Anne Neary The Blue Print Report – Keyhouse Seminar

As part of her presentation, she detailed how the structure of law firms must change and showed us how the traditional law firm consisting of a sole practitioner or a partnership has evolved into a structured law firm. She then talked about the law firm of the future. This will be a limited liability company with leveraged intellectual capital and with quality assured risk and practice management systems. It will benefit from the efficiencies of a systemised and automated service delivery and virtualisation. The staff will be flexible and all solicitors will have advanced technical and business skills.

Investment in technology will be essential and will enable firms to deliver professional services more efficiently and cost effectively. With recent legislative reforms and the dramatically changed business environment firms will have to evolve thus as they move to Anne’s vision of the “law office of the future” consisting of a partner/limited liability and this must evolve yet again.

Anne explained how the traditional Irish firm operates as a sole practitioner or partnership. Unlimited liability leads to high premia with poor use of IT and little focus on knowledge management. There is usually little risk awareness and few systems in place with a bespoke legal service delivery that means reinventing the wheel again and again. It is localised with expensive, highly trained fee earners performing rote work. The principal or managing partner may be a good lawyer but often has poor business skills.