Don't Shoot The Messengers – Change Them!

The Altman Weil, Inc. 2018 Law Firms in Transition survey that was recently released contains a number of thoughtful insights including perhaps capturing the essence of why law firms are so slow to embrace necessary change.

Basically, the proposition is that "threats" to the legal profession in the past have been driven by "known types of events," i.e. recession; societal change; legal rulings; etc. These known events could be dealt with through simple endurance and a belief that "this too will pass."

The threats faced by law firms today, and really in recent years, seem to be driven in a sense by "unknown events." The greatest unknown of these threats is the evolution of technology over the past decade or more.