Change Is in the Air
"Change is Natural and Good"
A good friend, Mimi Donaldson (author of the book Necessary Roughness: New Rules for the Contact Sport of Life) recently wrote a blog post on the topic of organizational change. To quote her: "Change is natural and good, but nothing is as upsetting to your people as change. Managing change means managing people's fear... People naturally resist a change because of a fear of the unknown or an expectation of loss. As a leader, you need to address the resistance from two aspects: how they perceive the change, and how well you can equip them to deal with the change."
Adapting to Change
In the current law firm world, everyone, lawyers and staff, are affected by the ongoing transformation in client expectations and legal service delivery. As the legal profession continues to contend with everything from layoffs to fee pressures, upheaval is the "new normal." The world many firms previously knew is gone. Adapting to that change in order to stay competitive, to thrive in the "new normal," is essential in 2012 and beyond.
Computer and Internet Technology
Consider this example. Legal Zoom is currently in battle with the North Carolina State Bar Association about the unauthorized practice of law over do-it-yourself legal forms that the company is making available in books and online. This reflects an economy-wide change. From travel agents to print journalists, "middleman" professions are increasingly irrelevant due to computer and Internet technology. Business and individual clients likewise assume that electronic tools make lawyers increasingly irrelevant to help with perceived commodity services like drafting a will, filing a patent application, or registering a real estate deed.
Greater Segmentation of the Legal Industry
People who believe they need legal help but can't afford it, will do the next best thing - get a form from an online resource. This will result in greater segmentation (a marketing term) of the legal industry. The "bet the company" cases and large companies that have them will still use good law firms; others with less serious matters will use lower cost lawyers or do-it-yourself forms. (Whether these forms create more legal work later is another issue and another aspect of change.) And at the lower end of the economic spectrum, you can expect to see great competition from commodity products and services. Even large law firms at the higher end are experiencing the same competition, just at a different level of sophistication (i.e., the pressure to charge fixed fees for so-called commodity work).
The "New Normal"
Change is in the air and those firms that want to survive must see it as it is - the "new normal" - rather than longing for the "good old days."
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