January 23rd, 2012 • Posted by George May • Permalink
When you reach a certain age and have spent a considerable amount
of your professional life in a given industry, you often find yourself
reflecting on how things have changed.
During the 25 or so years I've been working in the legal technology
industry, breathtaking changes have swept through much of the practice of
law. Just a few examples:
-
Attorneys old enough to remember pushing paper
files around during discovery in the 1990s (or earlier) likely never would have
predicted the size and scope of today's electronic discovery market.
-
Those of us old enough to remember when the law
book publishing market was far larger than the electronic research market (yes
- I'm that old) are apt to shake our heads over the continual descent of
library spending on actual law books these days. Entire consultancies earn their living by
showing law firm librarians where to cut redundant or unneeded content, most
often in print.
-
Many of us find it highly interesting that a
profession with the same pricing method in place since Clarence Darrow - the
billable hour - now finds itself in the grip of the same sophisticated pricing
approaches as many other industries.
Pricing tied to value is now all the rage in legal.
But some things connected to the legal industry don't seem
to be changing, or at least to be changing all that quickly. One of those legal market truisms I'd like to
explore here remains largely as much the case today as ever, and that is: When it comes to innovative products and
services in the legal sector, litigators still get all the love.
The LegalTech New York show for 2012 is right around the
corner. Love it or hate it, it is the event in our industry for kicking
off the calendar year. If you provide
products and services to legal practitioners, LegalTech is still a must. I can recall quite clearly a LegalTech
several years ago, when I ran the legal software and solutions endeavors for
Thomson (now Thomson Reuters). We were
bringing a transactional KM product to the market known as West km for
Transactions (a clever name, no doubt), soon to be followed by a different
transactional solution called DealProof.
In preparing for our launch, I took the time to review the full product
listing compiled by the LegalTech team at ALM.
I wanted to know how many of the products being exhibited at the show
were designed for the needs of transactional attorneys.
By my unofficial count, well over 100 distinct products and
services were being marketed at the show.
Of these, the vast majority were either focused on litigation (including
e-discovery and online research) or back office functions (managed IT services,
ERP systems, and so on). Marketing
solutions represented another large category of offerings. And what about our friends in transactional
practice? I counted a total of six -
SIX! - products and services designed specifically for them. And that included what we were introducing
that year.
During my Thomson days, we would frequently refresh market
information about the revenue distribution among the largest law firms. While a clean split between litigation and
transactional activity can be hard to measure (some work - such as anti-trust -
could turn up in either column), the market tended to sort out to about 60/40
between litigation and transactional work.
The cyclical nature of deal work might cast that percentage higher or
lower, but no one would argue that transactional practice is not a significant
source of law firm revenue. Given the
importance of transactional law, why are the tools brought to market so seldom
focused on transactional practice as opposed to litigation?
Some of the explanation is historical. The precedential nature of U.S. law means
that collections such as case law continue to have value even as the content
ages. Likewise, the growth of the
e-discovery market is driven by the sheer immensity and explosive growth of the
world's electronically stored information. It is only natural that creators of legal
products would choose to focus their innovations on these areas.
At Exemplify, we feel that transactional law practice is
ready for a breakthrough innovation.
During the LegalTech show, our company will be providing an early look
at our technology and product to a select group of large law firms and
corporate legal departments. I expect
you will be hearing more about our solution as the year unfolds. If you'd care
to learn more, you may get in touch with us via the contact information
elsewhere on this site.
I myself have lost count of how many LegalTech shows I've
attended, but this one should be rather exciting for us. Throughout 2012, we
will be working to deliver a better set of tools for transactional attorneys. After all, transactional attorneys need love
(and advanced products) too.
