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WHAT WE’RE WATCHING
CLIENT (SUBSCRIPTION) SERVICE - Last week in this space, we pondered how much longer law firms could go on raising rates before clients start to get really cheesed off. But imagine a legal services delivery model that eschews billable hours altogether—it’s easy if you try. As Law.com’s Victoria Hudgins reports, law firms are increasingly taking a cue from services like Spotify and Netflix and offering their clients subscription fees. While this model may not be common in the industry at the moment, its presence and growing adoption is being driven by clients, said Robert Taylor, CEO and GC of U.K.-headquartered law firm 360 Law Group. “I find even some of the large companies we deal with are actually looking at the bottom-line cost; they don’t accept the £300 or £400 billable hour and hours estimate,” Taylor said. “They’re now asking to know what the cost will be before doing the work.” To be sure, subscriptions don’t lend themselves easily to every practice area, but Tomu Johnson, founder of privacy and data management law firm The Broad Axe, noted that, wherever there’s predictability and repetition, there’s an opportunity. “The nice thing is that when you have a process that is somewhat static, you can then take that process and use tools to automate it and shrink the cost of replicating that process over and over for your client[s],” he said.
