Law Firms Face Increasing Competition From Non-Traditional Sources, Says TBRCPosted by praneeth on June 18th, 2018 The growth of online legal service providers will help the global market for legal services to grow from its level of USD 849 billion in 2017 to USD 1011 billion by 2021, a report from The Business Research Company shows. Both businesses and private individuals are increasingly willing to use the legal services of firms other than traditional law firms. More than half of all in-house legal departments now consider buying legal services from online providers such as LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer, and LawDepot. Many are also looking for commercial, digital, data privacy and cybersecurity expertise from their legal service providers. Other competition comes in the form of new legal delivery models offering affordable legal services to the wider population - paralegal technicians, legal document preparers, legal self-help websites, virtual assistants and offshore legal vendors. The legal services market covers the provision of legal advice, the drafting and execution of legal documents, case filing and negotiating on behalf of individuals or companies in relation to family, criminal, tax, corporate and real estate claims. As 90% of legal practice is concerned with civil law, and only 5% with criminal law, most purchasers are able to choose their supplier and price is becoming an increasingly important consideration as legal costs rise. Financial services are the biggest users of legal services, accounting for 40% of the global total; this focus helps explain why per capital legal services expenditure in the USA and the UK are by far the largest in the world. The second largest category of users of legal services are the mining, oil and gas industries, which accounts for Australia's position as the country with the third largest legal services expenditure per person. In comparison, Germany's per capital legal expenditure, despite its larger economy, is less than half that of the UK. Legal services are the third largest segment in the global market for professional services, ahead of accountancy but not much more than half as big as architectural and engineering consultancy services, and a little smaller than management consultancy. The segment is also growing by about 2 percentage points a year more slowly than the other three big segments, at just under 4% year on year.
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