‘uncertainty’:

The state of not being definitely known or perfectly clear; doubtfulness or vagueness.

Oxford English Dictionary

As we start to talk about the path/way out of COVID-19 lockdown, a number of pre-eminent thinkers in legal consulting have begun discussing what shape and form this might look like for our industry.

Notable among these have included:

• Richard Susskind + Mark Cohen debating the future of the legal industry as excellently reported by Ron Friedmann on his Prism Legal blog
• Patrick Lamb discussing ‘The Next Normal: Is There a Roadmap That Gets Us There?’
• The team on the LawVision Insights Blog giving their views on ‘The Legal Profession in a “Post-COVID” World’, and
• the excellent and very comprehensive series of blogs by Jordan Furlong under the themed title of ‘Pandemic’.

Then again, as Patrick Dransfield said in Asia Law Portal (‘Who knows what the future will hold?’) – nobody really knows what the future holds.

But isn’t that why we, as business developers, are hired? To try and give some insights to our partners on how the industry might look?

With that in in mind, for what it is worth , here are my two cents on some of things we may look forward to over the next 18 months:

• The industry will remain fundamentally the same – as it was pre COVID-19 pandemic days unless there are structural changes to the business model. And, as I understand it, the trust partnership business model that is currently used in most common law jurisdictions makes the talk of change easier than the reality of change (in that nobody today would likely start a new law firm under a partnership trust structure).
• Technology and working from home will play role – it goes without saying that both technology and working from home will play a part in the future, but how big that role will be in an industry built on presentism still remains to be seen.
• Uncertainty will feature heavily –  we are flying blind here and most of us have no experience to drawn on. Even those of us who have been through this several times have now come to accept this time is different.
• Consolidation will likely feature prominently – with The Law Society Gazette (England and Wales) reporting in the past week that ‘71% of high street firms face collapse‘ I would foresee a similar scenario playing out here in Australia. Only I doubt it will apply to high street firms, who should do well out of the expected growth in wills & estates and family law matters, as much as it will likely apply to the middle market where there still remain far too many firms representing far too few clients.
• There will be an increase in lateral hiring – for the reasons above.
• Cashflow/credit facilities will help – Warren Buffet is reported to have said that “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” Well, the tide has never been lower and we will see in the coming days who still has the ear of their banker. Arguably those with big trust accounts and/or on the panel of one or more Big4 bank panels will benefit.
• How much office space do law firms really need? – it will be interesting to see if rent footprint decreases. Rental space – and whether to remove parts of the business to less expensive rental footprints (see Herbert Smith Freehills to Macquarie Park and McCabe Curwoods to Chatswood for example) – has been an issue for some time and one of the big take outs from this may well be a lot more Hot-desking!
• The Big4 see opportunity – as EY reported this week, the Big4 are not going away. If anything, as this chart shows, they’ll be upscaling their charge

• A need to be even more client and sector focusses – with the team at Adam Smith, Esq looking at the following areas of need:
  • Insolvency, restructuring and distressed assets
  • Private equity (I’m not 100% sold on PE in Oz)
  • Regulatory investigations and dispute resolution a/k/a litigation
  • M&A
  • Tech and all the ancillary practices it spawns, including IP

From an Australian law perspective I would add Insurance law (going to be more claims made) and all forms of Government (Government will be spending big on Infrastructure, Health, Education and others).

But all of the above are my views and so to finish this post I’m going to turn to one of the great take-outs of this week for me – a post by Trish Carroll who interviewed 12 final year law students to find out how they were feeling in the middle of Covid – ‘Is Covid-19 the mother of all disruptors for the legal profession?‘ – and this is about as close as we will get to how the future of law will look.

As always though, interested in your thoughts/views/feedback.

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