The legal profession has experienced significant paradigm shifts in how it operates and practices. Law firms and legal departments are reshaping business models and reviewing workflows for more streamlined and cost-effective approaches for both legal and business processes. Overall, our view is that the legal profession is making progress, sometimes rapidly and dramatically, sometimes incrementally; regardless, we see fundamental and irreversible transformation — and this is both necessary and positive.
That said, we all know that legal often seems to require extraordinary forcing functions to produce reactions and do that which we ought to have already been doing, instead of proactively seizing opportunities. As was asked during and following the recession of 2008, the pandemic is producing a key question: “Will these changes be permanent?” We think it is safe bet that the pandemic of 2020 created many changes — and most of them are permanent.
