Bruce MacEwen likens industry disruption to a glacier melting underwater.

"When industries are disrupted, you don't see it until, like a melting glacier, it halves off and falls into the ocean," he said. MacEwen, who is president of consulting firm Adam Smith Esq., doesn't think law firms are experiencing true disruption yet—but if and when they do, the disturbance will begin deep under the surface, barely detectable until it's too late. This is one of the reasons it's so difficult for law firms to innovate.

"Success is a big blocker to change," he said. "If you're doing fine, why risk messing it up?"

During a conversation with more than 50 legal industry leaders at Legalweek New York 2020 on Wednesday, speakers agreed that although there has been some change in the legal industry, law firms—and sometimes clients—have been slow to embrace real transformation.

"Everyone wants change," said Lucy Bassli, founder of InnoLegal Services. "When it comes to what a law firm is designing to sell compared to what in-house counsel and clients are asking for, how do we bridge that miscommunication?"

Indeed, discussion participants highlighted the gulf between what many clients are requesting and what law firms are providing. Clients and their in-house counsel often want a more holistic approach from their law firms, including project management and other value-added services that don't fit into the billable hour. Most law firms, meanwhile, are sticking with traditional legal representation and business models.

Relying on new technology from alternative legal service providers could be one way to better address client need. Bassili, who worked in-house at Microsoft for more than 13 years, said she was managing outside representation, a tech team and multiple other aspects of the company's legal matters—and she wants firms to do more of that work.

"In-house people don't want to manage all of it—we want law firms to be the ones to take on a general contractor role and maintain the relationship," she said. "To best serve the client, don't offer to introduce them to a new technology tool or a third-party service provider. Do it for them."

MacEwen said it wasn't that simple. In the medical profession, multiple people now work together in a doctor's office to provide patient care, from doing intake to running tests to describing treatment plans. Lawyers haven't been able to step back in the same way.

"Unlike a doctor letting go of drawing blood, lawyers don't want to let go of anything," he said.

But MacEwen, who was in-house at Morgan Stanley and practiced at Breed, Abbott & Morgan and Shea & Gould, also said he'd seen clients show an "antibody reaction" against one innovation that law firms have frequently promoted: alternative fee arrangements.

"We would present a thoughtful alternative fee arrangement, and [the client] would just ask for 15% off," he said. "They just wanted to see something tangible."

Event participants weren't exactly sure how to best to bridge the divide between providers and clients, but many sounded a familiar note: bashing the billable hour.

"Everything is driven by the billable hour," a participant said. "As long as that's the case, it's harder to do all of this."