Beautiful Minds: 41 Legal Industry Predictions for the New Year

This entire article  was published by Frank Strong on December 17, 2015 on the "Business of Law" blog by Lexis Nexis.

Predictions can go in many directions.

Sometimes predictions can be unreliable when events progress at a slow pace. However, they can also become outdated if things move too quickly. In the realm of legal matters, the outcome often falls within a range of possibilities and is dependent on various factors.

This marks the third consecutive year we’ve published legal industry predictions and we’d like to believe it’s a both a fun and useful mental exercise.  We are equally grateful to the contributors – the beautiful minds – who stepped forward with a prediction. Predictions were made along three broad segments:

• legal industry/business of law
• legal technology; and
• legal marketing.

PREDICTION FROM PERFORMLAW' S BRIAN KENNEL : 

“2016 Will see significant advances in litigation management metrics and 3rd party lawyer rating services. Clients have been managing lawyer performance mostly as a billing concept. This year will see big data approaches to litigation metrics, including win/loss rates, lawyer performance by jurisdiction, case type, cost and just about any other measurable factor. Smart firms will recognize these trends and add value to the change process. Self-analysis of case handling performance including length of time files remain active, average total cost of cases including legal fees and indemnity, lawyer efficiency comparisons for similar assignments and competitive comparisons are great places to start. Data-driven approaches to the practice of law will be terrifying for some and an incredible opportunity for others.”

Mr. Brian Kennel  is a leading law firm consultant and pens the PerformLaw blog and has contributed in an article found here: Law Firm Branding: Communicating the Client Experience.

To read the full article and all 41 predictions, please click here.