In a new video interview, Mike Abbott, Global Lead of Enterprise Thought Leadership and Content Strategy at Thomson Reuters, speaks with Lisa Hart Shepherd, CEO and Founder of Acritas, about key highlights from the recently released report, ‘The State of the Legal Market in China 2019’.
The report, published jointly by Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute and UK research firm Acritas, shows that the Chinese market is changing much more rapidly than Western markets. Hart Shepherd says that because of the Chinese legal market’s relative youth, Chinese law firms are less hindered by the traditional legal industry intransigence that has slowed large-scale change in the legal markets in the West, especially in the United States. For example, Hart Shepherd explains, alternative fee structures are the norm in China—not the exception.
Technology-enabled innovation, such as workflow automation, also is taking hold in China, Hart Shepherd says, adding that a key takeaway from the report is how ready to embrace change the Chinese legal market is, compared to the West, which still has to shed its traditional ways of working.
“I think in China, they are much more willing to try new things”, Hart Shepherd notes. “Which means they could move rapidly ahead and become the most sophisticated legal market in the world eventually”.
