Future & Trends

Four years on the heels of its Ethics 20/20 Initiative, the ABA is once again trying to make itself relevant. This time around, the ABA has established a Commission on the Future of Legal Services , with a goal of inspiring innovation and leveraging technology to expand access to justice.  And guess who’s expected to…

With last week’s announcement of Legal Zoom’s recent partnership with Sam’s Club to offer deals on legal services as well as Avvo’s launch of Avvo Advisor, the blogosphere’s abuzz with discussion of “should lawyers participate or shouldn’t they?” ( See  Susan Cartier-Liebel, The Bridge Builders  at Above the Law, Bob Ambrogi’s coverage of Avvo Advisor…

The niche practice as the future of law is also yesterday’s news. Meaning that the benefits of niche practice have been well documented forever, nowhere more extensively than at Chuck Newton’s Third Wave Blog, which is jam packed with dozens of niche practice ideas. But I don’t like re-blogging old territory. So here’s a little…

Rob Jordan’s recent Above the Law column, The (Alleged) Uber-fication of Legal Services  comprehensively compares the latest crop of  lawyer match-making services and platforms designed to connect consumers and small business clients to lawyers. One of the characteristics that Jordan examines in distinguishing between services like Upcounsel, Priori, Law Kick or Law Dingo is “data…

Online dispute resolution is rapidly gaining traction. Modria, a leading online dispute resolution (ODR) platform, boasts that its service is used to settle more than 60 million cases annually. Yet even though ABA task forces have studied, and appear to endorse ODR, I’ve not found much mention of the potential uses of ODR to resolve…

Three years ago, I blogged about opportunities for lawyers in rural practice. That wasn’t just a short term trend either; demand for rural lawyers remains high, as shown by yesterday’s story from the Journal Star about veteran lawyer John Thomas’ efforts to find a successor to his busy rural practice. It’s a great story about…

Last week, Jordan Furlong lavished praise on the Canada Bar Association’s new report, Futures: Transforming the Delivery of Legal Services in Canada. As you might expect, the Report reads like a legal futurist’s wish list, supporting initiatives like non-lawyer ownership of law firms and fee-splitting between lawyers and non-lawyers. Still, truth be told, Jordan’s kudos…

In theory, MOOCs — massive online open courses — sound too good to be true.  Classes are available on any topic – from learning a new language or computer coding or even how to start a law firm. Even better, most MOOCs are free (or inexpensive) and open to anyone with an Internet connection. Yet…