The Law Firm Of The 21st Century — The Singapore Synergy

A new meaning to the world is being given — evolution, a leap into hyperspace. From fax machines, courier services, word processors to a paperless office — internets, intranets and the omnipotent law firm website. E-commerce is the story of 2000’ s first decade and e-practice is the next emerging force on the law practice horizon.

Introduction

I see a whole new world out there — dominated by the electronic medium. A whole new world not only for the profession, but also for our society, and the world. I see the advent of the technology age, particularly the Internet, having brought about a paradigm shift in ways of commerce, community, communications, and content. The Internet offers lawyers a powerful practice tool — from research capabilities, to networking, to marketing and beyond — with equally powerful ethical implications.

It is, in my view, scary.

Let me confess to you at the outset that I used to be a technophobe. I used to pride myself in not carrying a pager, a handphone or a personal digital organiser; I did not have an Internet account nor subscribe to voice-mail. I did not know the difference between a word processor and an electric typewriter. Recently though, I must confess that I have developed a weakness to know the latest in high technology. And whilst learning to meet my needs, I can now report progress by email and surf on the Net, and I am attempting to hold the future in my palm — by the use of a palm-pilot. In short, I have overcome my ’technofear’.

In the not too distant future, each one of us will carry in our pockets a digital device that will connect us to the world: ignoring technology will be at our peril.

How true it is that computers which entered our law offices in the ’70s, through the back office, ie time-sheets, billings and payrolls, have now enveloped the legal profession in all aspects of practice.

The Challenge

The onslaught by the Internet, in fact, the irresistible rise of the Internet, on the legal profession has begun and our Bar must remain progressive and must work for a radical change to better equip us for the world of tomorrow.

Just late last month, in Chicago, at the American Bar Association’s (ABA) TECHSHOW, legal journalists and practitioners were introduced to a portal which contained branded consumer legal information and services; this legal knowledge the lawyers compiled are in a centralised location, easily accessible to consumers, costing the inventors little to create, virtually nothing to store, and costing nothing to deliver.

Today, not only is the portal supplying basic legal documents and forms cheaply over the Internet, it also has a team of lawyers sitting in a chat-room dispensing legal advice over the Internet at an affordable price.

Soon, a generation of videophones will make talking to someone by video just like watching them on television, and simultaneous translations by computer, is already being demonstrated in laboratories, are breaking down the language barrier forever.

What I have come to learn is that an English portal at the Chicago TECHSHOW has reportedly snatched an estimated 6% of the total divorce practice in Britain, since it was first offered in July last year. It is also reported that there is apparently an impending British invasion on the American legal system. More than a dozen other such Internet-based legal services, appealing to low-to-middle income consumers, have been launched in the United States in the last twelve months. Nearly all of them are owned or financed by free-spending venture capitalists. Many more well-financed clones are expected to be launched in the coming weeks.

Like the ABA, the Law Society of Singapore is not only looking at the viability of a legal portal, but is also addressing other ethical and publicity issues facing the profession.

I shall fail in my duty, as President of the Law Society, to neglect to reform rules which impede progress; we have to review the profession’s existing ethics rules to see whether they unnecessarily hinder or deter the use of the Internet by law firms to provide their own on-line services to, inter alia, low and moderate income individuals.

Price competition would strongly encourage measures aimed at broadening access to the profession. Root and branch reforms are relevant and desirable, aimed at modernisation of competition rules to increase the competitiveness of tomorrow’s law firms in the global marketplace. The Society is at a threshold, and I am prepared to take on this challenge.

The formidable task ahead for a regulatory body of the legal profession, such as the Law Society, would be to achieve a balance between commercialism and professionalism.

Our rules as they presently stand impose several limitations on our local firms’ ability to embrace the opportunities brought about by globalisation, and the shrinking world resulting from the Internet.

There is a call for a radical change in our mindset, and in our rules so as to enable our lawyers to compete effectively.

In all this, however, we must not go about change in a piecemeal fashion. Just because the medium of communication or dissemination has changed does not necessarily make the seeking of publicity, previously held to be crass or demeaning to the profession, any less so now. Our professionalism cannot and must not be compromised in this new Utopia.

Globalisation

As corporations evolve into truly global institutions, as with more titanic mergers and acquisitions, making ever bigger conglomerates, law firms will also become more global. International business expansion will drive firms to be proficient in international laws. A body of law called ‘world law’ will be born and will grow. As boundaries on maps, as we know them, become blurred by advances in communication and language translation, technology, including voice command operation computers, will make office locations less important.

With legal technology, corporate law has today become an international business with firms in London competing with their New York counterparts by drawing business from America, claiming lower rates. The 23 March edition of The Times (London) reported that this traffic has recently been reversed, and Australian firms are now ‘touting’ for work in London, pointing to cheaper rates and the ability to work when London sleeps.

Singapore law firms must rise to the challenge of globalisation by strengthening the framework for co-operation with other countries. Those firms that are strong in their core areas will survive, but a number of smaller niche practices will also rival the global firms in their practice areas.

The top five law firms in England are continuing to surge further ahead: not entirely focused on the United States; they are also keenly watching Europe.

Soon, the nationality of a law firm may be seen as a relic of a bygone age, and lawyers will be only one component in organisations that offer ‘professional service advice’.

Change is today a feature of all aspects of our lives, and standing still or running-on-the-spot, is no option. We cannot allow globalisation to leave us behind. We, in the profession, have that chance to lead the world.

‘On-line Lawyers’

A cadre of ‘on-line lawyers’ will develop. These lawyers will work from home or in virtual offices all over the world, acting as specialists and resources for law firms on a case or project basis. The practice of law will move beyond a time and space paradigm. This alteration will mean certain information, which was only in one place for one-at-a-time use during set hours, need no longer be so.

Much of the information-sharing, legal research and client interaction will be done on-line. Lawyers in the United States are now giving advice on-line. Some of us here are also doing this — at least, it is a genesis.

Traffic jams, parking woes and business-hour constraints will disappear. Soon, off-hour practice, cross-country transactions and transnational negotiations will invade the last frontier — those witching hours between 2am and 7am. For a workaholic insomniac like me, life will be beautiful!

Specialisation

Specialisation will dramatically increase. In the next century, the solo practitioner who has a ‘do-it-all’ practice will become a thing of the past, although there will still be a need for small firms to handle matters requiring that personal touch, just as much as your corner ‘hole-in-the-wall’ shop, or as you have in the West, the ‘Mom-and-Pop’ grocery shop. But certain areas of law may be handled not by lawyers but by trade associations, banks/estate agents, local mediators and para-legals. Already, the legal market is stalked by accountants. Alternative dispute resolution and mediation panels will also proliferate.

Increased competition and demand for operating capital for training and technology will lead to changes in the rules of professional conduct. Law firms may be able to sell equity to their professional partners in multi-disciplinary consortiums. The writing has been on the wall for some time now.

Whilst the ABA studies the possibility of allowing multi-disciplinary partnerships (MDPs), and whilst the Bar Councils and Law Societies of Europe have also harshly condemned the idea, and whilst there is a growing support for MDPs in the UK, I foresee that MDPs here can have huge benefits for law firms of all sizes.

Law firm management and structure will change radically. Law firms will become multi-dimensional: their staff comprising not only lawyers, but also accountants, engineers, administrators and managers, and maybe counsellors, social workers and medical personnel. Law firms will be competing and vying for business, and clients will be looking for higher levels of sophistication in client service.

The Virtual Courtroom

Lawyers and the court system will be challenged to become more service-oriented, despite being more and more technology-driven.

On the litigation front, the court system here is already leading the legal profession in becoming a ‘paperless society’. The electronic filing of pleadings and other court documents are only in their beginning stages. In the not too distant future, lawyers may be required to communicate by electronic mail. Judges and lawyers may not meet personally in a courtroom for pre-trial proceedings. The true virtual courtroom will redefine what a ‘trial’ is, with its elimination of distance and expense.

Chamber hearings may be conducted in a chat-room format. Electronic courtrooms will make it possible for trials to be conducted by video-conferencing. Better yet, court proceedings can occur in ‘virtual reality’, with the appearance of a tactile world but without the reality of physical presence. In fact, why not a Law Conference or continuing legal education seminar being attended by simply logging on to one’s computer from home, in the comforts of your armchair. In the age of the virtual office, your notebook computer is your office. Commercial property owners may soon be out of business.

The Focus

Law firms expecting to survive in the 21st Century should begin to focus on four concepts of transformation, transition, technology and training. The proper management of these four ‘Ts’ will alter a firm’s competitive strategy significantly in the next century.

In all these, I see a revolution in motion, bringing about a synergy of transformation, transition, technology and training, and thetouchstone of client service.

Transformation

With the advent of technology, today’s lawyer, and indeed that of the future, will have to rethink old norms of practice. The lawyer of tomorrow, equipped with his laptop, wireless modem, handphone and palm-pilot or digital diary will no longer need an office. His laptop will be his office, files and books. He may work from home, from his car or even from his holiday getaway and the old adage that there is no place like home will become a truism.

If at all he has an office, it will be for the purpose of meeting clients, which will not be necessary if his equally sophisticated client can be accessed via a video conference. Just as today’s military battles may be done without ever seeing the enemy, today’s legal battle may likewise be waged without ever seeing the client — a luxury not shared by our medical brethren!

Transition and professionalism

Sir Walter Scott wrote that ‘A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.’

I am certain that one thing will not change in the 21st Century. Good lawyers must continue to read and study case law, be challenged to use their imagination, prepare thoroughly for their cases and not substitute technology for legal thought. When reading cases written over the past 200 years, I never fail to marvel at how good lawyering was demanded even back in the days of the bullock cart and the horse-and-carriage. This will continue to be required even as we communicate instantaneously in a ‘paperless society’, and develop a body of law that transcends the boundaries of nations.

As held in Copeland v Smith [2000] 1 All ER 457 (CA):

It is essential for advocates who hold themselves out as competent to practise in a particular field of law to bring and keep themselves up-to-date with recent authority in their field.

And that is just that much more for ‘Continuing Professional Development’.

Technology and training

With technology, there may soon be offices devoid of offices. New mobile office practices will be set up equipped with state-of- the-art electronic equipment. Where will they be located? In a home, a car, at a client’s office, on a boat, or under a gazebo of a Batam resort. Secretaries may become a thing of the past, as it will become faster, and more cost-effective, for a computer-savvy lawyer to type out an entire document himself, email a draft to his client to make corrections, and have the agreement signed digitally.

One author has described the successful firm in the emerging economy as a radically flat organisation — a spider web organisation, whose interconnections show lightness yet completeness. This will be a new age of a more specialised, highly automated mobile office. Firms need also no longer be large to compete and obtain top clients.

Clients will put more focus on hiring the best person to perform the needed service and less on hiring a law firm that has the capacity to handle all problems, no matter how complex. The effective law firm of the future must be flexible, yet entrepreneurial.

But what will distinguish the survivors will be their ability to transform generic commonplace technology to personal technology — technology that is flexible enough to be used by lawyers as an extension of their minds.

Client-service touchstone

The key to professional survival into the next century is the building and maintenance of client relationships. With globalisation and technological advancement comes a more sophisticated and demanding breed of client who is no longer satisfied with just putting his case in your hands; he wants to know what you have done for him. The legal profession has been demystified.

Efficiency in moving cases is now a threshold requirement, whether by the courts (through the application of the Woolf reforms), the clients or your colleagues.

Professionalism in the 21st Century, more than ever, will mean communicating with our clients. It will require treating the client as the customer that he is. Technology will be a great leveller. It will enable small firms and large firms to deliver legal products that are virtually indistinguishable in quality, whether it be a personal injury claim or an international transaction. However, client attentiveness can make the difference. One way is to start treating the client as a customer. Doing so has a practical effect. A satisfied client will be your ambassador, will tell ten other people about you and come back and bring others. A dissatisfied client will be like a terrorist, and also warn ten others, if not more, about you.

Clients will want their lawyers to use technology to work efficiently and keep their costs down.

As the number of lawyers grow, law office management skills and the effective use of technology will be indispensable in providing broad-based, efficient and effective service. Use of technology will permit lawyers to optimise results at a minimum fee to their clients.

Conclusion

Prophecies are not much use without a vision or two. Whilst crossing the bridge into new borderless frontiers, the legal profession must in one sense still remain earthbound. I have a hope and desire that our lawyers, old and new, will continue to be better trained technologically, but remain rooted with the ethical values of independence, confidentiality and loyalty, which make lawyering a profession.

I would like to see more lawyers who are respected by colleagues and adversaries alike, who enjoy being lawyers; who are guided not by what can be done, but what should be done; who are not despised but honoured by the society they serve because they contribute to the preservation, and not the erosion, of the values upon which society so desperately depends.

On the future of professionalism, and who is to ensure the same, may I conclude with this anecdote, which I have come to call ‘The Jurist’.

There was once a very ancient and learned person who was known as the Jurist, and who could answer any question. One day, some children captured a bird and decided they would test the Jurist. They said, ‘Let us take this bird to the Jurist and ask whether it is alive or dead: if the Jurist says that the bird is dead, we will let it loose; if the Jurist answers that it is alive, we will crush it.’ So they went to the Jurist and asked: ‘That which we hold in our hands, is it alive or dead?’

The Jurist looked at them and smiled, and then replied, ‘It is in your hands.’

The future of our law firms and our 21st Century lawyers — it is in our hands.

Palakrishnan
President, The Law Society of Singapore

This paper was originally delivered by Mr Palakrishnan, President of The Law Society of Singapore, at the Millennium Law Conference, The Singapore Conference: Leading the Law and the Lawyers into the New Millennium @ 2020, held in Singapore from 10 to 12 April 2000, as part of a joint session paper.