Through smart legal design, law firms can provide efficient and practical services
One important factor that small law firms need to keep in mind is that legal services built around efficiency and practicality should be accessible to a wide range of clients.
First coined by Stanford academic Margaret Hagan, the term “legal design” zeroes in on the creation of usable and engaging legal services. Through smart legal design, small law firms can become more competitive with their bigger peers.
“Law has always been a noble profession and for a long time it’s been immune to the forces that have compelled other sectors to compete…but that’s being ripped away now,” explained Blake Connell, senior lawyer at the Digital Transformation Agency. “People are starting to say, ‘if my lawyer isn’t effective for me, I’ll go somewhere else.”
2022 Australasian Law Awards winner Brave Legal, which concentrates on personal injury matters, implemented a “no-win, no fee” model. The firm said on its website that its lawyers operate “on the basis that you deserve to receive the majority of your compensation and we will reduce our fees where necessary to ensure this is the case.”
One way to build on efficiency in small law firms is to embrace technology in analysing and presenting data. Lawyers need to support their legal skills with a greater grasp of software like Microsoft Excel, which offers important functions like pivot tables and basic graph functions that help with data analysis.
