New Generation of Legal Professionals

WHERE ARE YOU in YOUR pROFESSIONAL JOuRNEY?

Startup | Growth | Maturity | Decline | Revival | Closure | TRANSITION to new owner | retirement…

Welcome to part one of future trends of the legal profession. Before we go into our 2022 useful case studies, let’s have look at the legal macro trends.

There are more than 1.3 million lawyers in the United States, and that number has barely changed in the past decade, according to the 2022 ABA National Lawyer Population Survey. In 2022, 38.3% of lawyers were female while 61.5% were male. The gains are notable, however, given that from 1950 to 1970, only 3% of all lawyers were women. And if women continue to outnumber men in law school, the upward trend may continue.

An aging population, combined with more workers taking early retirement to focus on family needs such as providing child care, and elder care, has created leverage for work/career transition and an extraordinary opportunity for entrepreneurship.

As with many other businesses and industries, the legal industry is among the top industries to experience a changing environment from the perspective of how work is done, and how services are provided.  Among other factors, this has to do with the changing demographic of attorneys.  There is an influx of younger more progressive attorneys, more women are becoming attorneys, and many attorneys are reaching the end of their careers heading for the new chapter in their lives.   

independence and flexibility

On top of that, according to the ABA, the solo and freelance attorney trend in the US is on the rise. This is due to a number of factors, including increased popularity of flexible and remote work, the rise of technology and online legal resources, the growing demand for affordable legal services, the increasing cost of traditional legal services which may make solo attorneys a more attractive and cost-effective option for clients, and the desire for more autonomy and control over one's career as many attorneys opt for the independence and flexibility of solo or freelance practice.

The influx of “new talent” creates a “new wave” of new ways to approach performing legal services. The legal profession is trending toward the lower cost facet of Freelance Paralegals, Legal Document Preparers and Paraprofessionals, as a viable alternative to attorney services.   If you’re thinking about “taking that next step” to advance your professional legal career as a solo or freelancer entrepreneur in the legal industry, now is a great time. The rate of change in the world has made it more possible and more affordable to strike out on your own, and or in parallel than in the past. Now more than ever people are approaching and operating business differently in their career. So many of us are working from home, hybrid or have become independent contractors and freelancers. This is no different for those in the legal profession.

2020 shut down

Then came the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020.  Due to the resulting shut down, we saw a dramatic increase in people working remotely and a dramatic shift to online commerce thus creating surge of new businesses. In the United States, new business creation is 50% above pre-pandemic with greater than 5 million new companies in 2021. In addition, per the U.S. Census Bureau, Business Formation Statistics, the monthly average of high-propensity business applications rocketed upward in mid-2020 and has remained at record levels.

The shut down in 2020 pulled the trigger on changing our business landscape.  One of the results is that it forced us to take a hard look at our lives and our careers and professions.  2020 caused us all to put more of a focus on our family and our health and safety, and less on our work.  There definitely came a new focus on work life balance. Health concerns do that. 

Unexpectedly and positively the pandemic has motivated many to shift away from the traditional model of employment by large institutions and step out into self-sovereignty, self-employment, and the new “Creator Economy”. People are creating their own security by taking the power back in their hands and becoming freelancers and or starting their own practices.

The legal profession is being redefined in how to operate in this new ‘Creator Economy’.  Some of the change was voluntary.  Some was not.  People caught in the shutdown could not adapt quickly enough and their business or job became a casualty.  Despite being displaced the Creator Economy provided a new opportunity to revive, recover and reset.  The door of opportunity opened allowing us to reset our career path, our goals, and even our life priorities.  For those approaching the end of their career this could look like early retirement.  For those just starting out this could and has taken the form of transition to a new independent, entrepreneurial career plan. 

EVOLUTION OF LEGAL BUSINESS MODEL

If you are working in or entering the legal profession, law school, or others certification program, as a Legal Document Preparer (LDP) or Legal Document Assistant (LDA), you are in good company. The demand for non attorney legal professionals is an emerging sector with immense opportunity to adopt and embrace freelance structure and participant in the collaborative economy. Reason for this demand, is many are looking for affordable and quality legal support, especially on unconstructed matters, thus shifting bulk of the administrative work from attorneys either to LDP or LDA. Several states such as Washington, Utah, Arizona, and potentially California are looking to address the gap of the need for legal services and access to those services through the launch of legal paraprofessional programs.

The explosion of digital transformation and the COVID-19 pandemic has fast tracked the acceptance and shift of ‘being in office’ to ‘working remotely’. It has changed how business operate, especially within the legal profession. Now legal professionals now can work from anywhere and have the freedom and flexibility to manage few or as many clients as they want. With the technology transformation across industries, we are seeing the evolution of database systems fundamentally changing the way how organizations are doing business. One example of this is Blockchain for Contracts, the shift of digitization of paper-based contracts onto the blockchain. The digitization of paper-based contracts onto the blockchain holds the potential to revolutionize the way contracts are prepared, transacted, amended, stored, and accessed.

In the midst of the next evolution of the legal business model due to rapid technology development and the changing business environments and market demands. This combined with the after effects of the pandemic have drastically accelerated workforce decades old trends of, side hustle and self-employment, a creative and collaborative economy, and the embrace of the independent freelance structure.

This has also created something of a “sink or swim” environment for the legal profession.  Existing law firms are forced to redefine their work processes and practices to meet the legal professional changing needs, or possible phase out of existence.  The start of 2023 is a great time to reset, recharge and renew, to adopt and leverage, simple and useful technologies to increase your ROI and enhance your personal and professional journey.

Stay tuned for our next segment where we share some real life case studies that illustrate transitions to the new Generation of Legal Professionals.

CASE STUDIES

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