The feedback loops in our industry are broken.

Let’s fix them together.

Billions in capital are funding legal tech companies. An increasing number of law firm leaders pledge their commitment to innovation, and the number of business, innovation, and technology roles in major law firms continue to grow at explosive rates.

The ecosystem is larger, more active, and more complicated than it’s ever been… but is it making a real difference to the associates toiling away at the biggest and most profitable firms in the world? We want to find out.

Practice Modernization Field Study

Do we really need more surveys about the legal industry? We say YES.

Modernize Legal is a field study comprising four related surveys. Each is meant for a distinct stakeholder group with a critical role in the modernization of legal practice in major firms. These groups share some common (and some competing) interests. Each are deeply affected by the decisions and actions of the others. And they all face barriers to giving and receiving clear signals on what they need to play their parts.

We designed this study to help them hear and understand each other.

  • The all-important users of practice tech, the workforce that keeps law firms running — and the group with the largest stake in the future of law. We want to know how associates really feel about the training and tools available to them, how they feel about the impact of AI on their careers, and the legal tech products they love and hate to use. So we’re going to ask them directly: almost 80,000 associates across 200+ firms.

  • Legal tech procurement is a job with many titles, often tucked under this or that department and hidden in the labyrinthine org chart of the modern law firm. The buyers of legal tech hold the future of law practice in their hands—and we want to know whether they have the budget, talent, and access they need. We also ask about their most and least beloved products, the vendors they love and struggle to work with, and the most pressing need that remains unserved by currently available tools.

  • As we ask the users and buyers to name their most and least favorite products, we want to give the makers and sellers a voice too. We ask legal tech companies to nominate the firms that are leading or lagging the pack in buying, trying, and implementing practice technology. We also ask for their views on the 2024 outlook for legal tech — budgets, adoption, funding and valuations.

  • Even from a distance, leaders cast a long shadow. What these decision-makers do in the next 3 to 5 years will reverberate through our industry for generations — and inquiring minds want to know which law firms are most likely to win the future. We ask Managing Partners and COOs to share their views on the strategic impact of AI, how they expect those impacts to shape market dynamics in the near future—and how they plan to respond as they chart the path forward for the firms they lead.

Why we are doing this

Modernize Legal is a joint effort by Jae Um, Rob Saccone & Brad Blickstein. The three of us have spent a combined 70 years in legal business, legal technology, and legal media. While we’ve each walked different paths, we share important values and complementary skills that brought us together to attempt something different with this project.

Helping lawyers adapt and evolve in step with changes in the world has been, and continues to be, our life's work.

We are optimists who believe that the future holds great promise. And we are realists who know that the future doesn't just happen – people make it happen, by envisioning something that doesn't exist yet, by working really hard to solve difficult problems, and by taking risks and asking others to believe in them.

We know from experience that people and teams need honest feedback to build great products, services, and businesses, and that all people find it difficult and uncomfortable to give and receive feedback. The feedback loops in our industry are broken. We see a lot of positive change happening, but we also feel the pain of sifting through the noise and fighting through a fog of cynicism. Over the years, we have known many driven teams working very hard toward dead ends, and we have worked for and advised many courageous, forward-thinking leaders who struggled to make good decisions – all because they suffer from information deficit.

The competitive forces that shape every industry push both legal tech companies and law firms to invest in vigorous and aspirational marketing. The power dynamics that exist in every organization and every ecosystem make it very difficult for associates and outside vendors to give honest feedback. We can't change these facts of life – but we are tired of watching talented people languish and promising businesses struggle against overwhelming odds.

We wish for customers to vote with their dollars, for talent to vote with their feet, and for the best performing products, services, and businesses to win.

For that to happen, we need clearer and more meaningful signals in our industry: signals that help us understand the differences in how those businesses see the market and prioritize resources. And we need signals that tell us which efforts are producing progress and which aren't working so well.

This project asks key stakeholders in our industry to contribute to a collective effort to create these signals – to try something new and different, to share your honest thoughts about your lived experience and how you think and feel about the future. We are asking you to trust us by answering provocative, uncomfortable questions. Our promise is that we will put forth our best to interpret, analyze and explain what we learn. Our goal is to facilitate constructive dialogue by building a shared view of reality.

Our hope is that this can help us all envision and build a better future, together and faster.

What we plan do with our findings

This project is self-funded without any sponsorship dollars. 

We did not seek media partners, although we hope and expect trade media to take an interest in the study and what we learn.

Public content. The responses we receive will remain confidential, but our insights will be shared across many public channels without any price-gating.

  • We will self-publish a high-level summary of findings, followed by a series of insights in Q2 and Q3 of this year.

  • We will hold an invite-only webcast with deeper insights for those who participate in our study.

  • We expect our analysis to surface legal tech products, legal professionals, and law firms worthy of recognition on the basis of acclamation by the users, buyers, and stakeholders they serve. We will find appropriate channels to spotlight these winners.

  • Jae will integrate a synthesis of this study into her annual Power Rankings and market commentary feature in the annual Am Law 100 issue of The American Lawyer.

Private briefings. We expect in-depth briefings will be available to law firms and legal tech vendors at varying price points. Like many other verticals, the legal industry has many pay-to-play rankings and awards. We aim to offer a pay-for-insights model that incentivizes us to provide value to the payors in alignment with the interests of the broader ecosystem. 

Who we are

Jae Um is a strategist and storyteller for legal markets, known for her ability to embed empathy and keen insight into the core of rigorous market analysis. As a consultant and advisor to legal businesses, she brings a unique blend of emotional intelligence and analytical prowess to drive innovative strategies. Jae's contributions to the American Lawyer and Legal Evolution drive industry dialogue toward understanding, resilience, and optimism.

Rob Saccone is an entrepreneur, investor, and advisor who unites technical expertise with pragmatic analysis of legal markets. He has spent the last 20 years connecting people, data, technology, and strategy to fuel transformation and growth at many of the largest law firms and legal businesses in the world. Rob's commitment to enabling evidence-based insights at scale date back to his early work as founder of XMLAW, an Inc. 5000 startup sold to Thomson Reuters.

Brad Blickstein has been a pioneer in legal media and research for over three decades. Much of his work has focused on supporting communities of practice make sense of a fragmented market by creating studies like the Law Department Operations Survey, now in its 16th year, and the Legal Pricing & Project Management Survey, now in its 3rd year. Brad's leading work in industry intelligence focuses on helping legal businesses better understand and serve their clients.

FAQs

  • We will initiate contact and distribute links directly to the firms and companies that meet our study parameters. The purpose of this approach is to maintain structure and rigor in our work to validate and analyze the responses we collect.

    We expect to open response collection by February 15.

    We are also using this site and social media to publicize our project. If you wish to participate, please let us know at info@modernize.legal.

  • We expect to open the surveys by February 15. Response collection will run for 3 weeks.

    We expect to post updates on this site as summary and insights become available. If you’d like us to let you know, please contact us at info@modernize.legal.

  • Brad and his team bring a track record of excellence and discretion in collecting and managing large-scale surveys.

    For this project, we are using Typeform to collect responses; Typeform is hosted on AWS, SOC2 certified, and ISO 27001 and 27701 compliant.