Cast your mind back a decade or so. Online legal services were supposed to be the future of the legal industry – a future that has not happened. You cannot blame it on technology, though. The tools, applications and hardware have been commercially available for years. You cannot really blame it on market conditions either. The last 10 years have seen both bull and bear markets in mainstream global commerce, while law firms’ earnings have continued to rise steadily. Online service providers are a force to be reckoned with in pretty much all other sectors of the economy. For years, large law firms have professed their interest in developing online services. So what is the problem?
It is easy to assume that most law firms had a serious go at selling services online, found little or no demand from clients and canned their e-business projects when the dotcom bubble burst. Such firms do exist, but very few have ever invested a significant amount in developing online services. Look at partners’ profit margins and it is easy to see why. Unless profits take a fall, there is really no basis upon which to conclude that firms should do anything other than exactly what they have been doing over the past decade. Why waste money on e-business?
