Running a law firm feels like being a rock at times…
Today’s law firms must survive in an environment characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA environment). The challenges that today’s law firms face include the enormous complexity of compliance requirements, higher performance expectations on the part of clients, the need to recruit capable talent, the urgent call for technology-based efficiency, increased insourcing and outsourcing of work, and fresh competition in the legal-tech setting.
In 2023, these challenges are intensified by the increasingly pressing question of how the work of the legal profession can be expected to evolve through publicly available AI programs, such as Chat GPT, Bard, Harvey or others.
These new ways of gaining access to knowledge raise the question of which technologies can be harnessed for the work of the legal profession – not just where they can lend assistance, but where they can actually serve as substitutes for tasks performed by the legal profession. Either today or in the not-too-distant future.
And what about small law firms in particular? How can they survive in times of competition for good employees, growing expectations from both clients and employees? And how to cope well with the need to innovate technologically?
We revisited the Wolters Kluwer Future Ready Lawyer Study 2022 with the needs of small law firms in mind. In our whitepaper, we outline the five key challenges.
