Montreal law firm Langlois Lawyers LLP has announced the launch of L-inc Project, a legal services program for innovative, growing start-ups.
The new program provides a wide range of legal services required when a business is starting up and during its first years, particularly dealing with incorporation, shareholder and employee agreements, and service agreements and commercial leases.
An overwhelming majority of law firm leaders believe technology will have the greatest impact on law firms over the next five years but are deeply concerned that cultural changes may prove to be a barrier in keeping up with new technology, according to a new report.
The global legal industry is at a tipping point, and there is an urgent need for law firms to consider the longer term impact of technological change on their strategic and competitive market position, suggests a report by accountancy and business advisory firm BDO LLP. The report, entitled Law Firm Leaders Survey, polled the managing partners and senior partners of 50 international and United Kingdom law firms.
Algorithms, the set of instructions computers use to carry out a task, have become an integral part of everyday lives, and it is immersing itself in law. In the U.S. judges in some states can use algorithms as part of the sentencing process. Many law enforcement officials in the U.S. are using them to predict when and where crimes are likely to occur. They have been used for years in law firm recruitment. And with advancements in machine learning they are also being used to conduct legal research, predict legal outcomes, and to find out which lawyers win before which judges.
Most algorithms are created with good intentions but questions have surfaced over algorithmic bias at job hunting web sites, credit reporting bureaus, social media sites and even the criminal justice system where sentencing and parole decisions appear to be biased against African Americans.
The practice of law however has been largely shielded by technological developments over the past fifty years, suffering little more than glancing blows.
That may be on the cusp of changing. Fuelled by big data, increased computing power, and more effective algorithms (a routine process for solving a program or performing a task), AI has the potential to change the way that legal work is done, the way that law firms conduct business and the way that lawyers deal with clients.
But it remains that law firms are proving to be a hard sell. A recent survey reveals yet again that the vast majority of law firms are uncomfortable being early adopters.
On top of that, most lawyers view AI as a threat instead of seeing it as an opportunity to help deliver better outcomes for clients.
The disconnect between clients and large law firms is so significant and persistent that a growing number of clients are considering bringing more legal business in-house, exploring alternative legal service providers and are contemplating doing business with smaller firms that offer greater flexibility, reveals a report.
General counsel feel that large law firms make little effort to understand their business, do not appreciate the budgetary constraints they face, and receive little help when analyzing the complex portfolio of legal work given to them. Indeed, the report points out that not a single client was satisfied with what law firms provide.
It’s not only smokers and drinkers who have been targeted by the federal budget. Sin taxes are to be expected, and are par for the course.
But professionals such as lawyers, doctors and accountants have been taken aback by the proposal in the federal budget to eliminate their ability to exclude the value of work in progress in computing their income for tax years that begin or after Budget Day.
The practice of law is under duress. Legal service innovations driven by digitalization and globalization are propelling seismic change. So too is the emergence of the sharing economy model which has taken the world by storm. Novel ways of delivering new products and services are seemingly materializing daily to satisfy increasingly demanding and fickle consumers. The rapidly evolving landscape is putting a strain on traditional business models, while governments and regulatory authorities are scrambling to keep up with the dizzying pace of change. But with change comes challenges – and opportunities – for legal service providers and legal protection insurers alike, all of which was explored at a conference held in Montreal recently by the International Association of Legal Protection (RIAD).
A bill introduced recently by the Quebec government that aims to fortify governance and ethics in professional corporations, better protect the public, and encourage professionals to denounce reprehensible acts has been praised but also drawn concerns from disciplinary law experts.
Bill 98, a piece of legislation that acts on four of the 60 recommendations made by the Charbonneau’s Commission’s report on granting and management of public contracts in the construction industry, will bolster the powers of the regulatory body that oversees Quebec’s 46 professional corporations, including lawyers and accountants, will hand more discretionary powers to the syndic or ethics officer, and will under certain circumstances provide protection to whistleblowers.
Internal investigations are likely going to be more costly and more difficult to conduct for Canadian companies with operations in the United States following a change of policy by the U.S. Department of Justice that will now prioritize the prosecution of individual employees for civil and criminal corporate wrongdoing, according to anti-corruption and white collar criminal defence lawyers.
For the “survival of the profession,” the Quebec legal society is calling on its members to shift away from hourly billing to alternative pricing arrangements to better respond to client’s needs, foster greater access to justice for citizens, and encourage a healthier and more balanced professional life for lawyers.
But at a time when approximately 70 per cent of Quebec’s private practitioners still charge by the hour, the Barreau du Québec recognizes that its call for a paradigm shift will require a “total cultural change” that will be met with resistance by many lawyers and law firms who have done well by the status quo, said Claudia Prémont, the president of the Quebec Bar, which recently published an 84-page study entitled “Hourly Billing: A Time for Reflection.”
In a move applauded by business and denounced by labour, the Quebec government has created a new labour, employment and workers’ compensation tribunal and consolidated several employment and labour boards into a single administrative body in a bid to streamline government services and modernize and improve the efficiency of the province’s administrative justice system.
