- The report explains the demand for innovation and contains guidance for the legal profession on how to respond.
- A key message of the report is that demands by large corporate clients are creating the conditions for new models of legal practice.
What you need to do
- Talk to your lawyers about how technology, process experts and new ways of working can deliver cost savings, clearer communication and more responsive service.
What is the FLIP report?
The FLIP report follows last year's Disruption innovation and change report in Victoria, the Future of Legal Services Report in the United Kingdom and similar reports in other jurisdictions.
The report is intended to identify what needs to be done to help the legal profession deal with innovation and change. It draws on testimony from 103 witnesses, as well as written and oral submissions.
What is driving change?
According to the FLIP report, the three key drivers of change across the profession are the cost of legal services and the demands for both clear communication and understanding the needs of clients.
Corporate legal teams are responding to these pressures by:
- collecting detailed data to decide whether high volume work should be insourced or sent externally;
- starting to adopt procurement methodologies and processes;
- using capped and collared pricing;
- developing legal expert systems and applications for different work types;
- unbundling tasks so that some components can be outsourced and others insourced where that is more efficient.
How is technology being used by lawyers?
Technology is rapidly changing legal practice and its use is growing exponentially. Professional infrastructure is cheaper due to cloud computing and people and devices are more mobile and connected.
Some examples of how technology is being adopted are:
- automated document assembly;
- artificial intelligence;
- paperless practice.
How are lawyers working in different ways?
Lawyers are adopting new practice structures, ways of competing for work and delivering service.
Innovative ways of working more efficiently include:
- proactive process improvement, such as project management;
- sharing information more effectively using technology;
- working remotely or using activity based work spaces;
- human resourcing, including using secondees, contractors, subcontracting or outsourcing.
What is changing in dispute resolution practice?
The courts are now rapidly moving to require electronic lodgement and maintain electronic court files.
The Federal Court has recently reorganised itself into National Practice Areas so that cases can be assigned to one of a list of judges working across Australia. This process improvement takes advantage of electronic court files, audio-visual links and increasing mobility to assign cases to a judge with specialist expertise, instead of randomly.
Technology is delivering greater efficiencies in responding to discovery requirements and regulatory inquiries. For example, Australian courts have recently recognised and approved the use of predictive coding
What is Ashurst doing?
In July 2016 Ashurst published our own research Riding the winds of change: the innovation efficiency agenda in action and launched Ashurst Advance.
Ashurst Advance is an integrated team bringing together the resources of our offshore legal analysts in Glasgow, a team of dedicated process experts and project managers and a legal technology team that is embedding automation and new technology throughout our client service to save time and increase efficiency.
For more information about how Ashurst is responding to the demand for innovation in legal services, ask your Ashurst contact or the Ashurst Advance team
Authors: Angus Ross, Partner; Andrew Westcott, Senior Expertise Lawyer; and Lucy Cameron, Graduate
