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There is no shortage of thought leadership on the topic of legal artificial intelligence (AI), whether in terms of defining the market segment, (re)educating audiences on what is possible with rapidly evolving technologies, and even the occasional ‘me-too’ displays of enthusiasm over new technologies and start-ups. We also find true thought leadership from legal tech visionaries, who describe the future of the legal industry and outline how legal roles are changing. What is clear is that tech companies are figuring out how to automate many day-to-day tasks using machine learning and AI.

There are a lot of changes happening in the personal injury sector right now, with many people wondering what the landscape will look like a year down the road. The relationship between law firms and claims management companies has never been without its challenges, and the Civil Liability Bill might make this even more complex. But how much is scaremongering, and what should solicitors be on the look out for?

“Our solicitors put lots of content on our website, but we don’t get much business from it”, the managing partner of a law firm said to me recently. Indeed, there was plenty of legal text on the website but there were several reasons why it was not yielding results. Of course, all lawyers can write, so it might seem logical to think that they can write content for a website. The question that you need to ask is, how well can they write? In particular, how well can they write for the internet?

If you are going to balance the demands of work and childcare, and stay sane, you need to adapt, and with any luck your firm will adapt with you. In doing so you will both win, and your respective productivity will soar. When I had my son, I realised just how lucky I was. Not only did I have the incredible support of my, and my husband’s, family through this life-changing time, but I had a firm that offered me complete flexibility and control over my return to business life.

Spring is in the air, and our New Year resolutions should have formed learned behaviour by now, so where to focus our vision next? Making sure we help our firms have a future-focused toolkit has been top of my list over recent months and, talking with the law firm leaders in our network, it’s interesting to see what they are prioritising. While some of the usual regulatory suspects remain on their radar, they are focusing their energies on many less conventional aspects of leadership, embracing psychology and communication in ways that would have been unimaginable in a law firm of yesterday.

“If we were running real businesses, we would be identifying future leaders in their 20s and 30s and fast-tracking them – whereas in most law firms people first have to prove themselves as a lawyer, and earn high fees, and only then, when they are probably in their 40s or 50s might we think about whether they have what it takes to lead the business.” This was a casual, almost throw-away comment from a colleague co-facilitating a managing partner retreat with me back in February, but it set the scene for the next 24 hours – how should law firms identify and then develop their future leaders?

With less than 50 working days until GDPR takes effect on 25 May 2018, many businesses are starting to consider the hot topic of whether their marketing lists will still be valid. But it’s not just GDPR that needs to be considered. Under the Data Protection Act, “an individual is entitled at any time by notice in writing… to require the data controller… to cease, or not to begin processing for the purposes of direct marketing”. But the majority of the rules around direct marketing can actually be found in the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003.

Very few people leap at the chance of becoming the leader of a law firm. It is, after all, a fiendishly difficult job. Most are encouraged to stand for election and then must run the gauntlet of peer interrogation and appraisal. From our work with many different law firms over the years, I think it’s possible to identify the reasons why some leadership candidates get elected and others don’t. This is what I’ve learned along the way. The biggest challenge for any leadership candidate is to get the agreement of intelligent, free-spirited and opinionated legal professionals to relinquish some control and be managed.

It’s no secret that these are challenging times for some of the UK law sector as it tries to keep up with emerging digital trends and increasing demand from clients. But there is buoyancy in the market and opportunities for those businesses that are agile and brave enough to challenge the status quo – the traditional equity partnership model. We’ve seen it all too often where partners have been duped into putting their assets against a failing business that is riddled with debt. We’ve even received calls from partners to discuss bankruptcy and that the possibility of moving house is no longer possible, due to the LLP they joined going into liquidation.

The apprenticeship reforms were introduced to put quality at the forefront of training and skills improvement and to give employers more control over developing their workforce. At Browne Jacobson we have been doing just that. Our existing legal apprentices follow the paralegal standards and our plans for 2018 include recruitment of a further 12 paralegal apprentices in September, together with developing many of our own teams by offering apprenticeships in business administration, first-line management, chartered manager degrees and senior leaders master’s degrees.