Legal industry leaders and analysts seem to suggest that United Kingdom law firms are out in front when it comes to legal innovation and technology adoption. The data my research team and I have assembled for the Legal Services Innovation Index lend some support to this.
Having just launched this project, I wanted to share a few Tableau Vizzes that summarize the LSII data on this topic. As discussed on the LSII website, it’s important to put this data into context and review and understand our methodology and the caveats that we’ve identified. That said, the Law Firm Index provides insight into whether and how law firms are innovating, especially when looking at the big picture, and the Catalog of Law Firm Innovations identifies concrete innovations that law firms have implemented.
We should not expect all law firms to look the same. Most would agree that we need greater differentiation across law firms, not copycat “innovation.” While one goal of this project is to define and generate discussion about specific categories of innovation, it is not intended to suggest that these categories make up the universe of innovation or that all law firms should be “innovating” across all categories. Additionally, we are not directly measuring critical aspects of organizational innovation, such as whether a firm has an innovative culture in which everyone from the bottom to top is engaged in innovation and efforts to continuously provide greater value to clients. All of this deserves further discussion.
We searched 260 law firm websites:
- Am Law 200 – American Lawyer
- Canadian Top 30 – Lexpert
- Global 100 – American Lawyer
Note: The firms categorized in our results as “Global 100” include only those firms not already categorized as part of the Am Law 200 or Canadian 30. For this reason, we added an asterisk to “Global 100*” in the Tableau vizzes. Keep this in mind when comparing the Global 100 to other categories of law firms.
Finally, when comparing jurisdictions, consider that we’ve included only the UK firms that made the Global 100 while in the US we’ve included all Am Law 200 law firms. Consider this when comparing averages.
Again, please review the LSII website for necessary context, an overview, and our methodology. With that said, below I have added a few snapshots of the data.
Figure 1: Average hits per website with Google searches for innovation categories across law firm websites. For context, review overview and methodology at LegalTechIndex.com.
Figure 2: Average hits per website for innovation Google searches across law firm websites, grouped. Note that Global 100 does not include those Global 100 law firms that are a part of the Am Law 200 or Canadian 30. For context, review overview and methodology at LegalTechIndex.com.
Figure 3: Catalog of law firm innovations. A form on the LSII website allows law firms to submit innovations for inclusion in the Catalog. For context, review overview and methodology at LegalTechIndex.com.