Law firms are from Mars, customers are from Venus

By Karl Chapman, CEO, Riverview Law

Smiling, the Chairman at a recent conference introduced me as a representative of “the barbarians at the legal gate”. I hope he smiled even more when I explained our surprise and pleasure to find that when we got there the gates were wide open, business customers were beckoning us in, and law firm competitors were fighting amongst themselves.

At another conference, not that I speak at many, the Chairman described Riverview Law as market disrupting and innovative. Flattering as this is, in its proper sense I don’t think it’s true. Riverview Law only looks disruptive from the perspective of the legal market. All we and some other businesses are doing is applying common sense, low risk, proven business principles to a sector which quite frankly should have done it many years ago. For example, we’re using “innovations” that we’ve deployed in our other advisory businesses over the last three decades.

Put another way, I don’t think that the legal market is seeing a bow wave of real innovation and creativity, whatever lawyers and commentators think. In reality it’s just in catch-up mode when compared with other sectors. However, it’s a catch-up that will probably only take five years not 30 given the changes in technology since the 1980s. This catch-up will change the shape of legal service delivery forever and customers, whether businesses or consumers, are the winners.

This has made me reflect on why the supply chain in legal services is so