A fresh icing on an old cake, “law new” is a marketing term embraced by many startups and law firm subsidiaries augmenting traditional legal services. These new legal services providers (ALSPs) are more than tech-enabled business processes; they are transforming the industry. They are doing this by changing the paradigm of how law is delivered. They are moving from legacy legal delivery models that focus on providers’ self-congratulatory awards and profit preservation to one where they focus on customer impact that generates high net promoter scores. They are leveraging data-driven, agile, cost-effective, practical and solutions-based approaches to once-bespoke legal matters.
This shift is being fueled by two principal sources: 1) large-scale legal buyer activism; and 2) corporate Goliaths with the branding, capital, know-how, customer-centricity, data mastery, tech platforms, and agile, multidisciplinary workforces that can disrupt the old-school law-firm model. This combination will create a law-based environment that is collaborative, transparent, accessible, affordable, efficient, data-backed and solutions-based. It will replace the bespoke, adversarial, slow, expensive and risky approach that has plagued the legal industry for too long.
New law will also include a level of collaboration that can’t be mastered by a single person, function, enterprise or stakeholder group. This collaboration will be enabled by platforms that are secure repositories of legal knowledge, expertise and experience. They will empower legal functions and their cross-functional enterprise colleagues to be proactive in identifying, eradicating, mitigating or extinguishing risk, and to seize significant value opportunities. This will drive significant business value for the enterprise, avoid costly litigation, free-up management to focus on other business opportunities, and enable global business integration.
In addition to regulating the encomienda system, the New Laws established protections and rights for Native Americans that Spaniards did not have themselves. They prohibited encomienda grants from being passed on via inheritance, and established a fierce defense of indigenous peoples.
The next phase of law’s evolution is likely to involve the development and implementation of a technology platform that allows legal practitioners, “legal techies,” process/project managers, and data analysts to work collaboratively on real-world projects with customers or end users. This platform will allow them to share information, analyze legal and non-legal data, and provide insight on how to resolve complex issues in a timely fashion. It will be a key component of an overall strategy that is driven by the needs and expectations of customers and end users. This is the underlying principle that drove the creation of the original Codex. It will also guide the creation of the future of law.