There’s one wearing sheep skins in the back row

Yesterday, Karl Chapman reminded me of a black humour incident when we first met. The occasion was an October 2012 law firm leaders conference in London at which I was speaking. I referred to the emergence of alternative legal service providers – ‘NewLaw’ was yet to be applied to these new business models. I likened the threat they posed to ‘the barbarians at the gate’ and the plundering of Rome, i.e. traditional BigLaw firms.

In a flash, Carl White (@cxinlaw) in the audience live-tweeted on the screen “There’s one wearing sheep skins in the back row”.

Carl White was referring to Karl Chapman who had recently formed Riverview Law.

In a few short years, Karl has built Riverview Law into a powerhouse. And as I reported on Dialogue on 7 August 2018, Karl will sell Riverview Law to EY at the end of August, and take the concept global.

This graphic is from my London October 2012 slide deck.

It tells the tale of the emergence of NewLaw in the early 200os, those start-ups that made it and those that didn’t, but nevertheless showed what was possible and has come to pass.

NewLaw has changed its clothes and is now increasingly in the front row.

C’est la vie.