THE STORIES (FULL VERSIONS) ____________________________________________________ SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS For Two Books DEMOCRATIZING LEGAL SERVICES: OBSTACLES AND OPPORTUNITIES And MODERNIZING LEGAL SERVICES IN COMMON LAW COUNTRIES: WILL THE US BE LEFT BEHIND? by LAURA SNYDER Updated 23 June 2017 [email protected] For Allen Who told me “talk to people, get their stories” © 2017 Laura Snyder ii Part Category Name Title Affiliation Page A Using business and IT processes to increase Tom Curran CEO Kings Court Trust 1 efficiency and reduce costs Oliver Jackson Director of Strategy and Growth Roberts Jackson 3 Andrew Grech Group Managing Director Slater and Gordon Lawyers 8 B Business outsourcing Alexander Hamilton CEO Radiant Law 17 Karl Chapman Chief Executive Riverview Law 19 Ursula Hogben Practice Leader and General LegalVision 23 Counsel C Adopting a corporate structure to foster growth John Kain Managing Director, Kain C+C 29 Rod Cunich National Practice Group Leader Slater and Gordon Lawyers 32 David Beech CEO Knights Solicitors LLP 37 D Holistic services Christopher Mills Partner and COO Schillings 39 Julia Hulme Managing Director Omnia Strategy LLP 42 Jeff Winn Managing Director Winn Solicitors 44 Adrian Powell and Partners Proelium Law 48 Richard Stephens 52 Keith Arrowsmith Partner Counterculture Partnership LLP 54 E Dispersed law firms Ken Jagger CEO AdventBalance 61 William Robins Operations Director Keystone Law 65 Warren Kalinko CEO Keypoint Law 68 F Turning employees into owners David Simon Chair Triton Global 72 Jenny Beck Partner Stephensons Solicitors LLP 74 Robert Camp Managing Partner Stephens Scown LLP 77 Martin Powell Director OmniaLegal Limited 80 © 2017 Laura Snyder iii Part Category Name Title Affiliation Page G Opposites attract? Law, charity and free legal Luke Geary Managing Partner Salvos Legal and Salvos Legal 83 services Humanitarian Chris Byron Managing Director Aspire Law 85 Glenda Terry Practice Manager Castle Park Solicitors 87 Martin Langan Founder Road Traffic Representation 90 Felice Batlan Professor of Law IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law 96 H Law school: alternative structure as an Jenny Holloway Associate Dean Nottingham Law School educational program and center for Nick Johnson Pro Bono Director Nottingham Law School Legal 109 research and experimentation Advice Centre I In-house legal as source of revenue Archana Makol Director BT Law Ltd. 114 Anne Copley Head of Legal BPIF Legal 118 Viv Du-Feu Director of Legal Services BMA Law 122 Yuliya Andresyuk Founding Partner Oracle Family Office 125 Geoff Wild Director Kent Legal Services 126 J Is it or isn’t it an alternative structure? Greg Tucker CEO Maurice Blackburn 134 K What is it like to be employed by an alternative Dina Tutungi General Manager — Personal Slater and Gordon Lawyers 140 structure? Injury Victoria Sue Bence Head of M&A Operations and Slater and Gordon Lawyers 146 Integration — UK Andrea Pierce Legal Services Director Kings Court Trust 151 Nadia Haque Associate Radiant Law 154 Tamyn Hearne Associate Radiant Law 156 L Perspective of an investor Jordan Mayo Managing Director Smedvig Capital 160 M Alternative voices: for consumers, for citizens, Elisabeth Davies Chair Legal Services Consumer Panel 163 for industry observers © 2017 Laura Snyder iv Part Category Name Title Affiliation Page John Ray Senior Consultant Law Firm Consulting Group 169 Paddy Oliver Managing Director and Founder Lexcel Consulting 171 N Experience from Washington DC Michael McDevitt Co-Founder & CEO Tandem Legal Group 175 Randy Price Co-Founder & Managing Partner Tandem Legal Group 178 O Canada’s almost alternative structures Monica Goyal Founder and Principal Aluvion Law 182 Mark Morris and Founders Axess Law 185 Lena Koke Peter Carayiannis Founder and President Conduit Law 191 Rubsun Ho and Joe Founding Partners Cognition LLP 196 Milstone P Voices of modern regulation David Clementi Author The Clementi Report 201 Robert Cross Project Manager (Research) Legal Services Board 204 Alex Roy Head of Development and Legal Services Board 207 Research Paul Clauson and Commissioner Queensland Legal Services 209 Scott McLean Principal Legal Officer Commission John Briton Former Legal Services Queensland Legal Services 210 Commissioner Commission Steve Mark and Former Legal Services Office of the Legal Services 223 Tahlia Gordon Commissioner; Former Research Commissioner & Projects Manager Darrel Pink Executive Director Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society 226 Kristin Dangerfield CEO The Law Society of Manitoba 236 Ross Earnshaw and Chair, Task Force on Law Society of Upper Canada Compliance-Based Entity 240 Margaret Drent Regulation © 2017 Laura Snyder v Policy Counsel Herman Van Ommen Chair, Law Firm Regulation Task Law Society of British Columbia 244 Force Fred Headon Chair, CBA Legal Futures Canadian Bar Association 248 Initiative Hope C. Todd Assistant Director for Legal District of Columbia Bar 251 Ethics, Regulation Counsel Saul Singer Senior Legal Ethics Counsel District of Columbia Bar 254 Gene Shipp and Bar Counsel DC Office of Bar Counsel 256 Lawrence Bloom Senior Staff Attorney James Coyle Attorney Regulation Counsel Colorado Supreme Court 258 James J. Grogan Deputy Administrator & Chief Illinois ARDC 262 Counsel The Story Behind the Stories 266 © 2017 Laura Snyder vi A. Using Business and IT Processes to Increase Efficiency and Reduce Costs Many alternative structures have developed and implemented business and IT processes to increase efficiency and reduce costs. The alternative structures of this category have done this in order to serve a large number of individual clients, in most cases also by deepening their areas of specialization and offering the services at affordable, often fixed, prices. Tom Curran, CEO, Kings Court Trust UK-based Kings Court Trust is a probate service assisting families through the probate process upon the death of a loved one. It operates on a volume model supported by online platforms. KCT is owned, in part, by private equity firm Smedvig Capital and Tom Curran, KCT’s CEO, is not a lawyer. KCT was founded in 2002 by a very farsighted lawyer and accountant who knew that the changes to the UK regulations to permit nonlawyer ownership of law firms were coming. They asked themselves, if they were going to set up a probate and estate administration business on a blank sheet of paper, how would they do it? The answer was using fixed fees and transparent service delivery, two of the foundations upon which KCT is built. KCT eventually became an ABS in 2012, when the regulatory changes finally came into effect. KCT is a business that uses the expertise of lawyers. We are not legal experts who are trying to run a business. This is how we work: we assign a case manager to each case. This person is not a lawyer, this person is essentially a project manager. They have two jobs — to make sure that each case is handled effectively and efficiently, and to handle communications with the client. Lawyers are our technical experts — our case managers seek the advice of the lawyers on their cases. As a result of this model, our lawyers see a huge number of probate cases. The experience that our lawyers get here, in terms of variation, volume, breadth, and complexity sets them apart from general practitioners, who, because they do a little bit of everything, can’t necessarily develop the same level of expertise in any one kind of matter. Our lawyers are highly regarded and well paid. The head of legal sits on the Board of the company. We support our lawyers in their professional training and professional associations — © 2017 Laura Snyder 1 given that they are technical experts, that becomes even more important than if they were in private practice. Some of them have become known in the industry for their technical expertise and often speak at conferences. To be clear, we do not expect our lawyers to bring in business — they are not evaluated, promoted or compensated in any way on that basis. That is not their job — we have sales and marketing people whose job it is to bring in business. Our legal positions are easy to fill as there is an awareness that the market is moving in this direction, and there is a lot of openness towards businesses like ours. There are some great legal firms that are good at business. But the average lawyer is trained in law and not in business. They’ve come into business by necessity, as a result of a desire to be a lawyer, but they’re not trained to be in business. So, if they came into business that way, then why would they be good at business? Legal expertise is a technical expertise, not a business expertise. Why does anyone think someone trained in law is going to be great at marketing, or great at customer service, or great at IT, or great at business? Some lawyers may be, but think of it the other way around: would you put your trained marketeers in a legal role without any support? The changes in the UK regulations coincided with a massive growth in desire from consumers, principally driven by the internet, for information and transparency. As a result, it became more difficult to disguise work that, even if it was traditionally done by lawyers, was really just administrative work, potentially billed at the full lawyerly rate. Another example — in order to help consumers make informed choices, businesses will provide information to consumers for free in a way that lawyers have difficulty to understand. This is because businesses have worked marketing and cost of sales into their pricing methodology in a way that allows the business to charge the appropriate fixed fees. There is a fundamental flaw in some partnership models: it can result in chronic underinvestment. Under a partnership model, profits are not retained for reinvestment. As a result, of course there is no investment in the firm, and so by default they can get behind in terms of technology and customer service.