This and the exponential growth of AI certainly means change of one sort or another is afoot
A Christchurch lawyer believes lawyers who work in the cloud like he does will eventually undercut the rest of a very traditional profession.
John Shingleton is the founder of Online Laywers NZ, a firm which eschews the usual formality of seeing a lawyer or the overheads of having an office and support staff.
“For a long time as lawyers we’ve had a privileged position. I can remember my parents – to go and see the solicitor meant, dress up nicely, go and see the solicitor in the office.
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“But the sense I get particularly with the millennial generation is, it doesn’t wash with them anymore. They want a different value proposition.
“I suppose I had a Richard Branson moment where I thought there might be another way of doing it.”
Shingleton began re-thinking the way he worked after hearing one too many comments about the difference between his profession and the rest of the world.
“Once you’ve heard the jokes many times, you start detecting an undercurrent and the message that was being sent to me by friends and clients was, ‘you guys are not really following what the rest of the world is doing in delivering more effective, streamlined services’.”
Today he often uses some of Christchurch’s many shared working spaces and meets clients at their business, or a cafe, if the matter’s not too private.
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“By and large people are comfortable with that,” he says. His younger clients particularly liked it. “They’re all Uber-ised now.”
Documents are shared securely, allowing clients to see how their case is progressing.
Video-conferencing out-of-town clients was a god-send. “I think people still like to see a human face and body language. Sometimes the hidden message in a conversation can be missed.”
Shingleton specialises in commercial, employment and health and safety law, and outsources to colleagues on issues outside of his areas of expertise. He hopes that eventually he might have a national business of similarly-minded lawyers.
The big revolution, he says, is in the way lawyers charge, which has traditionally by the hour, unlike most of the business world, which gives a quote.
“At the moment many people have no idea what they will be charged, after they have engaged a lawyer,” he says.
By reducing his costs, “I’ve estimated I’m able to offer the same quality that I offered at a senior partner in a traditional law firm at about 15 per cent less”.
Shingleton is sure that he will be followed by others and that ultimately it will change the profession.
“The way we are working will mean that quality legal services will be more affordable, particularly for small to medium sized businesses, who are regularly charged at the same rate as large organisations.”
Personally, he believes the change has given him a healthier work-life balance.
“People say to me, are you happy and I say, I’m loving it, because suddenly I’m out of the mould that I used to be.
“The media probably don’t report it as much as they should, but there is an issue of depression and stress within the legal profession. There are a lot of burnt out lawyers, very good people who have dedicated their lives to a service of the law for clients. The Law Society is addressing it.”
He was previously a managing partner of a mid-sized law firm and understood the heavy costs entailed in running a law firm.
