As a catchall industry term, “law new” combines many different facets of the legal business, from startups and law firm subsidiaries augmenting traditional services to companies offering solutions that have never been a part of a legal practice. The term reflects the fact that the way the industry conducts its business is changing rapidly. Whether it is a result of changing customer demands, the impact of disruptive technologies or a growing focus on cost takeout, the law new phenomenon has been on the rise for years.
Local Law 13 of 2022
This bill would require City agencies to notify employees and job applicants that they may be eligible for federal and state student loan forgiveness programs.
In its broadest sense, the word “law” means a set of rules governing conduct or rights and privileges. It can also refer to a body of laws regulating a specific area, such as land law, which governs ownership and possession of real property such as homes and farms. It can also refer to personal property laws, which cover movable objects such as cars, jewelry and computers, or intangible rights like stocks and shares. The law also includes a broad range of social and ethical rules that govern behavior, including criminal law relating to punishment for crimes committed against people and civil law governing disputes between individuals or between businesses.
The term law new has come to encompass many different aspects of the legal business, from new approaches for working with underserved communities to strategies for addressing the growing problem of uncontested divorces. The law new movement is driven by a desire to offer customers and consumers more options than the traditional alternatives. The goal is to provide more affordable, flexible and customizable solutions that are tailored to each individual’s needs and circumstances.
One of the key components of the law new concept is collaboration. This is essential to the fluidity and speed of business, and the accelerating pace of change in our global economy and society at large. Many of the most successful and innovative enterprises regularly collaborate with competitors to achieve a shared goal. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, regularly work with competitors to develop new medicines and vaccines. The legal function can and should play a critical role in this broader collaborative process.
The future of law is a more collaborative, customer-centric and integrated industry that better resembles its corporate customers and society at large. It will be more holistically diverse – cognitively, demographically and culturally – and include more multidisciplinary team members who are creative, tech-proficient, data-driven, empathetic and collaborative. It will leverage technology platforms to deliver accessible, affordable, on-demand, scalable, risk-backed, practical and predictable legal products and services that help solve and capture opportunities at the speed of business and the speed of our world. It will work seamlessly with internal and external cross-functional enterprise business units and be driven by data. It will have the agility to rapidly identify, eradicate, mitigate and extinguish risks, prevent costly protracted litigation and free up management time and resources for more value-added work.
