Chapter from New International Report on Online Legal Services

This summer I wrote a report for Managing Partner, a UK-based publishing company focused on law firm management. The report is for lawyers who are interested in learning about and possibly adding online legal services to their law firms. Here is the Executive Summary and Chapter One.

This is not intended to be an academic report so there are few citations and more checklists and recommendations for analysis and implementation. It is written for lawyers who want to focus on client-development and customer service for existing clients by adding online services in their firms. The case studies I reviewed are law firms that are successfully doing this. For example, Brilliant Law in the UK and Slater & Gordon in Australia. I’m not focusing on branded networks or companies in this report.

The chapter I wish they would have given me to share is the final one where I take a look at why online legal service delivery by firms have not been as quickly adopted or as successful as many had hoped and what I think needs to be done to see it evolve and really increase access to legal services for the public. I will try to make this the subject of a blog post soon because I think there are definitely some lessons to be learned from this research that need to be shared. You can purchase a copy of the full report here.

This report was international in scope, but I had difficulty finding firms in some areas that were marketing and delivering their services online. Some areas I neglected to write about simply because I couldn’t find anything there (Africa, South America, China, Japan, Russia, and others). I’m sure there must be some innovation in online delivery happening there, but to what extent? Already, since turning in the proofs last month, I’ve learned about a new company in Germany that is focused on online delivery. That’s the nature of this topic and why I should only write easily editable ebooks!

As always, feedback, comments, and connections to others innovating in this space, are gratefully encouraged.