In Tomorrow’s Lawyers, Richard Susskind predicts that the Big Four Accounting Firms would overtake law firms in the years to come. Susskind explains that the accounting firms were forced to deal with disruption earlier than law firms. In the course of adapting to the disruption, the large accounting firms became more streamlined and became more creative in packaging services. As a result, Susskind predicts that the accounting firms would first begin to dominate law firms by eating into more routine legal work.
Yet again, Susskind’s predictions were correct. It was recently announced that Ernst & Young would be buying a legal managed services business from Thomson Reuters, named Pangea3. The company focuses on document review, contract review, financial trade documentation, and regulatory change management.
As technology improves and more legal service providers enter the picture, it begs the question: “will lawyers be forced to end their monopoly on providing legal services?” I think so.
In the Vancouver Sun, Ian Mulgrew discusses this question, and quotes Profession Gillian Hadfield. Hadfield states that the solution to making justice more affordable is to change the regulations. Hadfield argues that law should be a team sport like medical care. Medical care is provided by a “wide variety of medical professionals: nurses, radiologic technologists, pharmacists. The law should be too.”
Hadfield further argues that “Any solution that makes a dent in the problem will also have to involve expanding the types of people and organizations that are authorized to provide legal help. … [I]t is a major mistake for the legal profession to focus exclusively on how to solve the access problem with more money — public or charitable money — and volunteer pro bono efforts alone.”
As the legal market faces more competition from technology and accounting firms, law societies will be forced to confront who and what types of organizations should be regulated.
(Views are my own and do not reflect the views of any organization. This article was originally posted on slaw.ca.)
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