Page 27 - PIC e-newsletter Spring Issue 8

KEEP
CALM AND
INNOVATE ON
Many personal injury lawyers will be licking their wounds after a decade of relentless external change in their markets, with more to come in the shape of the Civil Liability Bill, horizontal and vertical extension of the fixed costs regimes and the pilot stage online court to name a few. The future of legal services delivery is evolving at a pace, with frequent press accounts of omni-channel service delivery, chatbot’s, apps, AI and self-serve claims portals.
Jonathan Doughty reports
arket intelligence from the Law Society concludes that: “Over the longer term, the number of jobs in the legal services sector will be increasingly affected by automation of
legal services functions. This could mean that by 2038 total employment in the sector could be 20% less than it would otherwise have been, with a loss of 78,000 jobs”.
Many firms will be considering strategic options from market exit through runoff or disposal, market repositioning in niche areas of associated practice, further diversification to new practice areas, or transformation and change to secure a viable business model in the current sector.
The commonality of these options is change. Firms
will need to reflect, refocus, innovate and transform to remain competitive and enduring. They will need genuine confidence that their organisations and people can support innovation and promote a collaborative and open culture where the status quo is perennially challenged and continuous improvements prevail. Solutions must demonstrably meet a client’s needs and must be solutions clients will pay for.
HMRC reportedly has a £1.8bn investment over four years to deliver the ‘biggest transformation of the tax system in a generation’. This is an indication of the extent of change necessary to support true digitalisation of an organisation. However, many in the personal injury sector may be struggling to devote resource to a transformation agenda when ‘keeping the lights on’ feels like challenge enough,
Some may be concerned that lawyers may innovate themselves out of work but clients will always want a lawyer’s human touch.
but doing nothing is not an option. Consumers in the digital era have increased expectations on lowering costs and faster delivery of legal services which are forcing law firms to change fundamentally the way they do business. Those firms which don’t respond will not endure. But alternative approaches
are available.
Firms can lower cost and improve service delivery by leveraging the capability of established BPO/LPO suppliers of scale for front and back office functions. Increasingly these solutions will grow and develop as collaborative partnership models, rather than the tactical implementation of short term solutions.
Competitive advantage can be secured and margin enhancements realised freeing funds and resource for further internal investment, thus providing a visible catalyst for transformation. Further innovation can be supported by collaboration within the sector, including with suppliers who have a direct affinity with the competiveness of your future business model, and pooling of resources.
All of us will be fiercely proud of the quality client service
we have provided to our clients in the past and will want to defend the values we stand for that have underpinned that service. Equally if we were setting up start up law firms today, unhampered by legacy and designed for tomorrow, we would undoubtedly agree that those start up business would look significantly different to the legal practices we now have, even if the core values are common to both.
Some may be concerned that lawyers may innovate themselves out of work but clients will always want a lawyer’s human touch. Lawyers in firms of the future will have key client relationship and complex legal issues to focus on, where their technical and interpersonal skills can really add value to the client journey, reserving the more mundane aspects to technology solutions.
We shouldn’t forget the impact of change on those around
us. Many will be apprehensive of the journey, be uncertain
of the future and maybe resistant. Express your future as a goal, strategy or plan and energetically invest in sharing your collective vision. Communicate, challenge and support in equal measure and lead selflessly from
the front.
It will be a change and may be fearful for some, but it is a journey we
will all be on to some greater or lesser degree, so collaborate, share
your experiences and relentlessly celebrate your successes along the way.
Jonathan Doughty is a Consultant at ARL Professional Services.
www.pic.legal Spring 2018
27