Returning to practice after a career break (yes, we're mainly talking maternity leave, here) can feel a very stressful and dispiriting experience. Not only are careers in law extremely competitive and overly-subscribed, many firms are firmly stuck in the rigid and patriarchal past and fail to offer the kind of flexible working environments that reflect the twenty-first century environment we live in – a world in which both men and women work and it is (or at least should be) perfectly possible to combine a fulfilling and financially rewarding career with a rich and involved family life.
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There are plenty of indications to suggest that the disruption of the legal market is already taking effect. Online platforms, apps and in-house legal technologies are proliferating at an astonishing rate and, it seems, their presence is becoming tangible.
Take as an example of this tangibility the latest survey by international banking and financial services holding company Wells Fargo. It reports that larger flagship firms are experiencing stagnation in demand – something that leading analysts and philosophers such as Richard Susskind and Jeremy Waldron have predicted for some time. This is a perspective supported by the most recent Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor survey, which found that the litigation work of 151 large firms fell by 1.1% in the first half of 2016.
It seems that client generation websites are multiplying faster than a boat full of rabbit sailors enjoying a period of extended shore leave. Notwithstanding the significant doubt surrounding whether leporine society actually boasts a merchant navy, it does seem that these types of websites are launching with greater regularity. They all promise to attract pretty much the same thing: sensible clients with the ability to pay for legal services.
The problem these sites are facing in persuading lawyers aboard in significant numbers, however, is that previous versions have been spectacularly unsuccessful. Unless the current models represent a significant departure from the ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ platforms of the past, they too are heading for the dustbin.
Someone once said that being a salesman is either the easiest and best paid job ever or the hardest and worst paid job in the world. Whichever category you find yourself in depends, in part, on your customer. And if your customer is a lawyer, then you need to be prepared for regular periods of bread and dripping.
Let’s face it, selling anything into the legal profession is not for beginners. It is a task which Sisyphus would have regarded as thankless. Solicitors are programmed to be sceptical and immune to the grand claims of sales people. Every day legal practices are bombarded with emails and telephone calls from people trying to sell them everything from photocopy paper to the latest software innovation.
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