Disintermediating the Legal Backoffice

Remember the last time you used your travel agent? You’d call, tell them what you’d need done, and after a few phone calls back and forth for clarification, about a week later you’d have your tickets and itinerary ready to go.

It doesn’t quite work that way for travel agents any more, but it’s still the primary way we interact with lawyers. Though you now probably e-mail your attorney, the way you work together is fundamentally the same as it was 30 years ago.

It’s 2010. Times are changing.

Today, law firms use all kinds of technologies and outsourcing to lower their costs, building tools that help them do their jobs. But, despite improved law firm operations, little of that benefit has reached the client. However, with technologies focused on the client’s experience, paradigm shifts are possible.

No computer can (nor should) replace a trusted attorney; however, normal client-attorney relationships leave power largely in the counsel’s hands. Inasmuch, an attorney’s set up optimally to provide legal advice, but sub-optimally when it comes to everything else—like producing contracts or deliverables. In the latter instances, you can unwittingly turn on a profit center for the firm as the billable hours between back-offices resources eat your retainer with work that—GASP!—you can (and sometimes should) control.

The lawyers themselves may not realize the inefficiencies in this system: they’re lawyers, not Operations executives, and this is the way it’s always been done. But, there’s misaligned incentive to control costs when the client pays for the inefficiency.

If, however, you were to convert your lawyer’s back-office from behind-the-scenes profit mill into a shared resource between a law firm and its client, things would be different. And cheaper. And faster. New technologies can make this possible.

Tell us, when was the last time you called your travel agent to book a flight?