Millennials are now in the driving seat of legal practice and accelerating the pace of change in the legal marketplace. A new report from  LOD has charted the legal shift as the millennial lawyer begins to outnumber the babyboomer generation. Legal market analyst Jordan Furlong, who authored 'The rise of the Millennial Lawyer', looked  at the impact on law firms and corporate legal departments. 

Transition point

 According to Mr Furlong: 'Right now, in the late 2010s, we are standing directly on the fulcrum between two eras of law, at a key transition point in the evolution of the legal services market. That market is changing from a dormant, low-tech, individualistic system to a dynamic, high-tech, collaborative one.' 

Law firm DNA

Millennial lawyers are going to rewrite the DNA of law firm, Mr Furlong says adding that clients should be seeing a change already. 'The millennial law firm ought to be a significant upgrade for their clients and their priorities. Disaggregation, diversity and pricing will be seen as key elements in this new client-centric offering.' Law firms have to recognise that 'every day, another Boomer leaves the legal profession and another millennial enters. The organisations that recognise this the soonest, and react the quickest, will be the best positioned to dominate the new legal market to come,' he says.

Wireless

The report says millennials are 'wireless, mobile and peripatetic' and accordingly their law firms should be 'fragmented, flexible and collaborative.' It also points out that millennials have an 'inherent aversion to tme-based anything' and this will 'accelerate the drive towards reliable pricing of their legal services.'  It says they will invest in business intelligence and data analytics and will redefine the product away from input (hours) towards output (client deliverables). Source: The rise of the Millennial Lawyer