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Standing at the Crossroads of Legal Innovation

By Teresa J. Walker
August 01, 2017

When you arrive at a crossroads, you have the following choices: 1) Stand still and don't move. 2) Turn left; turn right; go backward. 3) Forge ahead!

The legal industry is moving quickly toward a crossroads. The law firm business model of the past is under attack. Slowly, private legal is responding with things like developing knowledge management systems, establishing jobs for data analysts who can establish pricing of services and beginning to look at ways to outline workflows and processes. Unfortunately, corporate clients are impatient and are beginning to push harder for improved efficiency and increased speed of service delivery. Clients believe efficiency should result in lowered cost of production for firms and thus lower cost of services to them. How do law firms respond to these increasing expectations? Will we Forge Ahead to remake our industry? Will we innovate?

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