Posted by Scott Jones, deputy editor of Legal Futures
Kassam: Remove the pyramid and redesign your team
In the run-up to this week’s LegalTechTalk [1], we are inviting lawyers to take the ‘blank sheet’ challenge – sketching out their dream law firm with the freedom to start again from scratch.
What would you do differently? What would stay the same?
This is the premise of one of the many sessions at the event, for which Legal Futures is a media partner.
Three lawyers are on the panel and have shared their ideas with us in advance. Yesterday it was Clare Murray [2], founder and managing partner of CM Murray. Today, it is the turn of Shainul Kassam, managing director of small London firm Fortune Law, which she set up in 2004.
First, location and practice area. If Kirstie Allsop is right and everything is determined by location, location, location, where will this new firm be based?
Ms Kassam said: “As a solicitor focusing primarily on corporate law and with a unique focus on shareholder and co-founder disputes, I would still choose London. And the sectors I know best are corporate and litigation. As a law firm founder, always looking to stay relevant, these would remain our core areas.”
Fortune Law, which markets itself as ‘the law firm for entrepreneurs’, has perhaps the most traditional address of all – Chancery Lane. But this is where tradition ends, especially when looking at partner models and historical hierarchies.
Ms Kassam said: “I am not traditionally minded. I started a boutique corporate law firm at three years’ PQE. I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t been so frustrated by the traditional way of working.
“In any event, I don’t think building around a traditional model is going to be possible, let alone desired. Law firms have been suffering from succession issues for some time and new ways of working can provide alternative career paths for those who aren’t chasing traditional routes to partnership.
“It can help those who work differently to succeed and it allows those with different skills sets or who want to pioneer in a non-traditional environment the ability to do so.”
So how do create a firm led by modern pioneers?
“You need to redesign your team and remove the pyramid which has existed to date. This will catch those who normally fall off along the way if they aren’t traditionally minded, like me. It will redirect those who are ramping on or off for personal reasons. And it will help prevent burnout of those committed to the hours traditionally demanded.
“You need to train all staff across the board on how to use AI tools. You need to consider what to invest, and how much, and how that is to be absorbed by the firm, how to charge clients, how to advocate for and value your skills beyond that which a machine can spit out in seconds.”
So humans will still be at the heart of things. But with a twist. This would be a firm that “is testing as many tools as possible, is looking for different skills at recruitment stage, is trying to redesign what work it can take on, and what work it can automate to benefit its clients”.
Technology, of course, has to play a major role. Alternative business structures mean that solicitors can go into partnership not just with private equity but with data scientists, engineers and tech builders.
Ms Kassam went on: “Larger firms are already partnering with private equity houses to accelerate technological advancement through increased capital and simultaneously redeploying legal associates or hiring legal engineers who are driven, ambitious and will want to be financially rewarded either through commensurate salaries or equity.
“A firm building now will need to factor in partnering up with tech and lawyers.”
But the client has to remain at the heart of everything. “Our first problem is always based around what the client wants and needs, and what we can redesign so that what we deliver is of better quality, more efficient and more cost effective.”
Ms Kassam said that whatever shape her dream law firm took, its focus would always be on the founders of businesses, the ownership of IP, data and the acceleration of disputes in a fast-changing AI world.
“Fortune Law has been here for decades, reinventing ourselves and we will be here for decades more. We will be the same but different.”
Tomorrow we hear from Lucy Murphy, chief growth officer at magic circle firm Linklaters.