Family lawyer Zoë Bloom made the switch to a platform law firm 11 years ago. She realised that the traditional legal career trajectory did not meet her needs: ‘I wanted more autonomy and wasn’t really prepared to play the games expected in a traditional practice.’
But, after years at the platform law firm , Bloom decided to leave. She wanted to establish a family law practice with colleague Hannah Budd. ‘We left [Keystone] for the same reasons we joined: autonomy and independence,’ she said.
‘The consultancy model is fantastic, but…it is a commercial business which offers you, the solicitor, facilities – you can take or leave those facilities but you can’t complain or expect to shape them. Over time, our needs changed.’
Bloom took the best aspects of platform law firms and applied them to her new firm, . ‘We want to offer straightforward legal advice, be transparent over fees and keep the team supported. We don’t have billing targets because they create a conflict…We don’t double charge by billing clients to train junior solicitors as well as pay for our time.’
For Bloom, platform law firms provided an example to follow. To compete with platform law firms, and others in the legal sector, small law firms need to adapt to the changing market.
Here are five ways that small law firms can learn from and compete with platform law firms.
Platform law firms minimise bureaucracy to give legal consultants time with clients. The model is simple: consultants get the right tools to do the job and the firm takes care of the rest. There is no hierarchy, no billing targets, and not nearly as much bureaucracy.
Small firms should empower lawyers, free up time, and allow them to focus on meaningful client-facing work. Small firms can free up time with simple legal tools, such as ³¢±ð³æ¾±²õ®±Ê³§³¢, which allows lawyers to access easily digestible practice notes, precedents, forms, and analysis pieces across 36 practice areas, or ³¢±ð³æ¾±²õ®³¢¾±²ú°ù²¹°ù²â, which helps lawyers find essential information in a short amount of time through effective filtering systems.
Embracing legal tech will allow lawyers at small firms to focus on the jobs they enjoy, rather than filling in spreadsheets, tracking billing, sifting through dense and inaccessible information, and performing myriad other tasks that bog down too many lawyers.
Read: How to free up lawyers' time for client-facing work
Transparency is essential. Most platform law firms work on a fixed-fee basis, which removes the need for hourly billing targets and . Indeed, the fixed-fee model eliminates most of the unexpected fees and allows legal consultants to focus.
Corporate lawyer swapped traditional law in favour of platform law. He cites issues around billing as one of the core drivers of change: ‘The profession has a certain reputation of billing every minute of every day but being in on a fixed-fee basis allowed me to just engage better with my clients.’
Small law firms need to offer a similar model. They need to offer transparency with fees, as Bloom suggests, and eliminate poor incentives through unnecessary billing targets.
Some 60% of mid-level associates said they would consider moving jobs for a better work-life balance, according to the. To put that in perspective, only 27% said that they would leave for more money. Creating a better work-life balance is essential for attracting (and retaining) the most talented lawyers.
Platform law firms prioritise work-life balance largely through flexibility. They allow remote working and they allow legal consultants to choose their own hours. In essence, platform law firms aim to provide complete autonomy. As Darryl Cooke, co-founder of , explains: ‘If [legal consultants] don’t want to work Fridays, they don’t work Fridays. If they want to take six weeks off in the summer, they take six weeks off in the summer.’
Legal tech is changing the future. Platform law firms are streamlining processes and, as mentioned above, removing admin and bureaucracy. Platform law aims to give lawyers the right tools to do the tasks required. Small law can compete by embracing legal tech.
suggests that 50% of firms are already using AI-assisted law tech. In addition, according to a , 84% of top firms have invested in document management systems, 81% have virtual data rooms, and 28% even have robotic process automation.
Big law firms and platform law firms are automating and small law firms run the risk of falling behind. Automation streamlines tedious tasks, such as legal document creation and billing, and reduces the amount of time lawyers spend on admin.
So start small, think about the admin that takes up the most time and the products on the market within your budget, and consider the tech that can automate tedious processes.
‘Keystone is about a lot more than just remote working – it is a whole culture,’ says James Knight, CEO at Keystone. ‘It’s about the flat structure and the fact that everybody has the same deal and everybody has the same title, it’s about a lack of hierarchy.’
Undermining traditional hierarchies and structures can lead to knock-on benefits. Small law firms need to learn from platform law firms, create agile working practices and hybrid working models, and promote a culture that prioritises .
One simple tip is to use cloud-based systems to improve access. The shift to the cloud has already started, with 66% of law firms storing data in the cloud as of 2021, according to the . The cloud allows better collaboration and knowledge-sharing, giving people constant access and allowing lawyers to collaborate in real-time on projects.
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