Demand for legal services in the future will not fall. Instead, customers will start spending their money with newer law firms and the cause of this change in legal spending will be new technology that will reduce the value of transactions.
Most law firms have yet to board the new technology train. Customers buying patterns have already slowly started to change, and it is not a case of it might happen, it has already begun to happen. The important question is, will your firm be on board the train? The problem with the legal industry is very simple. Customers will want to buy things that most law firms won't be selling. The majority of lawyers only sell one thing, 'time by the hour' and customers in the future won't be interested in buying that, they want fixed priced solutions. Start-ups and technology will sort out the problem, and in the future, that is where the money will go. As demand changes, old law firms will carry on selling the same old solutions with arguments as to why customers are wrong. Law firms need to look at acquiring start-ups and operating under different brands and new business models. They need to start thinking differently and diversifying. If your law firms doesn't change, you will not be able to respond to the future needs of customers. Rest assured that if you don't respond, the legal market is so large that someone else will take your customers. The choice is yours. Partners can carry on thinking about what wine to drink this weekend and where to go holiday or reflect on the insolvency company they might have to appoint in the future. Don't forget that disruptors always come from outside the industry. I'm a retailer, and I'm only interested in one thing, the customer. The solicitor's favourite line is “Look, you just don’t understand” and presumably you'll charge me by the hour to explain why I don't understand. Search 'Ajaz Ahmed Freeserve' on Google
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This blog was first published in Retail Week in response to another column.
Dear John, I read your column about the new Apple store with great interest. You ended it with "Or am I just being curmudgeonly?" I'm from the North, so I had to go to my Apple Air and type it into Google to find out what "curmudgeonly" means, I now know what it means. The photos of the store look beautiful, we don't have a store like that up here, I can't wait to buy a cheap day return train ticket to visit Regent Street to look at the refurbished Apple store and the Burberry store I've heard so much about. I'll probably want to get my 'Prayer Mat' out and start praying to good design when I'm down there. I was once talking to the Chancellor of our local University, and we began talking about our Apple phones, he then said "Have been visited the Apple store on 5th Avenue in New York?", " No" I replied, "You must go there on your next visit, it's stunning, it's worth a visit" I couldn't believe I was talking to someone about a shop. The Chancellor at the University of Huddersfield is a local lad, Sir Patrick Stewart, I couldn't believe that Jean-Luc Picard of the Star Trek Enterprise was telling me to visit an Apple Store, he was telling how good it was, that's the Apple effect. (I was on the Governing Council at the University) I'm the founder of Freeserve, and I was invited to the opening of the Apple Store and was there when it first opened and from the photographs of the refurbished store, it look's different from when it first opened. The big thing a lot of businesses get wrong is "Pivot", you need to keep changing. Lots of businesses only change after they have problems, read this magazine and look at examples of companies that are going through change because their customers are abandoning them. Apple stores are still busy because they go through a pivot when people are still shopping with them. Obviously, people don't understand this. And his comment about “Samsung are coming,” not a Samsung 7 on a plane I hope, you'd get arrested. |