Overview

This book is about how information technology can help a professional firm, what it makes possible, and how to make sensible choices about it. It looks at the challenges facing the leaders of any professional practice in the first years of the 21st century. More products are being seen as commodities: audit, financial investigation reports, due diligence, conveyancing, environmental reviews. Can IT help to de-commoditize such products? Barriers to entry are tumbling. Anyone with a computer and a mobile phone can set him or herself up as a consultant.At the same time as the financial barriers are falling, professional constraints are shrinking. Conveyancing, once the bread and butter of many solicitors' practices, can now be done by anyone as more and more of the necessary property information is being made available on-line. For the vast majority of people, perfectly adequate wills can be drawn up by amateurs. And boundaries between disciplines are blurring - as, for example, in the merging of accountancy and law firms. The book also looks at how geographical boundaries are disintegrating. Cross-European harmonization, and mutual recognition of professional qualifications, mean that more professionals can operate in any marketplace. That must add to competition and will probably drive down fees in the longer term. In the new shifting marketplace, new skills are becoming more important than traditional technical prowess. Lawyers need mechanisms flexible enough to ensure that key clients (and eventually all clients) get treated in the ways they want, rather than the way you like. What is clear is that no firm can afford to stand still. It explores the challenges with the benefit of more than two decades of experience in the field of legal IT and suggests ways through the maze.

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