Lawcadia’s Platform Manager and legal tech expert, Zachary Kominar, is going to be mentoring students at the Disrupt Law event in Brisbane, run by The Legal Forecast and QUT Starters. Zach (official first employee at Lawcadia) leads a team of 4 full-time developers, and with a unique background in both IT, law and legal tech experience, Zach brings a unique perspective to Lawcadia, the legal tech sector and the legal industry overall.
In preparing for the event, Zach was asked to share his vision of the future of the legal industry, and with his emphasis on innovation and technology, we thought it was worth sharing with a wider audience.
What is your legal forecast (i.e. how do you envisage that the practice of law or professional services generally will change in the next decade)?
In the next decade, professional services (including law) will continue to be commoditised and made more accessible. Today, many on-demand services already exist for the consumer to find and connect with lawyers, chat-bots, or even just relevant information in their time of need. The industry will see a continued expansion and growth of these services with expansion into new legal areas to serve increasingly diverse and specific needs. Consider some under-served consumer markets that may see growth over the next decade: dispute resolution, service to regional/country areas, succession, and elder law, to name a few.
What’s particularly interesting is a bigger change that’s going on in the corporate legal world. Business relationships are being redefined in the digital world and are more heavily quantized, scrutinised and evaluated. Demonstrating value for money spent is a key driver for business and it is reshaping the nature of how legal services are procured between established and new corporate clients alike. This trend will continue over the next decade, ultimately leading toward a more analytical, communicative, and value-based relationship. In time, this will lead to greater adoption of alternative pricing models from law firms, providing clients with an appropriate level of service meeting their needs and expectations.
Legal tech will play its role by providing tools and processes which assist lawyers and clients to better understand each other, removing communication barriers and allowing them to “get down to work”. The software industry will contribute solutions that strive to deliver the perfect experience, a cleaner interface, an efficient workflow, an informed answer, an automated document, or whatever knowledge or tools the situation may demand at the time.
Ultimately, technology does not exist in a vacuum and needs to be adopted and utilized by its users to deliver value. Lawyers and legal service providers generally must continue to shed fear of technological solutions. It may assist them in not only their practice of law, but allow them to deliver truly exceptional value for their clients through transparency, communication, and accessibility.
