Canadian Lawyer

creating new land from the old Monica Goyal is a founder of Aluvion. She holds an MS in engi- neering from Stanford University and a JD from the University of Toronto. She also teaches a course on legal information tech- nology at Osgoode Hall Law School and was named one of 10 women to watch in legal tech by the ABA Journal. AT ALUVION, WE THINK DIFFERENTLY ABOUT TECHNOLOGY, people, and process. About how we can improve the client experience and deliver great value to our clients, while enabling a better work-life balance for everyone on our team. Simply stated, we think business law needs a facelift. Our name — Aluvion — is derived from alluvium, legalese for the process of creating new land from the old. It intentionally evokes a creative, accretive process. At our core, we are still a law firm. But we are re-imagining how business law services are being created for and con- sumed by clients, just as other innovators are working in other legal disciplines. All of the founders of Aluvion — Eric Apps, Michael Berger, and myself — have back- grounds in law, business, and technology. Law is a second career, my first was as an engineer. Lawyers and engineers are both prob- lem solvers with the fundamental difference that one looks to the past to solve problems of today, and the other looks to solve the problems of the future. I thought once I entered the practice of law, I would be leaving my engineering background behind, but the engineering problem solver saw and continues to see tremendous opportunities to the process of how legal work is done. When people speak of the "broken" legal model, most people inside and outside the profession are thinking and talking mostly about money. Many business lawyers have not accepted that firms will all be making less of it moving forward. Margin erosion, commoditization, competition, however you think of it. At Aluvion, we have embraced that. We are responding in a positive way and focusing on two key areas: using technology innovation to make the "time is money" equation work better for lawyers as well, and also providing a very different day-to-day work experience and work-life balance for our team. Our firm's tagline is "doing legal differently." We think it summarizes our core mission and value proposition. It also seems to attract a lot of attention. The question I often get is "how exactly are you doing legal differently?" There are a few things we can point to that are core to our business: Technology: We have embraced a cloud-based platform and have auto- mated significant areas of business legal services that are currently costly and manually intensive. Client relationships: The time-based billing model is dying; legal services are being com- moditized. We are focused on removing unnecessary costs from legal processes, while maintaining high levels of quality, consistency, reliability, and client interaction. People: Aluvion has created a space for legal professionals to work together in a multidis- ciplinary team to serve the needs of our clients, and also to have a lot of laughs along the way. We want everyone to feel and behave "like a partner" from day one, and that includes sharing in the benefits of our success — a very different message from the traditional "up or out" model of law firms. We are just getting started at Aluvion, but we have already had a positive reception from clients and from other lawyers. We are optimistic about what we will accomplish. THE TIME-BASED BILLING MODEL IS DYING; LEGAL SERVICES ARE BEING COMMODITIZED. WE ARE FOCUSED ON REMOVING UNNECESSARY COSTS FROM LEGAL PROCESSES. . . . w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m M A Y 2 0 1 5 27

• Cover