Welcome to the Law Firm Disrupted, a briefing from Law.com editor Dan Packel that surveys new competitive pressures on law firms and how their managers are coping, plus insights on the tactics and tech employed by would-be disruptors. Have an opinion? Email me here. Want to be alerted to this dispatch in your inbox every Thursday? Sign up here.

Who doesn't make money while they sleep? It turns out that this is a favorite phrase of those scanning the horizons of the legal industry. Jeroen Plink, the former CEO of Clifford Chance Applied Solutions, told me a couple years back that building a successful captive ALSP was the closest thing a law firm could do to "getting rich while you're sleeping."

The idea here is that building digital models to address certain predictable legal questions gives law firms an opportunity to step away from the traditional linkage between the billable hour and revenue. If the technology isn't displacing a lawyer but allowing her to put her time on another task that can still be billed to a client, everyone wins, particularly if that task offers more personal satisfaction than one that can be easily automated.