Reach and rich : the new economics of information and the provision of on-line legal services in the UK

The paper considers a number of issues including the use of the Web as an opportunity for smaller firms to break free from the traditional indicators of reputation and expertise such as the size and opulence of offices. It also reflects on the use of client-specific Extranets in addition to publicly available Internet sites. The paper concludes that although the Web provides reach, offering richness and the sense of community required for creating and sustaining relationships with potential clients can be difficult. Some suggestions are made for enhancing 'Richness' in Web sites

Don\u27t Let the Digital Tail Wag the Transformation Dog: A Digital Transformation Roadmap for Corporate Counsel

Due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, enhancements in technology, as well as shifts in the macroeconomic and socioeconomic dynamics of globalization, Digital Transformation (DT) has become an enterprise-wide imperative for most multinational companies (MNCs). As a result, legal departments are being challenged to embrace enterprise DT and start their own departmental DT journeys. Despite these trends, there is little scholarship and research about how MNC legal departments are addressing the DT challenge. How are General Counsel (GCs) currently approaching DT? Is what they are doing effective and value-accretive? And importantly, how should GCs approach DT to best generate value? This article attempts to fill the literature gap. Based on interviews of 25 GCs and Chief Digital Officers of S&P 500 MNCs along with the authors\u27 professional experience and secondary research, we explore how legal departments are responding to and approaching DT. We identify a Three-Phased Digital Maturity Framework that maps the typical MNC legal department DT trajectory. We argue that this trajectory is suboptimal because it emphasizes technology at the expense of the foundational, non-technological elements of DT that are critical for success. Too often, GCs appear to let the digital tail of DT wag the transformational dog. The legal department itself must be fully transformed before the digital elements can add full value. By failing to transform the non-digital foundations of their departments in collaboration with the business before they introduce new technologies, GCs are leaving the most difficult aspects of DT-the organizational and structural, behavioral, and cultural changes-for last. This post-hoc approach (that leaves client-centricity and change management last) is disruptive, adds unnecessary cost, and threatens the credibility, viability, and timing of the entire DT effort on a go-forward. As an alternative to this typical Three-Phased approach, we articulate a Best Practice 5-Step Model for how GCs should approach DT. Our approach is distinctive in that technology is only considered and applied after the service delivery model has been designed and processes have been optimized in accordance with the broader strategic and organizational contexts of both the legal department and the MNC itself. Moreover, ours is iterative. Our approach is also distinct in that throughout this process, change management principles are thoughtfully and consistently applied in each step. Contrary to standard depictions, we contend that if deployed correctly, DT can significantly transform how a legal department operates and can enable legal departments to add value in ways that go beyond generating efficiencies, reducing costs, and increasing speed-to-market. Our model provides a roadmap to help GCs better execute DT and leverage DT-generated data and insights, moving the legal department away from its standard depiction as a cost center to that of a revenue generator and value creator that is seamlessly integrated with the rest of the MNC. In addition to filling some of the gaps in the literature, this article provides a vision that has broad applicability beyond the MNC legal department context and can be used as a model for law firms and other legal services providers to harness DT in their own contexts, to keep pace with-and better serve-their digitally transforming client base

The role of technology in the resolution of personal injury claims

This is the first study to focus on the role of technology within personal injury lawyering. The thesis draws on Science and Technology Studies methodologies to offer a unique and much needed approach to a highly topical and growing area of socio-legal research. Discussions of technology and the legal profession have been dominated by Richard Susskind who has consistently predicted greater computerisation in practice and, eventually, the replacement of lawyers by technology. The thesis moves forward these discussions by offering an empirically-based account of the role of technology within personal injury practice. It combines the insights gained from interviews with claimant practitioners with a review of the limited literature to explore the current uptake and use of technology in practice; practitioners’ perceptions of technology; the impact of technology on practice; and the drivers and tensions that shape the use of technology. This thesis argues that, while the LegalTech market has expanded rapidly, technologies for personal injury practitioners have changed little in the last two decades. Case management systems and legal research tools remain the principle technologies but not all practitioners have access to them. Participants recognised the benefit of the technologies they use, in stark contrast to the literature that portrays lawyers as technology deniers. However, none supported the view that technology will replace lawyers entirely. Though limited to automating legal processes, the systems have facilitated a shift towards greater use of non-qualified practitioners. This, with greater public access to digitised legal knowledge and an increasingly demanding clientele, challenges the expertise and autonomy of lawyers. Financial pressure on personal injury practices was the primary driver towards technology reported at interview. However, this pressure is markedly different from that set out in the existing literature. Coming from policy changes which prima facie seek to tackle the pervasive issues of cost and delay within civil justice, the financial driver in this context has been as much socially and politically motivated as it has economically. The need to reduce costs is balanced with a concern for the quality of legal service. This is also a key tension against the disruption of legal services that Susskind and others predict. That tension is linked with issues of trust in technology which, in lieu of a legislative framework to establish liability where sophisticated technologies fail, is a primary barrier to professional and public acceptance of such systems