[wooUK]

I've spent the past 10 years working in global corporate law firms as a software developer and have witnessed this change first hand. The legal profession is based around chargeable hours. This is not a good deal for the consumer of legal services. Billing by the hour does not encourage lawyers to work more efficiently or effectively, in fact it rewards the opposite. Recently larger clients have started to stand up to the legal firms and demand that work should be done on a fixed fee basis or a shared risk/reward basis. Suddenly lawyers are beginning to to act like business people and are looking at improving their own internal efficiencies now that their fees are capped. One example of this are lawyers trying to empathise more with their fixed fee clients' business strategy and point out legal pitfalls before they happen - wow a proactive lawyer! Observing how much money law firms are currently investing on improving their efficiencies then I think what we are witnessing is a shift to a new model and not just a blip.

[sunchild]

Based on your experience, I'd love to chat with you offline. My law firm (together with another firm in London) is building software for deal lawyers. If you're interested in meeting, you can reach me via the email address on my firm's page: http://yusonirvine.com/

If nothing else, I'd like to introduce you to my UK counterparts.

[VanL]

Interesting - I would be interested in chatting with you too. I am a lawyer at a Big law firm. One of the things that I have been doing (which clients love) is writing software to automate or enhance parts of what I do.

[sunchild]

I used to do this, too. It drove me crazy that my firm owned my work, though. Perhaps you have a more favorable arrangement with your employer?

[VanL]

I made an arrangement immediately when I started. I told them I do code on the side, and that I had other people that I worked with on that code.

They agreed that they pay me for legal work, not for code. Thus, the tools I build are mine, but the analysis and output of those tools may be theirs if I am using the tools for their benefit.

[ajtaylor]

That is an incredible deal! I would imagine any employee outside the legal profession would be hard pressed to win this sort of concession.