Introduction to the Topic
“Change management for lawyers”—it may sound like a contradiction in terms. Lawyers are notoriously skeptical about change and, while there are honorable exceptions, my experience is that the general public is more right than wrong when thinking of the legal community as change-resistant.
My favorite quote to this point is a Danish Supreme Court Judge allegedly having stated that he was resisting allA. Byberg (*)
EVRY, Inkognitogata 9, 0258 Oslo, Norway e-mail: enra@arnebyberg.com
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
K. Jacob et al. (eds.), Liquid Legal, Management for Professionals,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45868-7_12 change—including change for the better! I cannot vouch for the veracity of the anecdote, but even if it is not true, it could be. My experience is that most people engaging with lawyer communities have a couple of examples in the same direction, but rarely as dogmatic.
Exactly why lawyers are perceived as change skeptics I would not really know, and it probably is more of a social anthropology study for someone to consider. But the commercial reality for the manager of lawyers and legal teams—who usually is a lawyer, as well—is change pressures coming from all directions, at an increasing pace. More often than not, the change pressures on legal teams simply reflect increasing market pressures on their clients. As the clients experience innovation and efficiency pressures, they expect their legal advisors to work faster, better and more efficiently as well. And rightfully so, in my opinion. The entire legal industry, in-house as well as private practice, are dealing with a new paradigm where legal services are perceived as exactly that—services. The notion of legal advice being some kind of “dark art”, too complex for commercial scrutiny, is fading fast. The market demands operationally efficient legal services and we start seeing legal services becoming increasingly operationalized like Finance, HR and IT services.
We see legal services getting segmented into the classic, bespoke “high-end” or “complex” legal services dominated by higher cost law firms, and new areas of “low-end” or “commoditizable” legal services where the key is critical mass and new players are challenging the classic law firms with innovative delivery and cost models. In my opinion, it is more than overdue to start thinking about legal services in more classic Gartner Group terms of services simply being a factor of “people, processes and technology”. In fact, the classic legal industry has focused nearly exclusively on the people element and not much on process and technology at all. When I see legal teams struggling with change management I often find the main perceived challenge being cost or resource scarcity, while the real challenge is need for better utilization (or even introduction!) of process and technology in teams that traditionally focused almost exclusively on people. In business terms, the legal community has been “throwing people at the problem” for too long. Getting the mix right will be a critical success factor for the lawyer managers going forward, and while every team works on finding out which mix is optimal for them and their clients, I am convinced this is an area with continued need for change management strategies and execution for years to come.2