Canadian Lawyer

Risk and courage To thrive and prevail in the face of transformative change, Canadian firms will need leaders who are ready to challenge the status quo and boldly map their firm's destiny on that blank page. They will need the strength to listen and respond to their clients, and navigate their way through the risks and discomfort that come with change. Mostly, firm leaders need to recognize and convince others this turning point in our conservative profession presents massive opportunities to reinvent the practice of law for the benefit of future generations of clients and lawyers. Chris Pinnington is Dentons Canada LLP's chief executive officer who works closely with the firm's global leadership as a member of Dentons' global board and global management committee. He is responsible for building on the firm's vision and leading the implementation of Dentons' strategy in Canada. 40 august 2013 www.CANADIAN 2020 vision for solos and small firms By Mitch Kowalski A s we know, there are two very different legal markets in Canada: the corporate legal market where large law firms undertake legal work for large companies, and the retail legal market where sole practitioners or small firms address the needs of average Canadians as well as those of small and medium-sized enterprises. To date, much of the discussion about re-inventing legal services has been disproportionately directed at lawyers who serve the corporate market. Yet, at least in theory, solos and smalls should be better able to institute and adapt to change than their large firm cousins. Due to their smaller size, solos and smalls can be nimble decision-makers and pivot their practices to address advantages and risks. In addition, many lawyers go into solo practice or small firms because they want to work for themselves, so there is a rebellious, entrepreneurial streak in them. Unfortunately, this rebellious entrepreneurial streak is often deadened by the comfort of our monopoly over legal services. As a result, many solos and smalls tend to be plain vanilla legal services providers, making it hard for the general public to differentiate between them — and making them ripe for disruption by new players who do things differently. In my view, creating a unique customer experience will be the key to success for solos and smalls in 2020 and beyond; one that anchors around process, technology, and new business arrangements. Solos and smalls in 2020 will not be able to compete on quality alone. Process Successful solos and smalls in 2020 and beyond will need to constantly re-evaluate how they deliver services and constantly seek better efficiencies. Today, many solos and smalls have more staff/paralegals than lawyers, but solos and smalls in 2020 will have lawyers doing even less legal work than they're doing now. The role of the lawyer in solos and smalls will be limited to only high-value, bespoke work (which will account for only a very small slice of the day-to-day operations), and will concentrate on business development and managing teams. In football parlance think: quarterback. Furthermore, the ability to complete files more efficiently will make billing by the hour extremely unattractive to solos and smalls; price certainty will be the norm. Technology Lack of capital has traditionally held back innovation in solos and smalls. However, the once-high costs of technological innovation have dropped significantly making the cost of not using the most advanced technology for legal services in 2020 prohibitive. We live in a do-it-yourself-online society and by 2020 the public will see little reason why they must go to a law office for many types of legal services. Solos and smalls will use online forms, or online decision trees offering legal advice, to generate additional cash flow without increasing overhead costs; live or premium advice (via video conferencing or instant message) can be accessed for an additional charge. Tech-savvy solos and smalls will create their own apps to provide legal information, legal services, and attract business. Successful solos and smalls will schedule meetings online, and require all new clients to complete online intake forms prior to a first meeting; conflict checks will be automatically performed at that time so the client knows immediately if the solo or small may act for her. Solos and smalls will operate completely in the cloud with few or no paper files, and will give clients 24/7 access to all their files. Dashboards in each electronic file will map all steps in a matter and let clients know where the file is along that path, as well as L a w ye r m a g . c o m ranDy lyhuIs solve, yet we continue to view these goals and problems as matters falling within a spectrum of traditional legal practice areas. Breaking away from that model could lead us to discover entirely new product lines and services targeted directly to clients' needs. And, instead of reviewing how we handled the past several matters for clients in similar circumstances to identify best practices and lessons learned, we may need to deconstruct those matters entirely and question every component. Why was each step taken? Was it necessary? What would happen if we eliminated steps, rejigged the order, or added some fundamentally different steps? What would happen if we added non-lawyers to the team to help us address our clients' needs in richer, bolder ways? In addition, our profession and clients would be better served if, in a time of shifting demographics, we were to ask how our model helps lawyers develop their careers. Are our traditional partnership and staffing models too rigid to respond effectively to both client demands for value and efficiency and the changing career expectations of current and future generations of lawyers? How can we respond to both pressures with more flexible structures? Are we ensuring we are building a model that will create and leverage the diversity we and our clients aspire to and that reflects Canadian society?

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