The Law Firm Series

My five-part “The Law Firm” series frames issues and proposes solutions to the global legal service market’s juggernaut triplets – Artificial Intelligence, Pricing, and Talent Transience. 

For some unfathomable reason, many law firms have tended not to run as businesses, choosing instead to emphasize top line revenue rather than bottom line profitability.

This is one of the reasons why many law firms have historically considered themselves to be successful. Ironically, it is also why law firm mergers and acquisitions have increased with the speed of summer lightning of late as have insolvencies and failures.

The Juggernaut Triplets

The juggernaut triplets – artificial intelligence, pricing, and talent transience – have been impacting the global legal service market’s unbusinesslike methodology and operational peculiarity for some time, but not with the intensity we have been experiencing to date.

Pressure and intensity are increasing exponentially to the point where, by 2030, the global legal services sector will operate much differently than it does now.

For the last 10 of my almost 30 years as a consultant in the legal services industry, I have been writing legal market strategy and management opinion columns, and speaking at conferences and retreats about the impacts of these juggernaut triplets as well as the need for both business and sector restructuring that is critical for survival.

Publishing the Package

Since publishing “The Law Firm Pyramid Rollover” in Fall 2025, this massive and at times, overwhelming topic has taken on a life of its own becoming a series of five columns, each with its own take on specific bet-the-business issues and recommended solutions.

Having published these columns over the last 10 months, I have combined them into this package.

“The Law Firm” columns are presented in order of published appearance to provide logical thinking and sequencing, while enabling them to be findable in one place and easily accessible.

Each piece contains links to other columns and writings of both mine and others, as well as resources that may prove helpful.

Do with this material what you will.

For my part, within this series I have endeavoured to do what I am known for – frame critical issues and propose prescriptive solutions.

“The Law Firm” Five-Part Series

1. The Law Firm Pyramid Rollover

Artificial intelligence, pricing, and transience of the legal service sector’s workforce will cause the traditional law firm pyramid structure to rollover like an upending iceberg, and by 2030, global legal services will operate much differently than they do now.

2. The Law Firm Private Equity Puzzle

Private equity is now a major and, in many cases, deciding factor to enable solvency and structural reformation, and is forcing law firms to choose if and how they meet demands of clients and the legal market itself.

3. The Law Firm Disappearing Act

Disappearing acts pertaining to people, skills and talents have always happened every few years in the global legal services market as the sector continually refreshes itself. But disappearing has never been more prevalent than it has been of late and will become even more common in months and years to come. Act now.

4. The Law Firm Foundational Rebuild

The legal services sector is in for rough times for the foreseeable future after which we will see a rebirth of legal services entities that bear little resemblance to those operating in the market currently. This is why your firm’s foundational rebuild must happen now.

5. The Law Firm Inflection Point

The troika of artificial intelligence, pricing, and talent transience has been with us for some time now. As a result, traditional pyramid-structured law firms grappling with these bet-the-business juggernauts are at an inflection point. I propose a flatter way forward.

This column first appeared on Slaw, September 2026.