Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T11:18:41.775Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Commercial and Regulatory Evolution of Legal Services: Implications for the Information Professional1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2015

Stephen Mayson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This Willi Steiner Memorial Lecture 2015, delivered by Professor Stephen Mayson2, explores the commercial evolution of law as a business, and draws attention to the disconnect between this development and continuing significant unmet need for legal services and prohibitively high fees for consumers and small businesses. The evolution is therefore supposed to be far from complete, and is hampered by the broken business model of law firms. A further shortcoming is the regulatory framework for legal services. Although this, too, has evolved in recent years with the introduction of the Legal Services Act 2007, the framework is nevertheless built on the still-complex and limiting structure of reserved activities, regulatory objectives and prescriptive detail. The author then explores the implications for information professionals, and highlights the opportunities for them to contribute to the development of ‘knowing management’, to the better education and training of legal practitioners, to helping them and their organisations address greater complexity and fluidity in regulation, and to harnessing market and client intelligence to improve the quality and relevance of legal services and the value of client relationships. The themes of cooperation, collaboration and connectivity underpin all of these opportunities, and contribute to the possibility of shaping and re-forming the role of the information professional in the 21st century.

Keywords

regulationlegal professionknowledge managementlegal information managers
Type
The 5th Willi Steiner Memorial Lecture
Information
Legal Information Management , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 150 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aiken, J., Cadmus, F. & Shapiro, F. (2012) ‘Not your parents’ law library: a tale of two academic law libraries’, Green Bag 2d, Vol. 16, page 13Google Scholar
Ashcroft, L. (2008) ‘Predictions for the future world of work: challenges for information professionals’, available at: http://eprints.rclis.org/12924/1/86.pdfGoogle Scholar
Blake, M. (ed.) (2000) A History of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL, Warwick)Google Scholar
Clementi, D. (2004) Review of the Regulatory Framework for Legal Services for England and Wales, available at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.legal-services-review.org.uk/content/report/index.htmGoogle Scholar
Franklin, J. (2015) ‘Law libraries and legal education’ in Maranville et al. (2015); available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2556587Google Scholar
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)Google Scholar
Maranville, D., Bliss, L.R., Kaas, C.W. & Lopez, A.S. (eds) Building Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World (Lexis)Google Scholar
Mayson, S.W. (2007) Law Firm Strategy: Competitive Advantage and Valuation (Oxford University Press, Oxford)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayson, S.W. (2010) Business models in legal services: the meaning of ‘business model’, available at: https://stephenmayson.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/mayson-2010-business-models-in-legal-services.pdfGoogle Scholar
Mayson, S.W. (2013) Restoring a future for law, available at: https://stephenmayson.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/mayson-2013-restoring-a-future-for-law.pdfGoogle Scholar
Mayson, S.W. (2015) The Legal Services Act: what might replace it and when?, available at: https://stephenmayson.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/mayson-2015-lsa-what-might-replace-it-final.pdfGoogle Scholar
MVA Consultancy (2011) Study into the provision of legal services to small charities, prepared for Legal Services Consumer Panel and available at: http://www.legalservicesconsumerpanel.org.uk/publications/research_and_reports/documents/MVA_SmallCharities_ResearchReport.pdfGoogle Scholar
Pleasence, P. & Balmer, N.J. (2013), In Need of Advice? Findings of a Small Business Legal Needs Benchmarking Survey, prepared for Legal Services Board and available at: https://research.legalservicesboard.org.uk/reports/consumers-unmet-legal-needs/Google Scholar
Pleasence, P. & Balmer, N.J. (2013), How People Resolve ‘Legal’ Problems, prepared for Legal Services Board and available at: https://research.legalservicesboard.org.uk/reports/consumers-unmet-legal-needs/Google Scholar
Polanyi, M. (1966) The Tacit Dimension (reprint 1983, Peter Smith, Gloucester MA)Google Scholar
Sternberg, R.J. & Horvath, J.A. (eds) (1999) Tacit Knowledge in Professional Practice (Lawrence Erlbaum, London)Google Scholar
Sveiby, K.E. & Lloyd, T. (1987) Managing Knowhow (Bloomsbury Publishing, London)Google Scholar
von Krogh, G., Roos, J. & Kleine, D. (eds) (1998) Knowing in Firms (Sage, London)Google Scholar
Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)Google Scholar
Wenger, E., McDermott, R. & Snyder, W.M. (2002) Cultivating Communities of Practice (Harvard Business School Press, Boston MA)Google Scholar
Winterton, J. (2003) ‘In celebration of Willi Steiner’, Legal Information Management, Vol. 3, page 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar