Law.com - ABA Gives Thumbs Up to Legal Outsourcing

Law.com - ABA Gives Thumbs Up to Legal Outsourcing
This is a very interesting development, and it portends some very significant changes to come in the way legal services are delivered, not just globally but locally as well. Once law firms gain experience working with remote service providers, will it still be necessary to have as many young lawyers on staff? Even if your practice is strictly local, if your peer law firms have decided to outsource much of their basic research and similar requirements, can you afford not to do that as well?

When you couple this development with other recent developments, such as, non-lawyer ownership of law firms, which is coming in the UK and already exists in Australia, will it still be necessary to have law firms of the type we have today? It may make more sense for large consumers of legal services to own their own core group of lawyers who then outsource as much as possible. This would essentially make today's law firm an outmoded structure.

Also, this may make it easier, or even necessary, for individual lawyers to establish their own identity and work independent of law firms. The attorney-client relationship is, after all, still in many aspects a one-to-one relationship. A top lawyer with a good reputation and a good presence on the Internet, may find it more interesting to work alone and create, or become part of, teams on an ad hoc basis. If you have not noticed, this is how many other service industries are going. Many young people in those industries these days have multiple employers whom they service over the Internet. Why should law be any different, particularly when the rules are changing to make that easier.