Another in the series on Legal Publishers Online
Practical Law Company
by Guy Baring
Practical Law Company (PLC), was founded in 1990 when two ex-Slaughter and May
lawyers launched PLC Magazine. As
corporate lawyers they understood the needs of front-line fee-earners and the
magazine rapidly established itself as the leading source of practical know-how
for UK business lawyers.
PLC, www.practicallaw.com,
is still privately owned. It now provides a range of specialist web services in addition to the
original paper publications. Successful web services
have been established in Cross-border, Property, Competition and IP/IT, in
addition to Corporate. PLC also enjoys strong allegiance among in-house
lawyers through its Law Department service.
As well as new web services on the way (Financial Services is currently in pilot
phase and Employment is launching in January) PLC is also developing a new
range of products in the area of document automation.
Professional Support
Professional support has now moved to the centre stage of many firms’ strategy.
Senior lawyers are being appointed to oversee know-how development, more
is spent on technology to support it and increasing numbers of non fee-earning
lawyers are being employed. There is growing pressure to manage this aspect
of practice cost-effectively.
PLC is the only independent provider of professional support for business
lawyers. It employs a team of over 30 lawyers with significant transactional
experience. They focus on the continuously maintained practice notes, standard
documents and drafting notes, practical articles and filtered updates that form
the core of the web services.
Firms intent on providing the highest quality, cost-effective advice to clients face
a number of challenges:
- Information overload. The ease of publishing over the web, together with ever
more new legislation and case law, have resulted in an avalanche of raw legal
information.
- Hiring professional support lawyers. The demand for high calibre PSLs
currently exceeds the supply. Good technical lawyers with communication skills
and prospects of partnership do not often want to switch to a support role. If they
do, they command high salaries.
- Managing professional support lawyers. Keeping PSLs working effectively and
profitably for the firm can be difficult. For example, PSLs at many firms prepare
similar legal updates. Costed properly this is expensive.
- Infrastructure. Establishing a system to manage information is a major
challenge involving choosing the right technology, funding its purchase, creating
a taxonomy or "know-how index" and coding the resources. All this requires
expertise and time.
- Knowledge sharing. Fostering a culture in which fee- earners are prepared to
share knowledge, building this into their career development and rewarding it
has huge benefits for a firm. But often it requires the attention of a time-pressed
PSL to nurture this culture by extracting useful know-how from transactional
lawyers and disseminating it.
- Developing document automation. The pressure to maintain competitive
advantage through automated document assembly and other initiatives
combining know-how and technology is growing. Many large firms have invested
significantly in these areas and ultimately the clients themselves are imposing
capped fees and demanding greater efficiency.
Firms that cannot justify the expense of a PSL avoid the associated recruitment
and management problems but they still face the challenge of maintaining their
competitive position without a PSL, and using fee-earner and partner time to do
so. In the long run, this is often more expensive.
How PLC contributes
- Continuously Maintained Know-How. In addition to invaluable archive material,
we provide maintained know-how in the form of practice notes and checklists.
These are concise, practical explanations covering core transactions and the
background law. For experienced lawyers they are reliable statements of
practice, and for more junior lawyers, they give an understanding not yet
acquired through practice.
- Standard Documents and Drafting Notes. We provide a library of first-rate
documents that are kept up-to-date as law and practice develop, together with
comprehensive drafting notes highlighting potential legal and negotiating issues.
Our new FirmStyle service allows firms to download PLC documents in their own
house style.
- Current Awareness. PLC does not simply pass on new information; we also
aim to filter out unnecessary content. We provide useable know-how explaining
concisely the practical implications of important developments. Updates are
integrated with the underlying know-how providing fuller background for those
that want it.
PLC has recently collaborated with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to provide
a current awareness service for its corporate group. This followed a review of
the role of professional support lawyers and allowed the firm to increase
efficiency, eliminate duplication and concentrate internal resources on
proprietary know-how (see
Freshfields Case study).
New Tools
- Complete integration of standard documents. PLC FirmStyle allows lawyers
to download PLC precedents from any of our services in their firm’s house style:
- The converted document includes firm margins, fonts, spacing, heading, numbering and definition styles
- Automatic table of contents and cross-references can be activated or disabled according to preference
- The precedent cover sheet includes the firm’s format, displaying logo and firm details.
- Document automation. PLC Transaction Toolkits are automated documents
combined with know-how for common transactions. They are being developed
with partner firms and in-house legal departments in major companies. They will
provide an efficient means of authoring and maintaining documents for all firms.
- Streamlining Due Diligence. PLC Diligence is a workflow application designed
to match the way lawyers review, summarise and report on legal documents. It
improves the efficiency and focus of the due diligence process, and provides
better risk management.
Guy Baring is Director of Sales & Marketing, Practical Law Company,
www.practicallaw.com.
Email guy.baring@practicallaw.com.
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