For young lawyers, entering the professional marketplace nowadays is akin to jumping onto a moving subway train whose doors are open: the opportunities may be there, but it’s hard to gauge them or the risks involved, and once you make it aboard, it’s hard to know where the sheer motion will toss you.
Traditionally, joining the profession has been more like getting on a stationary train whose destination is known to all. Not everyone makes it to the destination, of course, because there are a lot of stops along the way and many reasons for getting off before the end of the line.
Still, in law the ultimate destination for the most part has traditionally been equity partner at a law firm of one’s choosing. In recent years, career opportunities have also exploded in corporate legal departments, where increasingly the role of in-house counsel has evolved to encompass important strategic business advisory functions.
But the traditional model is facing serious disruption. Global and national economic business environments, the way clients buy legal services, technological innovation, and new entrants and competition mean that the future of law might involve fewer opportunities for lawyers.
Many legal services can now be provided without the intervention of fully qualified lawyers. Technology-driven services and companies like Avvo, Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom have flourished in the consumer end of the legal market.
But new business models and technology have also made their mark in the business law spectrum. Here, the most sophisticated clients are the ones demanding that whatever can be done by less costly contract lawyers or non-lawyers – or better still, by automated or software-aided process – be so done.
Many of Canada’s professional regulators, including the Law Society of Upper Canada, have recognized the fact that legal services are no longer just about lawyers by moving into paralegal and entity regulation — a shift from regulating fully qualified lawyers who have the exclusive right to provide legal services to regulating entities who provide legal services, whether or not they are owned or populated by fully qualified lawyers.
Things have changed, then, even for top-of-class graduates from the very best law schools everywhere.
“Many of these graduates will for the most part go the traditional route to large law firms where on the whole they’ll have fantastic career experiences, but as the legal market changes, the number of them who will actually make equity partner is steadily diminishing,” says Aron Solomon, a self-styled “serial entrepreneur” who has worked with startups all over the world and is currently the Innovation Lead for the LegalX cluster and Senior Advisor for education technology at Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District, a not-for-profit enterprise whose goal is to commercialize publicly funded and other innovation with the help of local private enterprises.
The upshot is that young lawyers must be open to opportunities in the changed marketplace for legal services.
“There are tons of new opportunities in the legal market,” says Shelby Austin, a lawyer with private practice experience who founded ATD Legal Services PC in Toronto, an ediscovery outsourcing service that she sold to Deloitte in 2014. Austin is now the Innovation and Growth Leader for Deloitte’s Financial Advisory Practice and leads its Legal Project Solutions Offering, which focuses on managing large-scale legal projects, including document review and due-diligence projects on litigation and competition matters and corporate transactions. “For example, there’s a whole industry growing up around legal tech, there are jobs at legal outsourcing providers, and there are jobs at ediscovery firms.”
Indeed, growth in legal startups is astonishing. In 2014, AngelList, a popular fundraising site, identified 412 companies as legal startups. Two years later, the number had almost tripled to more than 1,100.
Robert Ambrogi, an American legal technology and social media blogger, says the explosion has occurred because the legal market is large, ripe for innovation and has a low cost of entry. “Virtually anybody with a good idea can launch a product,” he told media recently.
Solomon recommends that law grads who have experience in a complementary field, like computer technology, take advantage of their skills.
“And there are many places where those who don’t have the skills can learn the basics they need fairly quickly,” he says.
Complementary skills can also lead to opportunities within traditional law firms that depart from the traditional career routes. Jobs in knowledge, project and data management, for example, are but a few of the new careers that are springing up at a growing number of law firms.
It’s not that anyone is suggesting that interested young lawyers shy away from traditional paths. It’s just that the opportunities along this road have diminished.
“If you’re lucky enough to work at the traditional firms, you have a gift that shouldn’t be taken lightly,” Austin says. “But if you can’t make your way there, getting into any of these new fields may be the best thing you ever did.”
Traditionally, joining the profession has been more like getting on a stationary train whose destination is known to all. Not everyone makes it to the destination, of course, because there are a lot of stops along the way and many reasons for getting off before the end of the line.
Still, in law the ultimate destination for the most part has traditionally been equity partner at a law firm of one’s choosing. In recent years, career opportunities have also exploded in corporate legal departments, where increasingly the role of in-house counsel has evolved to encompass important strategic business advisory functions.
But the traditional model is facing serious disruption. Global and national economic business environments, the way clients buy legal services, technological innovation, and new entrants and competition mean that the future of law might involve fewer opportunities for lawyers.
Many legal services can now be provided without the intervention of fully qualified lawyers. Technology-driven services and companies like Avvo, Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom have flourished in the consumer end of the legal market.
But new business models and technology have also made their mark in the business law spectrum. Here, the most sophisticated clients are the ones demanding that whatever can be done by less costly contract lawyers or non-lawyers – or better still, by automated or software-aided process – be so done.
Many of Canada’s professional regulators, including the Law Society of Upper Canada, have recognized the fact that legal services are no longer just about lawyers by moving into paralegal and entity regulation — a shift from regulating fully qualified lawyers who have the exclusive right to provide legal services to regulating entities who provide legal services, whether or not they are owned or populated by fully qualified lawyers.
Things have changed, then, even for top-of-class graduates from the very best law schools everywhere.
“Many of these graduates will for the most part go the traditional route to large law firms where on the whole they’ll have fantastic career experiences, but as the legal market changes, the number of them who will actually make equity partner is steadily diminishing,” says Aron Solomon, a self-styled “serial entrepreneur” who has worked with startups all over the world and is currently the Innovation Lead for the LegalX cluster and Senior Advisor for education technology at Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District, a not-for-profit enterprise whose goal is to commercialize publicly funded and other innovation with the help of local private enterprises.
The upshot is that young lawyers must be open to opportunities in the changed marketplace for legal services.
“There are tons of new opportunities in the legal market,” says Shelby Austin, a lawyer with private practice experience who founded ATD Legal Services PC in Toronto, an ediscovery outsourcing service that she sold to Deloitte in 2014. Austin is now the Innovation and Growth Leader for Deloitte’s Financial Advisory Practice and leads its Legal Project Solutions Offering, which focuses on managing large-scale legal projects, including document review and due-diligence projects on litigation and competition matters and corporate transactions. “For example, there’s a whole industry growing up around legal tech, there are jobs at legal outsourcing providers, and there are jobs at ediscovery firms.”
Indeed, growth in legal startups is astonishing. In 2014, AngelList, a popular fundraising site, identified 412 companies as legal startups. Two years later, the number had almost tripled to more than 1,100.
Robert Ambrogi, an American legal technology and social media blogger, says the explosion has occurred because the legal market is large, ripe for innovation and has a low cost of entry. “Virtually anybody with a good idea can launch a product,” he told media recently.
Solomon recommends that law grads who have experience in a complementary field, like computer technology, take advantage of their skills.
“And there are many places where those who don’t have the skills can learn the basics they need fairly quickly,” he says.
Complementary skills can also lead to opportunities within traditional law firms that depart from the traditional career routes. Jobs in knowledge, project and data management, for example, are but a few of the new careers that are springing up at a growing number of law firms.
It’s not that anyone is suggesting that interested young lawyers shy away from traditional paths. It’s just that the opportunities along this road have diminished.
“If you’re lucky enough to work at the traditional firms, you have a gift that shouldn’t be taken lightly,” Austin says. “But if you can’t make your way there, getting into any of these new fields may be the best thing you ever did.”
