The goal isn’t to find people who have already decided that they urgently want to go where you are going. The goal is to find a community of people that desire to be in sync and who have a bias in favor of the action you want them to take.

Seth Godin

TRIBES

In around 2009 I recall reading Seth Godin’s, then recently published, blockbuster ‘Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us‘ and thinking this would have a profound impact on the way clients engage law firms. To give this thought some context, it was around the same time as we had started talking about a new fad called ‘unbundled legal services‘ (which would later also become known as ‘limited scope representation‘ – see ‘The great unbundling of legal work‘ in the Australian Financial Review). It was also a time when ‘disaggregation‘ and the rise of Legal Process Outsourcing (LPOs) (predominately in India at that time but later this would extend to South East Asia and South Asia) would have many of us who worked on bids and tenders discussing issues around disruption of the legal services supply chain – if for no other reason than clients were asking us to provide answers to these questions in their requests for tenders.

A cold wind, amounting to real structural change, in the way clients purchased their legal services was coming (Pfizer Legal Alliance).

THE ‘NEW NORMAL 1.0’

Fast forward a decade and probably the only person who still talks to me about Seth’s Tribes is my good friend Julian Summerhayes, and it is never within the context of an RFT or legal services more broadly.

Nope, in short tribes, disaggregation and unbundling, while definitely remaining vogue, never really had the impact and penetration that I – and I would suggest many others – thought they would.

The ‘New Normal 1.0’ had, to all practical purposes, failed.

KRYPTONITE TO THE ‘NEW NORMAL’ – TEAMS

Probably the biggest obstacle to the growth of tribes post 2009 has been the role that teams have historically played within the legal profession.

Since the times of Dickens a junior apprentice lawyer has worked with, and been mentored by, their senior (supervising) partner. It has always been thus, and with it has come an almost umbilical cord tie between lawyers who have worked in the same team.

Many an in-house General Counsel has sat at the foot of the table of the private practice partner to whom they send instructions. A relationship that has been forged within the confines of a team structure.

TRIBES REBOOTED – TRIBES 2.0

It’s my opinion that one of the biggest likely outcomes COVID-19 will have on the profession is the re-emergence of tribes – tribes 2.0!

There are a number of reasons why I think this might be the case, but probably the biggest is that in-house counsel have, over the past three months, become used to working with remote teams.

It should not, then, be too far removed to say that in-house counsel will be happy working with subject matter experts across firms who can enable them to achieve their objectives rather than with an individual firm that might get them across the line.

In short, on the right deal, in-house counsel will be happy to work with a group of lawyers from various law firms rather than one firm – a tribe over a team.

THE CHALLENGES

Moving from teams to tribes is not a foregone conclusion, it faces challenges.

High among these will be:

• How is risk allocated?
• Who wears the professional indemnity risk?

My own view is that these can be overcome with:

• properly scoped Engagement Letters
• proper use of Legal Project Management
• a good understanding of Workflow Process Methodology

But that still leaves the issue: How do we price the ‘New Normal 2.0’?

HOW TO PRICE THE ‘NEW NORMAL 2.0’?

The cynic in me says that many law firms will not have the first idea how to price the New Normal 2.0. This presents a significant problem because if they cannot price it, then they cannot sell it (pricing still remains the principal form of credentialisation despite, or rather because of, whatever experience you claim to have).

ONE ANSWER – THE ROLE OF SCOPE PRICING IN THE ‘NEW NORMAL 2.0’

Scope pricing will play a critical role in the pricing in the ‘New Normal 2.0’.

Unlike a fixed fee, capped or fee estimate pricing, scope pricing does it exactly what it says on the tin – it prices to the scope of work being undertaken by the relevant lawyer. This means that proper use of scope pricing should allow in-house to teams to unbundle the legal work within their project – either between the role the in-house plays and the role the private practice firm plays; or, in the case of this post, the role that multiple lawyers with subject matter expertise from various firms play in a project.

And, if done properly, the biggest upside to scope pricing over any other type of pricing of legal services is that, by definition, there really shouldn’t be any scope creep – what you see [in the tin] is what you get!

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