Interview with... RICHARD SUSSKIND - Peppermint Technology

Interview 11
Interview with...
RICHARD SUSSKIND
Professor Richard Susskind OBE is a British
author, speaker, and independent adviser
to international professional firms and
national governments.
Anthony Smith speaks to Richard
Susskind on his latest book,
Tomorrow’s Lawyers (published
January 2013).
QIn some ways this may be
your least radical book, for
instance, there are examples
of law firms and new legal service
providers already doing some of the
things you suggest. Does this mean
the legal industry is now past the
‘new ideas’ stage and into the ‘new
delivery stage’?
A
Tomorrow’s Lawyers is intended
for young and aspiring lawyers,
as well as for older lawyers who
could not bring themselves to buy or
read a book called The End of Lawyers?
(My last book.) It brings my thinking
up to date, but lays it out in shorter
form than my earlier books. There is a
lot of new thinking in there too - I like
to think - not least about what the next
generation of lawyers should expect
to be doing in their working hours.
For readers who are familiar with my
past work, the new book may seem
less radical but, for the great majority
of practising lawyers, most of whom
(alas) have not read my stuff, this work
will seem not just radical but seditious.
It is true that some law firms have
moved from ideas to action but they
are still the exception.
QNotwithstanding the above, I
think some practising lawyers
will be affronted by some
of your assertions, in particular the
following two:
• ‘for much of the legal market the
(business) model is not simply
unsustainable; it is already broken
• ‘I do not see much of a future
(beyond 2020) for most small
firms in liberalised regimes’
What do you say to people who
would dispute these views?
AI say, ‘speak to clients’. Almost
all the General Counsel with
whom I meet tell me that they
are under huge pressure to reduce
their legal spend and that law firms will
need to transform to help them make
these reductions. Equally, look at the
research into individual consumers and
legal services – a majority suggest that
customers would be more comfortable
securing legal help from a high street
brand than a conventional law firm.
QYou refer to lawyers struggling
to meet the ‘more for less’
challenge. Most lawyers will
understand what this means, but how
would you summarise this challenge?
AThere are three elements.
In-house legal departments
are under pressure from CEOs
‘My advice is to move from pricing
differently to working differently; above all to
implementing new and much less costly ways of
sourcing routine and repetitive work’
and CFOs to reduce their internal
headcount, to spend less on law
firms, and yet they have more legal
and compliance work than ever
before. So, these clients need more
legal service at less cost and this
challenge will define the next 10
years of the legal industry.
QYour advice to lawyers
needing to meet the ‘more for
less’ challenge?
AMy main suggestion is to stop
thinking about this challenge
as a call for alternative fee
arrangements. Much of the debate
on alternatives to hourly billing is
misdirected because when most lawyers
move, say, to fixed fees, they are still
working out these fees with an hourly
billing model in mind. My advice is to
move from pricing differently to working
differently; above all to implementing
new and much less costly ways of
sourcing routine and repetitive work.
ML // January 2013

12 Interview
‘Many deals and disputes are complicated, resource
intensive, document intensive, high pressure activities that
deserve the rigour project management can bring.
Too often, today’s lawyers are haphazard and ad hoc in
their matter management’
QMany lawyers say clients want to ‘speak to the
lawyer doing the work’ (and this is a selling point
for many firms), so is decomposing and the
perhaps outsourcing realistic?
AThe idea here is that we can break down deals
and disputes into component parts and source
each part as efficiently as possible. For the routine
and repetitive work, this might call for off-shoring or
outsourcing or computerising (or one of the rest of the
15 alternative ways of sourcing legal work that I have
identified). Generally, and here is the key, clients don’t want
to see the lawyers who are doing this kind of work. They
only tend to want to speak to lawyers who are undertaking
the complex, bespoke work. But, on my model, that kind of
work stays with traditional lawyers who will interact with
their clients in the way they always have done.
QYou also advocate collaboration between law firms.
Is it realistic to suggest to firms who compete against
each other that they should now collaborate?
AIf left to their own devices, law firms will not tend
to want to collaborate. However, a number of very
major clients have recently been asking their panel
firms to collaborate. This drive from clients changes the
tune. Law firms have to make it ‘realistic’.
QA surprise in the book is that you have very little
time for AFA’s, including value pricing. Why is this?
AI have already said something about AFAs. They do
not, in my view, change the price of fish. Value billing
is superficially attractive but misses a crucial point
– that even if a law firm delivers great value, clients will not
wish to pay more than the going market rate. Tax lawyers
who say to a client they want a cut of the action because
they have saved the client £x million will only succeed if
they are the only firm that could have delivered that value. If
others could have recommended a similar scheme, then the
market will trump the value as an index of price.
QBut if a law firm has become more efficient and
reengineered its legal service delivery, surely there
is inherent value in that, which they can then seek
to reflect in their pricing?
AI agree. If a law firm reengineers, it can take advantage
of the savings by being able to offer a lower cost
service to clients (or by achieving a greater profit
margin; or both). Again, it is all about the market and clients.
There is value for the client, in your sense, if the client pays
less. But when most people talk of ‘value pricing’ or ‘value
billing’ they mean charging according to the overall value
delivered to the client as opposed to the numbers of hours
spent by the firm. They are saying look at output rather than
input. I say the market sorts out pricing (methods and levels).
QYou are actually quite optimistic about the
employment opportunities for tomorrow’s lawyers,
why is this?
ARead the book for this one. There I lay out a whole
new set of new jobs for lawyers.
QYou have long been a vocal proponent of legal
project management – why do you believe a project
based legal service delivery model is so important?
ABecause many deals and disputes are complicated,
resource intensive, document intensive, high
pressure activities that deserve the rigour project
management can bring. Too often, today’s lawyers are
haphazard and ad hoc in their matter management.
QYou implore young lawyers to ‘work in the law
in the interests of society and not of lawyers’.
Some would say this is overly idealistic and that
- to quote the famous phrase - there is ‘no such thing as
society’. What would you say to that?
AI want lawyers of tomorrow to be passionate about
access to justice and the rule of law. I would like
them to make a good living but for that to be a biproduct
and not a prime objective of working in law. It may
be idealistic but I like to pursue ideals.
QA consistent theme in your writing has been the
need for greater access to justice and trying to
satisfy the ‘unmet legal need’. Would you agree
that, compared to all other suggestions made in your
other books, progress has been slowest here?
ANot at all. It is of course hard to measure. But I think the
wealth of government websites and sites put up by the
third sector have made simple legal guidance far more
widely available and easily accessible than in the past. But we
are just warming up. Wait for online dispute resolution.
Richard Susskind OBE
MLM would like to thank Anthony Smith, Director, Legal
Project Management for conducting this interview.
ML // January 2013

Interview
13
EAT LUNCH OR BE LUNCH
Waking up and addressing change in the legal industry is do or die and as Arlene
Adams reports, the value of data and technology needs to be realised when
negotiating the future of your legal services provision.
The legal market is
undergoing seismic
change. It’s not a threat of
something that may happen; it’s
happening now. If you wait to see
how the market plays out, you
will be too late. On a daily basis I
engage with businesses, existing
law firms and new entrants alike, who are plotting and taking
action to radically change how legal services are delivered.
In five years’ time the landscape of legal services will
be very different. There will be more legal providers of a
larger scale. They will adopt business models that are highly
automated and largely technology driven. We will also see a
surge of boutique firms focusing on specialised work. Again,
they will use technology but with a focus on using data to
provide a highly personalised and relevant service. It is likely
that some of the largest and most successful legal providers
in 2017 will be names we haven’t even heard of yet.
It’s already happened in other markets and it will happen
in legal. Take retail for example. Before the adoption of
the Internet no one had heard of Amazon. Now it’s one of
the most successful companies on the planet. Traditional
retailers lost out to a business that used technology to
transform how services are delivered in their market.
Many large companies waited too long and in the end
became victims of their own denial. Technology has
changed the way we all interact and consume services and
understanding this is vital to any business strategy.
Recent research commissioned by Peppermint
Technology, across 1000 consumers and 150 businesses,
found that legal clients are increasingly demanding
new, technology driven models of consumption (www.
pepperminttechnology.co.uk/legal-service-customerexperience-research).
Firms must embrace technology,
and the client, at the core of their business if they are to
deliver a quality service, every time, anywhere, anytime.
Like Amazon, firms must focus on becoming data driven
businesses and turn this data into value. Only with
technology at the core of the business will firms be able to
deliver high quality services at the right price point.
The future is being defined now. In this wilderness, firms
must realise it is a fight for survival; you either eat lunch or
become lunch.
Arlene Adams is CEO and Founder of Peppermint Technology.
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