New Legal Landscapes?A Rude Awakening

• Author: Adam Newhouse
• Pages: 87-92

87

CHAPTER 10

New Legal Landscapes—

A Rude Awakening

Coming out of the Great Recession, we confronted a new legal land-

scape, reshaped by two potent byproducts of the digital age:

• Leveling of the playing field among legal service providers

enabled by the ease of offering legal services on the Internet

where almost anyone can overnight hook up a URL shingle to

compete for legal business; and

• Globalization of commerce, which has shrunk our old world of

international diversity into a single global village.

These changes caught many of us by surprise. Parallel to removal of

barriers to enter the legal market, many businesses now look at interna-

tional borders as relics of the past and expect their legal counsel to fol-

low and serve them regardless of geographic location.

The forces behind such democratization of legal marketplace and

globalization of commerce are reshaping our customary ways of doing

business. Not only must we compete with legal providers who sell

their services based on price alone regardless of work quality, experi-

ence, or any meaningful training opportunities offered to their legal

staff; we are also now expected to serve as one-stop legal and business

solution centers for clients operating in one globally borderless business

environment.

The new legal landscape is set in a redefined business environ-

ment governed by a culture all its own. Feeling at home in this new

business environment is our primary challenge. Just learning its lan-

guage while maintaining a passing acquaintance with its business

culture will never do. To truly connect, we must immerse ourselves

deeper. Let’s take a closer look at this new legal vista, its challenges

and opportunities.

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