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Junior lawyer shake-up seeing firm hierarchy shift
The evolution of roles carried out by junior lawyers has created an inevitable shift in the traditional structure of law firms, a new report has found.
Emma Musgrave
According to the 2018 LexisNexis Australian Legal Tech Survey, across the board the Aussie legal profession is seeing a significant repositioning in the responsibilities set for junior lawyers when compared to past years, creating a shift in their law firm’s set up.
“To support this, the ‘shift in the value chain and profile of lawyers’ was identified by 33 per cent of respondents as being the most noticeable impact of increased digitalisation and automation in their organisation to date, followed by 25 per cent of respondents selecting ‘employment decrease’ as the most prevalent impact,” the survey found.
Noting the nature of the legal profession as being one which has traditionally seen hierarchy and tradition ingrained into it, the survey noted “the impact of change to organisational structures are likely to extend beyond human resourcing”. This, in turn, it said “gives scope for graduates to rethink the career path that has been laid out ahead of them”.
Commenting on the findings, LexisNexis managing director Simon Wilkins said:
“The changing nature of work for junior lawyers is clearly a key driver of change within the legal industry, as 44 per cent of the respondents identified the removal of grunt work as a key implication of technologies such as analytics and AI”.
“Whilst this change has the potential to significantly impact service models, team structures, and career paths within law firms, there are organisation types within the legal sector in which adoption of technology is taking more time,” he said.
“As partners and clients adopt new ways of working and encounter new tech-driven problems, lawyers will need to integrate these new work processes and broaden their skillset to adequately advise clients. As such, it will soon be lawyers’ professional responsibility to be literate in these skills.”
Emma Musgrave
Emma Musgrave (née Ryan) is the managing editor, professional services at Momentum Media.
Emma has worked for Momentum Media since 2015, including five years spent as the editor of the company's legal brand - Lawyers Weekly. Throughout her time at Momentum, she has been responsible for breaking some of the biggest stories in corporate Australia. In addition, she has produced exclusive multimedia and event content related to the company's respective brands and audiences.
Prior to joining Momentum Media, Emma worked in breakfast radio, delivering news to the Central West region of NSW, before taking on a radio journalist role at Southern Cross Austereo, based in Townsville, North Queensland.
She holds a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) degree from Charles Sturt University.
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