I recently listened to Stephen Poor‘s podcast entitled Pioneers and Pathfinders. I am a regular listener and find it to be always enlightening. (Poor is Chair Emeritus of the large and innovative law firm, Seyfarth Shaw). This past week, Poor’s guest was John Alber, a former partner at Bryan Cave and its Strategic Innovation Partner for many years. Alber was one of the first chief innovation officers in a big law firm, so his experience in that regard, I thought, would be pretty revealing. And he didn’t disappoint.
I have written several times about the frequent disconnect between legal tech providers and law firms. Part of this disconnect comes from the lack of knowledge on the tech companies’ part as to how law firms really work.
The real power in law firms resides with the lawyers
Unlike a business (or even the selling tech companies’ business), most law firms are still de facto managed on a consensus basis by lawyers. Certainly, many firms do indeed have business people in critical roles and a managing partner or committee. But the real power in law firms resides with the lawyers. The fact is individual partners produce the revenue of the firm. They originate the business; they bill the lion’s share of the hours. The economic reality is that the partners’ income and profit are directly affected by changes and tech purchases. So they still have a lot of clout in what gets used and decided.
So if you are selling to law firms, you have to convince—one way or the other—a group of partners that the product is worthwhile. Then you have to be sure they use the product lest it is relegated to the dumpster. Add to this that because firms are run on