What a great day out yesterday at the http://www.legalfutures.co.uk/ conference. Must have been going on 200 people all assembled at the RBS offices on Bishopsgate to hear a vast array of people from the legal sector talk about the future of the same.
Neil Rose opened proceedings and then promptly forgot to introduce the major sponsor of the day, Natwest, represented by Steve Arundale. Steve had just a short slot and was not able to give as much useful information as he had at the Law Society LMS conference just a couple of weeks ago.
The people's names below link to their LinkedIn profile which will open in a new window and their photos are from their LinkedIn profiles too (well, not Adam Sampson as he did not have one!).
My mindmaps of the day are at the bottom of the page. They were made using http://www.xmind.net and I've linked in the native file as it might be better than downloading each PDF.
Understanding Client Needs
Arlene Adams was the first main speaker of the day and in in her soft lilting Scots accent (OK, so I have a soft spot for the accent) talking through the results of the second Legal Service Customer Experience Report. One statistic that surely was no surprise to anyone was the only 5% of consumer clients want to receive legal documents in the post! You can buy the full report online at via the Peppermint Technology website for the princely sum of £25 (inc. VAT).
Adam Sampson was up next (don't bother clicking on his name, he only has ONE connection on LinkedIn! Did you know he was a "don" at Oxford University. No, not The Don, he wasn't in a Scorcese film! The big piece of news in his whole talk was that when LEO start to regulate Claims Management Companies it will be run as a separate P&L so that that law firms are not impacted by any increased burden of complaints….is that telling about what they expect to happen?
Brian Weston from the Institute of Customer Service talked about the wider trends of customer service from a broader church of that than just law firms. The two things I picked up on were how were law firms going to not only survey they clients, something they've been bad as historically, but how about benchmarking themselves against the wider legal market. A comment that ties in nicely to a video we recorded last week about the Law League benchmarking service
The Fixer
Then it was the turn of Karl Chapman of Riverview Law. His Twitter address is @KarlChapman100 and I can see why, he spoke at 100mph and was not just because the conference opened late and he was trying to make up time. I suspect he's a bit like that all the time.
Neil Rose did fess up that his associated PR company Blackletter PR acted for Riverview and that he was a client (he said he was paying £200/month for complete legal services and was very happy).
Anyway, Karl gave a fantastic presentation on the Riverview Law model. He shared loads more information about what they were doing and how they were doing it than frankly I expected. But he said why, he said we will all go away and talk about it and at some pint we'll (perhaps unknowingly) talk to someone who might end up becoming one of their clients. In a world of supposedly "perfect information" that might well have been a smart move.
A coffee break (or was that a coffee queue?) gave everyone the chance to ponder on what had been set already. How come they don't tell people at the back of the queue that they can go to the other side of the serving station and start a second queue, me, I just wandered over there.
The Outsiders
Next up it was the turn of the people billed as The Outsiders…shame there was not a whole TV/film theme throughout the day!
First is was Harry Hill of Indeed (ex. of Countrywide Estate Agents and Rightmove). Within five minutes he was telling the audience that lawyers were No.1 on the popularity ladder in terms of providers of "professional services" above even Estate Agents…some doing eh?
A revelation to me was that the Average Time on Site of the Indeed website was just 28secs. Makes the 2min that the average law firm gets look BRILLIANT!
Harry got one of the biggest laughs so far when right at the end of his presentation he said "So what next for Indeed? Actually I have no idea". Ok, so I might be paraphrasing, but you take my point. Things are changing so fast that who knows where things will be in two years.
Then we got intro trucks, big green ones. It was Trevor Howarth from Stobart Barristers. He opened up with a great "height related" joke (you had to be there). And then proceeded to do a very good job of explaining (justifying?) why they were in the legal market, and I paraphrase. "It was cheaper for us so we said why not offer it to clients and the wider market". I wonder if they teach that on MBA courses around the UK?
Either way, he ended with a great quote;
"Someone who is not in your industry is planning on revolutionising it. Remember a record company runs a railroad and digger maker runs a boot company"
So that would be Virgin & CAT then? Hard to argue with that logic eh?
Avin Rabheru from Smedvig Capital did a really good job of explaining why Private Equity businesses were interested in the legal sector. Key for me was the $1trillion that Private Equity firms are sitting on and the observed fragmentation in the legal sector.
It did feel a little bit like he was the warm-up act for Doug Crawford from myhomemove (I've deliberately written their name in all lower case as that's what he did in his slide, but my late father, a secondary school English teacher, would turn in his grave. It's a bit too "on brand" for me.
Some branding consultant probably once told them "Let's write our name all in lowercase in our logo and then do the same thing every time we write it'. I get branding, I really do (no, no jokes about my orange shirt) but to met that's a brand step too far. myhomemove compared to MyHomeMove just does not read write when written in text.
The Sponsors
They were keeping us from what was a great lunch, so they only get a quick name check. But we all know that events like this sometimes can't run without them:
NatWest, DPS, Omnia, Peppermint Technology, Redbrick Solutions, RR Donnelly
Lunch was great. If I'd had one more mustard sausage, you know, the small ones, I would have burst. And, Coca Cola in their trademark small body shaped bottles, how cool were they. I was even allowed to drink from the bottle rather than a glass!
Taking the Initiative
A great name for the collective hive mind that kicked off the afternoon.
Craig Holt, QualitySolictors couldn't be bothered to turn up, so Saleem Arif was a perfectly adequate stand in. He contended that there were no "…good local law firm brands….only firms with a decent reputation" (you might want to check the exact wording on the transcript on the Legal Futures site when it's available in a week. "Ouch" to any of my larger regional clients who I contend, M'Lud, would argue against that.
I have to confess, I lost a bit of attention during Tim Oliver's, presentation about Parabis (sorry Tim if you are readinfg this). No particular reason apart from I guess I was not that taken either the delivery or the content.
That said, his points about Private Equity investment making you "stretch" your business and have to bring in Corporate Governance. Perhaps you should get the slide deck when it's available and pretend that you can hear what he was saying on top.
Greg Shields from Forster Dean did an excellent job, in his quiet, considered manner of telling everyone about the 2007 MBO of the firm, their growth from £5m turnover in 2007 with an EBITDA of £1m to £8.5m and £2.7m forecast in 2013. WOW! A law firm talking about EBITDA….who'd have thought that a few years ago.
David Beech from Knights LLP did not spill as much dirt as everyone was hoping on their investment from James Caan (ex of Dragons Den). But he did give a great presentation on the changes in the firm from before the investment to 6 months post the investment. 
One last spin through the coffee queue took us back into the last session of the day with Neil reminding everyone that if they did not have to rush off the The Gun (Brushfield Street) was the Official Watering Hole (Note: I managed to make one of the grumpy bar staff smile).
Virtual Reality
The final session of the day saw the effervescent Chas Rampenthal of Legal Zoom entertain us with his pronunciation of Knor-wich (Norwich). But actually he made some great points about the Legal Zoom model both in the US and through their UK partnership with QualitySolicitors. I really loved his phrase "legal engineering" to describe in one way what Legal Zoom is doing. But also he made great points about the consistency of client experience that law firms need to work on.
Martin Langan of Road Traffic Representation was the English rose between two US thorns. He spoke (at some speed it must be said) about the expert system he has built to allow people with traffic offences to choose either to just DIY or to engage with a legal professional. This was the perfect lead in to the bonkers session of the day.
Daniel Katz, Assistant Professor of Law, Michigan State University (to give him his full title) took us on a whirlwind trip around the world of denial by law firms that only they can do what they can do, not computers. How eDiscovery m
ight be mainstream now, but will be a computer job tomorrow. I for one cannot wait for him to announce the date of the ReinventLaw London conference in June. Read his blog at http://computationallegalstudies.com/
Neil closed the conference pretty quickly as it had been running late all day.