The up-coming changes to the legal profession in the UK (from October 2011 in England) mean that lawyers really need to think about their future and consider taking serious action.
The legal marketplace is now the next target of opportunity for Venture Capital (VC) funds (regardless of the social cost or the cost to small firms and sole practitioners) it now really IS time to take stock of where you are and more importantly, where you are going.
But just in case you don’t really buy in to all the dust on the UK legal horizon, let me mix my metaphors and tell you that the light at the end of the tunnel really IS an oncoming train.
If you’ve not yet read Richard Susskind’s book “The End of Lawyers?” then first of all, you should, but in it he writes about “disruptive technologies”.
VC investment into the legal sector will also be disruptive, but let’s look at what “disruptive” means;
On the one hand, disruption means changing the way things operate by making them more efficient.
On the other hand, it means sucking the value from an industry in favour of the disrupter. If VC’s invest in something, it’s because they want to divert all the value (and money) from that sector into the business that they invest in.
Consider these recent examples in other industries; Apple changed the music industry, Amazon permanently sucked the value out of retail bookstores and Vision Express has almost wiped out High Street Sole Trader opticians.The disruptors are now coming to the legal sector in a big way; get involved or get out.
The legal marketplace is now the next target of opportunity for Venture Capital (VC) funds (regardless of the social cost or the cost to small firms and sole practitioners) it now really IS time to take stock of where you are and more importantly, where you are going.
But just in case you don’t really buy in to all the dust on the UK legal horizon, let me mix my metaphors and tell you that the light at the end of the tunnel really IS an oncoming train.
If you’ve not yet read Richard Susskind’s book “The End of Lawyers?” then first of all, you should, but in it he writes about “disruptive technologies”.
VC investment into the legal sector will also be disruptive, but let’s look at what “disruptive” means;
On the one hand, disruption means changing the way things operate by making them more efficient.
On the other hand, it means sucking the value from an industry in favour of the disrupter. If VC’s invest in something, it’s because they want to divert all the value (and money) from that sector into the business that they invest in.
Consider these recent examples in other industries; Apple changed the music industry, Amazon permanently sucked the value out of retail bookstores and Vision Express has almost wiped out High Street Sole Trader opticians.The disruptors are now coming to the legal sector in a big way; get involved or get out.
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