New Book: What’s Your Digital Business Model?

Today I am unabashedly recommending What’s Your Digital Business Model?, a new book by Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner. Chairman and Senior Research Scientist at MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research, Peter is regarded as the leading researcher and thinker in this space – and he is also my friend and former colleague at Melbourne Business School.

Watch the video, buy What’s Your Digital Business Model and accelerate your organization’s digital journey.

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Posted by on May 9, 2018 in Book review, Business models, Digital strategy | 1 comment

Small firms: Take your size and own it

At the end of March, George Beaton posted an article in his Remaking Law Firms blog entitled ‘Mid-market law firm brouhaha’ in which he challenges the automatic attribution of law firm woes outside the BigLaw firmament. George references my previous article on ‘The Strength of Small Law Firms’ and advocates for a move away from the “small equals struggling” narrative. “To my knowledge”, he says, “there isn’t a skerrick of systematic evidence that all/most clients of these mid-market firms are saying “It’s desirable that your services are delivered by you in a firm with a bigger/international footprint/greater scale/wider range of services”.

Beaton argues that the “small-equals-struggling” narrative attributes certain challenges to the mid-market, which are, in fact, challenges faced by all law firms. In this scenario, he argues, it’s not the size of the firm that matters but the way it delivers its services.

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Posted by on May 8, 2018 in Clients, Small law firms | 1 comment

De-equitization is the elephant in the room in BigLaw’s profit distribution

The annual ritual of the release of the Am Law 100 financial results is playing again. In 1979 Steven Brill launched American Lawyer and brilliantly used the Am Law 100 league table as a marketing tool. In doing so Steven allowed elephants into the room. In this post, I (re)make a few comments on the merits and dangers of league tables, making the point that de-equitization is the elephant in the room in BigLaw’s profit distribution.
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Posted by on May 3, 2018 in BigLaw firms | 1 comment

Update: NewLaw firm combo intends to halve corporates’ legal spend

For the first time, three luminaries who appear on Dialogue are featured in the same story by legendary Bob Ambrogi on the equally renowned Above the Law website.

Bob reports on the formation of ElevateNext, an innovative partnership designed to comply with the US’s ethical rules and enable those who are not lawyers to invest in the provision of technology-based and process-related services bundled with legal services to corporate law departments.

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Posted by on May 1, 2018 in Clients, Law departments, NewLaw business models | 0 comments

Legal transformation requires (a lot) more than tech

Mark Cohen contributes Legal transformation requires (a lot) more than tech, adding to Ken Grady‘s recent contributions. I admit to exercising editorial prerogative and adding (a lot) to Mark’s title. I did so based on research my consultancy released earlier this month: Client-led innovation in legal services. One stunning statistic from the report justified (a lot): When clients are asked what comes first to mind when thinking about innovation and legal services, only 15% answer ‘technology’.

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Posted by on Apr 26, 2018 in BigLaw firms, Technology | 0 comments

Who is responsible for the future of BigLaw firms?

Who is responsible for the future of BigLaw firms? discusses one the biggest challenges facing BigLaw firms: Investing in the future.

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Posted by on Apr 24, 2018 in BigLaw firms, Future, Innovation | 0 comments

Two paths to legal innovation that change how lawyers work

With growing relaistion that collaboration in the legal services supply chain is key to strategic innovation, Ron’s post – Two paths to legal innovation that change how lawyers work – is timely. 

In my last post, I wrote unless innovation changes how lawyers work, it likely delivers little benefit to firms or clients. Since publishing that post 10 days ago, three recent items suggest two ways to get lawyers to change how they work.

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Posted by on Apr 20, 2018 in Innovation | 0 comments