Greetings from New York, where this week I spent my time at Legalweek. In today's Law Firm Disrupted, I share some of the discussions I had over the course of the week on the future of law firms and what may rattle their shareholders. Keep the conversation going at [email protected].

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Earlier this week, three major U.S. companies, including Amazon.com Inc., made news by announcing they were in the early stages of creating something akin to a captive health care system for their employees.

As Amazon's entrées into new business sectors tend to do, the announcement led to a dent in the stock prices of established industry players. Shares of health insurance giants such as Anthem Inc. and United Healthcare Services Inc. both fell more than 5 percent in the wake of the news.

Perhaps Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon can fix something that the private market (and the federal government) can't seem to do. Consider me a skeptic.

Either way, the short-term stock fall made me think: What type of news announcement could similarly rattle shareholders of the world's largest law firms?

I asked a chairman of an Am Law 50 firm what he thought. His first answer: A merger of two of the biggest, highest-performing law firms. A true “merger of equals,” he said, which is rare in the legal industry. His other answer was perhaps more predictable these days: The Big Four.

This week, I wrote a story for The American Lawyer that gets at the question of what could potentially alter the competitive landscape for legal services. The article looks at what the Swiss legal arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers is up to and how the accounting firm's work may be a precursor of what is to come in other countries.

I've received more answers on that question about a big time shake-up from more people this week, as I've spent the past few days in New York at Legalweek. On Wednesday, I moderated a panel on “the future shape of law firms” that featured Jami Wintz McKeon of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius; Al Giles of Axiom; Richard Punt of Allen & Overy's PeerPoint; and Patrick Lamb of Valorem Law.

Punt said that change in the legal service industry has been agonizingly slow, with even the biggest newcomers to the sector having failed to as of yet drastically moved the ball. But that is changing. And the competitor with the biggest opportunity ahead of them? Law firms.

“The law firms have a massive opportunity,” Punt said. “The only constraint is their ambition.”

Giles said that over the longer-term, legal companies like Axiom will introduce an “industrialized” offering that will have huge efficiency gains from the way legal work is done today. Law firms should be traveling down that path as well, he said. They may have a leg up, given their expertise and current access to the biggest clients.

“It's an opportunity for law firms,” said Giles, a former managing associate at Linklaters who now serves as head of commercial at Axiom. “I don't think it's a sort of doomsday scenario.”

All over the Business of Law Forum held at Legalweek, I heard presenters speak optimistically about law firms' potential in the changing legal market.

Daniel Reed, a former Greenberg Traurig associate now serving as CEO of alternative legal services provider UnitedLex, was among those who said law firms have “an amazing opportunity” if they only “wake up.”

My colleague Miriam Rozen wrote more about Reed's presentation. Perhaps PwC and the other Big Four firms will be the news that rattles law firms into taking his advice.

All of which brings me back to the news about Amazon going into the health care space. Maybe they will succeed in upending the market. But maybe the news is just a wake-up call for the incumbent players.

Roy's Reading Corner:

On Smart Contracts: Whatever they are, many people are convinced smart contracts could someday radically change the way contracts work. The Global Legal Post reports that Linklaters wants to get ahead of it, announcing they are partnering with a new consortium, called the Accord Project, in conjunction with U.S.-based legal technology pioneer Clause in association with blockchain platform Hyperledger and the International Association for Commercial and Contract Management (IACCM). The consortium aims to move legal work from paper-based processes to a native, digitized environment.

“This is a pioneering consortium project which we feel will drive change in the legal industry,” commented Richard Hay, a former capital markets associate at Linklaters who recently became U.K. head of fintech at the Magic Circle firm. “We're at a critical juncture for the industry—if we can come together to finesse how smart legal contracts operate, including the standardization of format and protocols, then we really could be on the cusp of seeing the adoption of smart contracts for complex commercial cross-border transactions.”

On CLOC Time: Richard Susskind spoke at a conference in London thrown by the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) and he had some advice for in-house lawyers, as my London-based colleague Anna Ward writes for Legal Week.

“In-house lawyers have tolerated law firms' old-fashioned ways of working. Clients don't want just professionals; they want the outcomes they bring and different ways of delivering them,” Susskind said. ”CLOC is a collective voice, and in-house lawyers can re-conceptualize how legal services are delivered. The future of legal services is within the grasp of CLOC.”

On Super Bowl Branding: Kudos to Briggs and Morgan for this announcement: “With all eyes on Minnesota for the big game at U.S. Bank Stadium, Briggs and Morgan is pleased to reveal its new brand identity.” That's right. The Super Bowl is as good a reason as any to re-brand your law firm. All eyes are now on Briggs as people try to figure out what a re-brand actually means for the Twin Cities-based firm. As for the Super Bowl? The Strommy Sez: The Strommy Sez: Patriots 24, Eagles 17. And take Tom Brady for over 1.5 rushing yards.

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading, and send me your predictions for what could really shake up the legal market at [email protected].

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