Source: Bloomberg Law
The roughly 500-attorney, Atlanta-based firm announced last week that it acquired the startup Blue Pencil Box, which offers tools to help companies track the changing regulatory and enforcement landscape for non-compete agreements. The company will become part of “fpSolutions,” the firm’s hub for technology tools to help with compliance.
Jonathan Crook, Blue Pencil Box’s founder, is becoming a partner in Fisher Phillips’ employee defection and trade secrets practice as part of the deal, as well as oversee his company’s offering within fpSolutions, he said.
Need for Speed
Across the industry, many law firms are thinking about how to build or integrate technology to meet clients’ demands for more efficient work. Big Law is poised to be hard-hit by disruption from artificial intelligence, a study published last week said.
And building tech departments can be costlier for firms, said Lourdes Fuentes, founder of Karta Legal, a practice management and legal operations consultancy.
While a firm choosing to “buy, not build” a tech product isn’t that common, it’s likely to happen more often as firms look to bolster their technology offerings, said Fuentes, a lawyer who has worked as an attorney and e-discovery specialist at Big Law firms such as Duane Morris and Baker & Hostetler.
“Lawyers are figuring out that there are ways to help clients by providing them actionable information or actionable tools or resources that are not necessarily billing by the hour,” Crook said. “I think we’re all realizing that there are different avenues out there for providing outstanding client service that is not necessarily dependent on the billable hour.”
Onboarding Legal Technology
Law firms have used multiple models to onboard legal technology, said Dan Linna, director of law and technology initiatives at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and McCormick School of Engineering.
When looking to bulk up their legal tech presence, firms are facing “key decisions of ‘make versus buy,’” he said.
One key consideration for firms contemplating a legal tech purchase is the many state laws requiring lawyer ownership of law firms. The lack of enough large states with these loosened rules that would allow firms to buy non-lawyer-owned tech companies “is one of the things that gets in the way” of more firms like Fisher Phillips buying their own legal tech companies, Linna said.
Even if direct law firm purchase of legal tech companies has proven rare, a number of the largest US and British firms have augmented their tech expertise through a range of methods in recent years.
Read full article: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/fisher-phillips-tech-co-purchase-points-to-buy-v-build-dilemma
