Legal Innovation Scarcity

While on an airplane last week, I was catching up on some long-overdue blog reading and ran across this post in Kevin Kelly's ever-fascinating The Technium.  Kevin discusses "The Shirky Principle" from author Clay Shirky that says, "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."  Put another way, "Established industries like to focus on established problems," and are often incapable of changing because, like the media industry, "they are still solving the last problem." 

As law firms struggle to develop alternative billing models, I wonder if they too, are still busy solving the last problem.  Shouldn't their focus instead be on how to deliver the service their clients need and want, instead of just changing the way they charge for what they always have done?  It is one of the reasons that small, nimble firms and entrepreneurial start-ups will have far more to say about the future of law practice than the big-firm legal industry will acknowledge.  What do you think?

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