Future & Trends

Almost a decade ago,  Richard Susskind’s book. The End of Lawyers  predicted that many traditional lawyers, particularly solos and smalls would soon be rendered obsolete. And while Susskind wasn’t wrong — jobs in the legal sector decline steadily  every year, with a loss of 100,000 jobs predicted by November 2017 – the glass is also…

Note: Post substantially revised at 3 pm 12/4/2017 to include additional explanation of proposed legislation This week, businesses of all sizes – from behemoths like Google and Amazon to tiny mom & pops will have their eyes on tax reform, particularly the provisions on tax rates levied corporations and pass-through income from LLCs. Most solo…

Although I owe my career to legal technology (after all, it enabled me to continue to practice law while staying home with my girls ), truth is, the nuts and bolts and latest and greatest don’t interest me  unless I can find a way to employ those tools to help my clients. In other words,…

Fed up with his law firms’ inefficient and costly practices, serial-entrepreneur Justin Kan decided to take matters into his own hands. Now, Kan isn’t a lawyer, so  he couldn’t start his own law firm. And given the size of his companies, my guess is that DIY wasn’t an option.  But what Kan could do is…

Today’s headlines are rife with plenty of tech topics that could conceivably form a niche practice. From sci-fi sounding topics — like  internet of things , wearable tech ,  bitcoin and crypto-currency ,  micro-chip implants on employees — to changes in existing trends such as a rise in Hispanic-owned businesses to newer and less costly…

 Correction (8/9/2017) – I’ve been informed that Law Charge, previously mentioned in this post, does not pay for endorsements and so I have removed any reference to that from this post. Skimming through my aggregator, I came across a ludicrous article entitled Five Ways to Be Secretly Productive At a Meeting . Suggested activities included…

These days, the legal industry is obsessed with data . In my view, that’s a positive trend. Access to large amounts of information outside of any single lawyer’s experience yields trends that enable us to better assess our clients’ likelihood of success. Data also gives clients a more objective view of what they can expect to…

Niche law practices are nothing new. This blog contains dozens of posts  that either describe an interesting and emerging niche practice or profile lawyers with unique niches. My blog doesn’t hold a monopoly on niche law either; for years, my blogging colleague Chuck Newtown  tracked interesting niches, and there’s even a recent book, One of a…