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‘I have no doubt’ that more revenue-sharing models are coming
Revenue-sharing models are a relatively new phenomenon in Australia’s legal marketplace, but one senior legal professional is convinced that it is “the way of the future”.
Jerome Doraisamy
Keypoint Law — which recently reached the milestone of 60 consulting principals in Australia — has led the charge for revenue-sharing models for law firms in the country, following the practice’s founding in 2002 by its UK counterpart, Keystone Law.
James Stevens — who is the founder and managing director of GTC Legal Group, which includes GTC Lawyers — believes that such revenue-sharing platform models are “the way of the future” for Australian legal practices.
“Revenue-sharing models are predicted to be doing one-third of all legal work in the UK within three years, with over a hundred platform model firms trading there already. In Australia so far, there’s Keypoint, and there’s GTC. I have no doubt that very soon there will be dozens more like us,” he proclaimed.
GTC Lawyers, Mr Stevens detailed, currently has 30 consulting principals, who are focused on family law, criminal law, corporate crime, commercial law, contested wills, traffic law and admin law.
That firm, which was founded in 2009, began as a legal referral service by operating a fully resourced legal hotline service that gives people access to free legal advice from practising lawyers from 7am to midnight, seven days a week.
In a statement, GTC said that it now receives around 80,000 legal inquiries to its hotline annually and uses the referrals from this hotline to operate nationally across the aforementioned practice areas.
As a group, GTC includes a “traditional model law firm” in Armstrong Legal, a “non-traditional consultant model law firm” in GTC Lawyers, an agency network of approximately 1,500 network partners in All Courts Lawyers, and a front and back-office service company, GTC Legal Group Services, that utilises custom-built technology on the Salesforce platform to deliver efficiencies and drive productivity, known as NebuLAW.
Mr Stevens said that he believes that the platform model can “greatly benefit sole practitioners across the country who struggle with the administrative side of their business, and don’t have enough time to do what they got into the profession for in the first place — the law!”
“Australia has one of the most fragmented legal professions in the world, with an average of only three lawyers per firm,” he mused.
“This means the vast majority of lawyers working in Australia today just don’t have access to the economies of scale they need to actually practice law instead of wasting time and energy doing non-billable administrative work.”
Moreover, Mr Stevens added, most platform firms in the UK don’t refer you work, whereas his does.
“In addition to all the admin, IT and accounting services we provide, GTC Lawyers will send you red-hot leads from our national legal hotline, whenever someone in your area needs a lawyer. These leads have already been given advice, assessed and vetted by our hotline lawyers,” he outlined.
“You can choose to put only this work through GTC Lawyers as a consulting principal, or you can put all your firm’s work through us and make your life easier by letting us take care of all of your trust accounting, office accounting and all non-billable work. It’s totally up to you.
“That’s just part of the unparalleled flexibility that the consultancy model provides.”
Jerome Doraisamy
Jerome Doraisamy is the editor of Lawyers Weekly. A former lawyer, he has worked at Momentum Media as a journalist on Lawyers Weekly since February 2018, and has served as editor since March 2022. He is also the host of all five shows under The Lawyers Weekly Podcast Network, and has overseen the brand's audio medium growth from 4,000 downloads per month to over 60,000 downloads per month, making The Lawyers Weekly Show the most popular industry-specific podcast in Australia. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of Minds Count.
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