Seven years ago we had a training day for the IT department, we were set a task to set a task to prepare a very short presentation on “The Law Firm of the Future”.

The reason I remember this was thanks to an article I saw re-tweeted on Twitter last week from the Financial Post in Canada. The article was about changes in law around the globe that effectively enables law firms to launch an IPO.

This reminded me of a slide we put together in that 2002 presentation:

Looking at the rest of the slides some of our other points weren’t bad either.

• Fixed price contracts for legal work, leading to lawyers working on projects rather than cases.
• Full project management expertise for the legal project manager who has a team of lawyers, secretaries, IT personnel etc for each project.

These two bullets may be specific, but I think we were trying to point out that the traditional bill by the hour partnership model would not last. Quite in line with current “in vogue” thinking during the today’s economic climate (for example, see Optima Legal’s warning on small firms and the Adam Smith, Esq. blog report from the London City firms)

Not bad thinking for a bunch of IT geeks!

Back to the IPO point in the Financial Post though. I wonder how long it will be before we see the first IPO of a larger firm? Given the current economic turbulence, probably not soon. But thinking about the proceeds an IPO would probably realise for partners of a top 200 firm, surely it can’t be that long before someone tries!