Innovation in legal services is long overdue. Everyone is calling for it, and becoming increasingly impatient that it’s not happening fast enough. Even the President of the Canadian Bar Association has recently said out loud, “Lead the change, or be forced to follow.” I chose to lead. Clients care about outcomes, not hours. The legal industry is among the very few sectors left where costs and incomes continue to rise year-over-year well above the rate of inflation. Overheads are too high, and many law firms try to be everything to everyone. I spent many years in private practice working on large outsourcings and business transformation for clients in a wide range of sectors. Sadly, the trend to virtualization somehow seems to have bypassed the legal vertical for the most part. These factors have contributed to the collapse of some major law firms, as recently as this past week. I thought there had to be a better way to work with lawyers for everyone’s benefit — most of all for clients, but also for legal executives and major law firms. I have worn each of those hats during the course of my career. For over 20 years, I have been in the business of solving legal problems while building win-win solutions for clients. So why not try to solve this one? Imagine that: your lawyer knows your business intimately and feels like a part of your management team, but is not part of company headcount legal counsel actually simplifies and takes care of legal issues so the rest of your team can focus on what they do best you have predictable level costs for ongoing legal services, and don’t have to worry about the cost of senior-level advice whenever you need to pick up the phone your lawyer has 20+ years of experience in high end corporate practice for major companies, but costs about the same as a 1st year lawyer in a big law firm. That’s the vision for Avōkka, a new kind of legal services firm. I have had the good fortune to build and work with teams of talented lawyers throughout my career. So I began to assemble this one. Avōkka is a group of seasoned professionals, all of whom all have been executives leading in-house legal and compliance teams for major public and private companies. They are passionate about business, and creating value for clients. Avōkka is not a traditional time-and-materials law practice. Nor is it a body shop or placement agency simply plugging lawyers into temporary openings. The vision for Avōkka is to be an outsourced, part-time in-house legal department that manages legal issues and leverages technology to keep costs down. The idea is to be able to provide strategic legal advice that matters to the business, and manage execution as and when required. Sometimes that means just making legal issues disappear instead, and getting lawyers out of the way. It’s about solving problems, not just punching out paper. It takes experience to know the difference. The primary purpose is to make top end strategic legal advice accessible to mid-sized companies, at a cost they could easily afford. But I’ve also been a general counsel, and know they are more stretched than ever to do more with less. There are many times I believe they wish they could have access to another seasoned legal executive who’s been there, but who doesn’t want their job. Why? Principally, to help get things done at the right level on special projects at a much lower cost than hourly rates for law firm partners, who probably don’t have the time to dedicate in any case. I started working with a small number of clients in this way during the past year, and found we both liked it — a lot. The more I talked to CEOs, CFOs and other executives, the more I learned how much they found this model resonant. To my surprise, even big name partners at major law firms saw the benefit and referred clients – to help clarify and filter issues, to keep churn to a minimum, and to avoid unpleasant surprises for everyone. That’s why Avōkka was created, and already is growing quickly.
