Canadian Lawyer

By Fred Headon "B ut how else can I get paid for the time I put into the file?" That's one of the reactions the Canadian Bar Association's Legal Futures Initiative steering committee hears from lawyers when we talk about how clients' expectations of lawyers are changing. First of all, neither we nor your clients really want you to be poor. Certainly, clients are telling us clearly they don't want lawyers taking quite so much of their cash. But they have ideas about how more of their money can be spent on what they value and less on what they don't. Secondly, it does not necessarily follow that new ways of doing business have to mean less income. In fact, there are many new opportunities out there. Meeting client expectations will always be the surest way for any business to succeed, and the more attuned we are to those needs, the more opportunities will arise. For example, a background paper prepared for the Legal Futures Initiative looked at 14 firms from around the world doing law in new ways. The Canadian regulatory environment does not currently allow for some of these business models — publicly traded firms, for example, or nonlegal, outside investment — but shifting regulatory standards is also fodder for the Futures discussion CBA is hosting. The businesses studied range from publicly traded law firms to freelance lawyers; from legal process outsourcing to online legal services; from Co-operative Legal Services in the U.K., owned by retailer The Co-operative Group, to SkyLaw LLP in Toronto, a boutique firm that harnesses technology to offer big-firm service. The entrepreneurial spirit drives each of these firms. They also have something else in common: almost all of them have shifted away from the billable hour to offer services tailored to their clients' needs with predictable billing, whether that be flat-, fixed-, or flexible-fee arrangements. Some are no longer only serving clients in a traditional office setting. And every last one of them is successful, judged by their own or any other standards. Why? Because they found new ways to meet client expectations. They've seen the future, baby (with apologies to Leonard Cohen), and it's not murder — it's working. So why isn't everyone jumping on the bandwagon? When Pascale Pageau formed Delegatus eight years ago, she based the Montreal firm's guiding principles on her interviews with clients. Delegatus, for instance, doesn't hire anyone with fewer than four years of big-firm experience. That's because clients told her they didn't like shouldering the cost of training junior associates. Delegatus charges according to the value of the service provided, instead of by the time spent. And for those corporate clients that complain their lawyers don't know anything about them, Delegatus sends a team to the client's premises to identify what they need and value. Asked whether it's their conservative nature that makes Canadian lawyers so slow — reluctant even — to change the way they do business, Pageau says, "If you want to start something, it's easier to do something that you know already. . . . Why fix something that at this point doesn't seem to be broken? But what they don't seem to realize is that it's already broken." Pageau and entrepreneurs like her looked for new ways to deliver legal services because they understood their clients were dissatisfied. They established business structures that were flexible and resilient enough to adapt to changing requirements. How are client expectations changing? Our research suggests, for example, that clients would be more likely to call on a lawyer if the cost was more predictable. They expect us to find new processes to deliver legal services. Where is the opportunity in those expectations? Nobody is well served if clients choose not to engage us just because they don't know how big the bill may be, or because we don't serve them how and where others do. Changing how we practise can open that latent market for legal services. In the paper he wrote for the Futures Initiative, expert Richard Susskind suggested in order for the legal profession to meet the challenges posed by globalization, a weak economy, and rapidly evolving technology, lawyers' incentives must change. If money is earned some way other than by racking up billable hours, then lawyers could be free to find new — perhaps faster — ways to perform tasks in order to get the most profit from a flat fee, for example. De-lawyering — setting up processes which facilitate non-legal or paralegal professionals doing work under a lawyer's supervision — could lower costs without sacrificing quality. Online dispute resolution could expedite litigation when it is unavoidable. It all becomes possible once you accept the premise that a good living can be made beyond the billable hour. In the latest Superman movie, when all around him is loud, explosive chaos, a quiet secondary character saves the world when he shifts something by a few inches. That's not to suggest all in the legal profession is currently chaos. What it does suggest is you don't need to have super powers to make a big difference. What it takes is an ability to focus, despite the noise, on the crux of the problem. In the case of the legal profession, the crux is how to better serve the client. "In many cases economic power has shifted to the consumer or client side, with buyers demanding more say on what lawyers do, how they do it, and how much and how they charge for it," says "The Future of Legal Services in Canada: Trends and Issues" paper released by the Futures Initiative in June. "With new competitors already in the marketplace . . . law firms and individual lawyers will have to make important decisions on how to maintain a competitive advantage in the provision of legal services in Canada and globally. While these decisions may seem daunting to some people, they also present a vast range of opportunities for the profession to reinvent itself and thereby ensure that it remains dynamic and confident." Canadians deserve no less. Fred Headon is chairman of the Canadian Bar Association Legal Futures Initiative and assumes the presidency of the CBA on Aug. 20. www.CANADIAN L a w ye r m a g . c o m august 2013 45 ranDy lyhuIs The future is now: Changing the way legal services are delivered

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