Innovators at the Barricades by Bruce MacEwen at Adam Smith, Esq. argues that legal process outsourcing (LPO) is a disruptive force for law firms, citing Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma.
“Outsourcing is here to stay” writes MacEwen. He describes different flavors using a 2 x 2 grid: location on the x-axis with offshore or onshore ("foreign” or “domestic"); ownership on the y-axis with captive or 3rd-party ("owned” or “rented"). MacEwen notes that this model is “by no means exhaustive; it’s merely indicative and representative”. This is a good model for thinking about centralizing support services.
LPO will have a big impact: “Once clients begin to get accustomed to the notion of being able to unbundle, or unchunk, legal engagements - be they disputed matters or transactional ones - there’s potentially little end to it.” MacEwen argues that LPOs are likely to go upmarket, meaning they perform higher value work, which will threaten law firms - and also force them to innovate and move up the value chain.
Working for an LPO, my view is that there is a clear line between legal support and law practice. An LPO cannot practice law so I think there is a clear limit to how far “up the value chain” an LPO can go.
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Source: Prism Legal
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1 comments:
I completely believe there is a very distinct difference between legal support and a law practice.
But, I also believe that legal support services has the proven ability and processes which makes a law practice simpler and less time consuming/case
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