We sometimes get asked if the legal market is capable of delivering legal services with software. As of today, the answer is that 45 of the 100 largest law firms in the world can deliver legal services with software. The number of law firms capable of delivering legal services with software has been increasing quickly, and we expect a majority of the Global 100 will be considered capable in the next year.
This article describes the state of the market for legal services delivered with software by looking at the practices of the largest law firms in the world (the "Global 100"). We discuss the types of delivery of legal services with software pursued by the Global 100, and how our Partnership for Innovation helps companies and law firms transition to the delivery of legal services with software.
This article is part of a series that looks at the market for legal services delivered with software. In upcoming articles, we discuss the Global 100's pricing strategy for legal products, rank the Global 100 based on their offer on delivery and transparency on price, and discuss moving from subjective to objective valuation with Innovation Intelligence and the Partnership for Innovation. So you don't miss those articles, please sign up to our newsletter, which you will find in the footer of this page below.
The Types of Offer
To understand the offer of the Global 100 on delivery, we reviewed the marketing materials from the Global 100. In a later article, we rate and rank the quality of their offer. Before we discussed a more subjective rating, we wanted to discuss if law firms can deliver legal services with software today, and how the Global 100 position their offers.
We found four general categories of what law firms offer, which we explain below with definitions and examples of firms that we include in each group as follows:
| Category | Capability/Strategy | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| No offer |
| Kirkland & Ellis, Skadden Arps, Sidley Austin, Wachtell Lipton, Ropes & Gray |
| Marketing only |
| Latham & Watkins, Baker McKenzie |
| Optimizing client processes |
| DLA Piper, Dentons, Clifford Chance, Morgan Lewis, Linklaters, Freshfields, CMS, Goodwin Procter, Herbert Smith Freehills, Cleary Gottlieb, Eversheds, Shearman, Bryan Cave |
| Optimizing their own delivery |
| Allen & Overy, Norton Rose, Cooley, Reed Smith, Orrick, Wilson Sonsini, Seyfarth Shaw, Gowling WLG, Pinsent Masons, Littler |
The firms without an offer on the delivery of legal services with software could be considered incumbents in the legal sectors or regions that are important to them, which is pretty much what Clayton Christensen predicted in the Innovator's Dilemma.
The distribution of the Global 100 among those types of offers is as follows:
In this article, we've looked at the Global 100's capability to deliver legal services with software. In other articles in this series, we will discuss each of these categories in more detail. Since the savings from legal services delivered with software are high, companies have a real incentive to support law firms that optimize their own delivery.
The Partnership for Innovation
Through a program called the Partnership for Innovation, we help companies optimize the delivery of legal services with software. One part of that program is called Innovation Intelligence, which helps companies calculate the value law firms deliver with software. Innovation Intelligence is based on actual use, so it requires a company to gather data on how their employees use software that delivers legal services. It is the best way to calculate the value a law firm delivers to a company, and companies have an interest in understanding that value because the savings from software overwhelmingly benefit them. When we discuss the benefits of calculating the value delivered with software, we sometimes get asked if law firms today are capable of delivering legal services with software. We did this research for companies trying to understand the state of the market.
If you have comments to this article, you can comment by clicking on "write a comment" below. If you'd like to read the next article in this series, you can find it here. If you'd like to follow new articles in the series, sign up for our newsletter in the footer below. If you'd like to discuss how the Partnership for Innovation would work for your law firm or company, contact us.