#lexthink.1

Small is the New Big: wireLawyer CEO Matthew Tollin presents a talk on crowd-sourcing the practice of law. He asks, "Can solo and small firms band together through technology to be bigger than Big Law?" SMLs (small to mid law practices) currently account for 80% of attorneys, 55/60% of revenue and over 90% of legal matters. However, for too long, technology creators, marketers and small firms themselves treat SMLs like little big firms.

We need new business models. The practice of the law has never been competitive and has always been collaborative (whether through big firm conference rooms or bar associations or email listservs). There are collaborative technologies out there that allow little firms to be more efficient and profitable.

Our team attended LexThink.1 presented by Matt Homan of LexThink and Joanna Forshee of Inside Legal. Each legal industry professional was given 6 minutes or less to share a presentation on “The End of Irrelevance -- An Alternative Future for the Legal Profession in Uncertain Times."

Photo Credit: Ryan McGuire/Bells Design

Here are our favorite takeaways from the evening:

The Data Life Raft | Gwynne Monahan

What is the one thing that you can do to help you succeed at the plate? Use external data and patterns to guide you. Identify and write down your ten most profitable clients. Determine what makes them profitable for your practice? Identify the pattern and use your data to repeat your success and avoid irrelevance.

People Don't Have Legal Problems. Lean Start Up for Lawyers. | Christopher Anderson, LexisNexis

Businesses need solutions (lawyers). Lawyers mistakenly believe that opportunity lacks because of the rise of solutions such as Legal Zoom and Rocket Lawyer. However, Legal Zoom only represents 1% of the legal market. There is more opportunity in the legal market than we think. We should apply the lean start up to the practice of law - bring services to the market faster and cheaper, listen to the market, investigate and learn. Test solutions until we get it right. Use our toolbox of specialized tools gathered from law school and life experiences to solve our client’s problems. 

Lawyering in a Brave New World | Nehal Madhani, Plainlegal 

Catalog - determine which part of lawyering is the art, and which part is the routine work. Calibrate - delegate the routine work, or find technology that can take care of it. Compete - focus more on providing strategic advice to clients. You will have a competitive edge in your market and be a happier lawyer by actually doing the part of lawyering that you enjoy. 

MomLaw and the 50/50 Solution | Leila Kanani, Intermix Legal

Women leave BigLaw at disproportionate numbers to male counterparts and only represent 15% of partners in Am Law firms. Yet, women are fortune tellers of the future of law. They are the first to see that traditional business models don’t work. Technology provides the opportunity for more flexibility in practice, especially for women. Women don't have to leave the practice. They should ban together to build a virtual, multi-jurisdictional law firm and collaborate in MomLaw.

You Are Not Irrelevant | Matt Spiegel, MyCase 

As lawyers, we’ve made ourselves irrelevant. Our well being has become secondary to becoming a wildly successful lawyer. The law firm needs to take lessons from the work/life culture at tech start-ups. Tech start-ups have a fun culture anchored by collaboration. When you have a team of incredibly smart people its important to allow them to work collectively rather than in isolation. Empower your employees to actually enjoy the work day. It’s time to make the law firm a really fun place to work and take attorneys off the suicide list

Best Quotes of LexThink.1

"Man (lawyer) + Machine (technology) = relevance." -Mark Jenkins, cicayda

"What’s more relevant than the right attorney working with the right client?" -Scott Malouf, Law Office of Scott Malouf

Matt Homan closed out the evening with this question, “There is a lot of talk about the future. But what do we do when we are there? How do we do things better and differently now to prepare for the future”

Stay tuned later this week when we share the video of wireLawyer CEO Matthew Tollin’s Lexthink.1 talk on “Small Law is the New Big.”