While other industries innovated, it seemed for a while that the legal profession was hunkered down in a bunker somewhere. Comprehensive and non-uniform regulation and risk-averse, independent stakeholders have kept interest, and funding, for disruptive tech lower than in other industries.

But in recent years, squeezed by market forces on one side, and pushed by advances in machine learning and computing power on the other side, there’s been a blossoming in legal tech. According to TechCrunch, “Legal technology is booming, with companies attempting to disrupt the legal space at every level and from every angle. Some estimates value the market size at as much as $400 billion.”

So let’s find what’s in store, and how smart lawyers can adapt to a changing marketplace.

Online referral services

The past decade has seen vertical marketplaces dominate myriad markets, from ZocDoc for doctors to Tinder for dates. While the legal industry has been slower, it’s not been spared. For-profit legal referral websites have proliferated in recent years. Avvo was honored earlier this year by American Bar Association for innovative delivery of legal services. The company has a new ad campaign which highlights the potential for humor in legal quandaries.

Online listings of lawyers isn’t a new concept. The Yellow  Pages rake in $1.2 billion annually on lawyers advertising their services. But Avvo has innovated on the model by offering people in need of legal help a 15-minute phone call for a fixed-fee. While the company’s marketing might claim it “connects consumers with experienced lawyers,” the target market on the provider side is clearly new attorneys looking for work while they get established.

The new model seems to be working. Avvo raised $37.5 million in venture funding last year.

DIY legal

A trend that predates the mainstreaming of online lawyer referral services is the effort to cut lawyers out entirely. For example, Rocket Lawyer is another competitor to Avvo. Rocket Lawyer does offer online marketing tools and client referrals. But like LegalZoom, the company seems to be geared more toward replacing lawyers than helping people find them.

VentureBeat calls LegalZoom “the most familiar legal tech company for most consumers.” It recently began operating in the UK. This ubiquity is no accident. The company has been aggressively marketing itself through ads and partnerships such as last year’s with Sam’s Club. As a membership benefit, LegalZoom prepared more than one million wills. The plan is to stock stores with lawyers like they do with optometrists.

In every industry, the safest place to be is either beside the freight train of mechanization, or driving it. Smart lawyers will move from specializing in easily automated tasks to niches which are more complex and ambiguous. The smartest lawyers will adopt early, harnessing the power of AI and machine learning to make their practices more profitable and gain an advantage over their competitors.

Research alternatives

In Lawyerist, Randall Ryder offers tips for keeping your solo practice lean, including finding alternative research sources. A decade ago, this advice would have been a nice dream, but not really actionable. TechCrunch derided the legal research field as, until recently, “particularly antiquated and inefficient.”

However, recent entrants such as CaseText, Judicata, and RavelLaw are democratizing and streamlining legal research processes.

The only viable option for savvy lawyers is to either move away from research-heavy niches and cases or move away from expensive, cumbersome legal research tools and methods.

Conclusion

Whether you’re scared, excited, or both by these developments will likely depend on your disposition. Ready or not, online referral services, DIY legal service providers, and legal research alternatives are transforming the legal field.

Similarly, as machine learning advances in sophistication, and decreases in price, lawyers are quickly finding themselves unable to comfortably rely on their monopoly on routine legal work for profit.