge

Legal Systems & Skills provides essential knowledge and skills for underpinning legal studies, providing a foundation for graduate employability both within and outside the legal service profession. It develops students’ understanding in three core areas: legal systems, legal skills, and professional development and commercial awareness. The first part of the book looks at legal systems, sources of law, legislation, case law, and legal services. The next part considers how to read and understand law, legal research, problem solving, communication, and writing and drafting. The final part examines employability skills, business, economics and finance, law firms, and clients.

scholarly journals AI-enabled business models in legal services: from traditional law firms to next-generation law companies?

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Armour ◽  
Mari Sako
Keyword(s):  
Business Model ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Law Firm ◽  
Corporate Form ◽  
New Business ◽  
Employee Incentives ◽  
New Business Models

Abstract What will happen to law firms and the legal profession when the use of artificial intelligence (AI) becomes prevalent in legal services? We address this question by considering three related levels of analysis: tasks, business models, and organizations. First, we review AI’s technical capabilities in relation to tasks, to identify contexts where it is likely to replace or augment humans. AI is capable of doing some, but not all, legal tasks better than lawyers and is augmented by multidisciplinary human inputs. Second, we identify new business models for creating value in legal services by applying AI. These differ from law firms’ traditional legal advisory business model, because they require technological (non-human) assets and multidisciplinary human inputs. Third, we analyze the organizational structure that complements the old and new business models: the professional partnership (P2) is well-adapted to delivering the legal advisory business model, but the centralized management, access to outside capital, and employee incentives offered by the corporate form appear better to complement the new AI-enabled business models. Some law firms are experimenting with pursuing new and old business models in parallel. However, differences in complements create conflicts when business models are combined. These conflicts are partially externalized via contracting and segregated and realigned via vertical integration. Our analysis suggests that law firm experimentation with aligning different business models to distinct organizational entities, along with ethical concerns, will affect the extent to which the legal profession will become ‘hybrid professionals’.

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