EP #47: Innovation and Growth in the UK Legal Market with Neville Eisenberg
Release Date: 12/17/2024
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EP #63: Inside the Legal Profession: Trisha Rich on the Surging Interest in MSOs and ABSs
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EP #62: Laura Cameron of Pinsent Masons on Law Firm Strategy and Leadership across 4 Continents
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EP #61: Changing Perceptions in a Vanilla Market: Mischon de Reya LLP’s Branding Story with Elliot Moss
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EP #58: Law Firms, PE, and MSOs: A Legal Ethics Conversation with Lucian Pera
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Private equity is circling the legal industry, and Lucian Pera is helping make sense of what that means for MSO law firms and beyond. Joining Chris Batz and Howard Rosenberg, Lucian breaks down how management services organizations (MSOs) and alternative business structures (ABSs) are giving outside investors new ways to participate in the economics of law - without running afoul of ethics rules like ABA Rule 5.4. Lucian makes it clear that these models are tools, not shortcuts. For some firms, an MSO structure may unlock the capital needed for technology, acquisitions, or ambitious...
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EP #57: Feeling the Squeeze: How Mid-Sized Law Firms Adapt and Compete
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Mid-sized law firms are facing pressure from every direction. Associates are poached with six-figure pay bumps, partners are stretched thin between billing and management, and specialty practices vanish without succession plans. At the same time, clients expect broader reach and deeper benches than many firms can deliver. In this episode, host Chris Batz shares what he’s hearing directly from managing partners and executive committee members across the country. He outlines the squeeze mid-sized firms are feeling - lagging organic growth, talent retention challenges, leadership burnout - and...
info_outline“It is still quite challenging to convince partners of the need for change when the traditional model is still serving them incredibly well,” says Neville Eisenberg, Senior Strategy Executive, Mishcon de Reya, who joins The Future is Bright to talk about innovation taking place within UK law firms, innovation he helped contribute to with the contract attorney company, Lawyers on Demand, and now with Flex Legal, an alternative legal services provider now owned by Mishcon de Reya. Neville will discuss with hosts Chris Batz and Howard Rosenberg the growing number of opportunities in the alternative legal services provider market and what it means for private equity.
He'll discuss the changes which have taken place in the UK legal landscape as a result of deregulation and a number of legal processes now available in a self-service capacity, and what this means in terms of social justice. He will discuss the widely differing implications of AI on Top 10 law firms and on everyone below them, and the disconnect between supply and demand that he finds most concerning.
Learn Neville's thoughts on the crop of small high-performing law boutiques burgeoning in the UK and the importance of U.S. competition to the UK market.
Quotes
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“It is still quite challenging to convince partners of the need for change, or indeed the value of spending money on doing things differently when the traditional model is still serving them incredibly well.” (11:40 | Neville Eisenberg)
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“The Top Ten law firms in the UK generally regard Gen AI as likely to have a positive impact on their firms, in particular, because they see opportunity for productivity gains. But the rest of the Top 100, so the 90 firms below the top ten, have exactly the opposite, almost exactly, the opposite view of the impact of Gen AI in that they have significant concerns about the pressure that it might produce from clients to reduce cost of legal services and also that there may be a reduction in some of the work that’s outsourced to their firms.” (12:27 | Neville Eisenberg)
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“Notwithstanding the deregulation, there is still—it appears to me from my conversation with clients—there is still a disconnect between the demand side and the supply side in the market.” (20:15 | Neville Eisenberg)
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“One doesn’t have to be in a huge law firm to be successful. There is another model that can work.” (30:20 | Neville Eisenberg)
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“It just seems to me that there is a very strong business case for many of these firms creating shared business services platforms that can benefit from scale economies, and all the other benefits of scale, and running those business services functions in a more effective way.” (32:51 | Neville Eisenberg)
Links
Connect with Neville Eisenberg:
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neville-eisenberg-47b2586/
Connect with Howard Rosenberg:
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrosenberg/
Company web profile: https://www.baretzbrunelle.com/howard-rosenberg
Connect with Chris Batz:
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisbatz/
LinkedIn Company page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/columbus-street/
Columbus Street website: https://www.columbus-street.com/
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm