Daniel-Reed Daniel Reed, CEO of UnitedLex. Photo by Melissa Sigler/handout

 

UnitedLex made headlines in late 2017 for what it billed as legal's largest-ever managed service transaction: an agreement to support the global legal team of DXC Technology, a conglomerate of Computer Sciences Corp. and Hewlett-Packard, with 250 senior-level professionals.

At ALM's LegalWeek 2018 in New York, UnitedLex Corp. CEO Daniel Reed will partake in a panel on the changing legal services model, where he will discuss his “contrarian” view of the subject.

LTN recently spoke with Reed about the panel and his views on an industry in transition.

You're on the “Evolution of the Legal Services Delivery Model” panel. What's your take on it?

It's a topic I plan to address in a contrarian manner. Each year, the same kinds of things come up: What would you predict for the future? You get these guys like Richard Susskind, David Wilkins or Bill Henderson, and they'll pontificate about a range of things. They have very little impact though. And then you hear things from law firms, and they're fundamentally constrained to lead and drive sustainable and systemic chance because of their partnership structures. Not for lack of intellect or desire, but because they lack the kind of capital that well-backed companies have.

And then you have legal service companies. The problem they have is that they are, to a firm or company, parasitic to the legal ecosystem. The ones that are brandishing about the latest in AI or what have you, they generally are one-trick ponies or very narrow in their perspective. Their fundamental purpose is to simply make money. They don't have any desire to improve the practice of law to strengthen the legal industry.

Unless you change the paradigm—unfortunately, capital and long-term vision are the only things that can truly address the topic of the panel—and bring a solution that has long-term stability economically, intellectually, inspirationally and have the capital to truly see that through, then you're basically just pontificating or just blowing a lot of smoke. What people need to be focusing on is really understanding that what we're talking about is truly real, and it will happen in our professional lifetime. We shouldn't be talking about things that go beyond that.

Look at [what] Uber has done with transportation. Amazon, Facebook, they all have a common characteristic of what is the umbrella concept of what I'm talking about: democratization of law. What are we doing to enable consumers to buy services in a way in line with how their business is growing and moving into the future?

Why is democratization often overlooked in law?

I think they're operating from their own narrow point of view. They're not asking what's in the best interest of the client, or of the legal ecosystem. They're asking, what's in the best interest for us, and how do we make the most profit this year? If you're asking those questions, you may exploit a niche here and there, but you're not going to have something tectonic, transformative and sustainable.

What do you account for the misdirection of folks like Richard Susskind that have talked about the future of law?

What they're advocating makes sense, but because they're not practitioners, they're not able to piece together the precise steps to get there. It's one thing for me to tell you that you should aspire to go to heaven. Everyone's going to agree to that. But how do you get there, and what is the path of getting there?

There are certain people who have advocated different paths, but they at least offer a path. The problem with most members of the academy is that they don't have the insight and the capital, understandably, to make it happen. And they do their best, but they operate from a different vantage point—someone trying to tell me about Paris, France, is sitting in a condo in Brooklyn and has never been to Paris. They've only seen pics and read news stories, so it's hard for them to argue what's truly needed in Paris at the time.

Why does such talk often go beyond what's possible in our lifetime?

They extrapolate that this should be doable—allowing software to analyze a case and provide precise guidance on its completion. But it's generally being done by people who have read about what it means to prosecute a case. They haven't done it. And the inverse could also be true: Someone who has been doing it all their lives may lack the ability to step outside themselves and see potential.