Defining real change
The Legal 500’s publishing director, David Burgess, considers whether we are on the precipice of change for the delivery of legal services.
In the last few weeks, my LinkedIn feed has been full of talk of how the latest NewLaw move (EY purchasing Riverview Law) is a massive sign of the market shifting. My email inbox and conversations with general counsel have shown the other side to this story, which ranges from indifference to a collective shrug of shoulders.
One law firm partner suggested that this deal was symptomatic of the divide between talented people vs smart technology, and suggested that the latter is the key driver of the in-house department. I’m not so sure about that, but what we have seen from legal tech is that the key players are much better at marketing themselves than the traditional service providers. Riverview is a great example of that – there has rarely been a conference in the past two years that hasn’t featured Karl Chapman evangelising about how consumption of legal services has changed forever.
