New generation of law firm sparks life into legal industry

“So law firms and the law partners who don’t reinvent themselves with new and better value propositions are highly susceptible to being commoditised.”

“The legal industry is going to get dramatically disrupted in Australia and most people aren’t aware of it yet,” says Andrew Mellett, the managing director of legal services provider Plexus.

“We can now do a property lease in about 45 per cent of the time it takes a traditional law firm and have a number of steps that demonstrate that we can do it for a high quality outcome. So in the end we deliver about a 70 per cent cost saving to our clients. That’s a pretty profound disruption.”

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Melbourne-based Plexus, an incorporated law firm founded and headed by non-lawyer Mellett, provides lawyer services to larger corporate clients on a project basis, to meet the needs of general counsel who are also trying to keep costs as low as possible. It also uses automated processes to create documents and a dedicated web-portal for clients to track matter progress and cost.