Guest Post: Q & A with Matt Smith of Consilio
This post is a short Q & A with Matt Smith, who is a relationship manager with Consilio, an eDiscovery, litigation support, and alternative legal service provider for law firms and corporations. In addition to discussing the benefits Consilio can provide, Matt also shares his thoughts on the consolidation in the legal industry, alternative legal services and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
What do you do? I wear many hats for Consilio, but my primary function is a relationship manager. I work with clients from UK to California helping them optimize their legal spend on litigations, investigations, and other legal functions. Which is a really fancy way of saying, we provide eDiscovery, litigation support and alternative legal services to law firms and corporations.
Who do you help? My team works with outside and in-house counsel. Each side hires us for different reasons. Law firms have vast expertise and capabilities however often they will tap a vendor like Consilio to help support their matters when volume, budget or deadlines require surge resources. In-house counsel hires me to help them reduce their reliance and spend on outside counsel. We help develop more cost-efficient solutions for our clients while working in conjunction with outside counsel. My team provides cutting edge technology, consulting and tactical legal functions while outside counsel focuses on strategic advisory and higher level legal services.
What does Consilio do and what is their market differentiator? Consilio has market leading expertise and global scale. This industry is seeing a lot of consolidation and the big global players are gobbling up the small and mid-sized players. The consolidation is driving down costs for the end client and is also focusing a lot of talent across a few key players. This net brain gain helps our clients because they do not have to cobble together teams across multiple vendors to accomplish large, complex and/or global challenges.
What is driving the consolidation? First, money is plentiful and cheap right now. This helps large, well run and profitable companies to have an advantage when it comes to acquisitions. The main driver of this consolidation is the desire to continually upgrade the services provided to our end clients which are often large law firms and the global corporations. There is certainly a place for the smaller niche player, but global organizations need a partner that has global reach, a deep bench of experts, and economies of scale.
Where do you see the legal industry heading in 2022 and in 5 years from now? You can’t get far into the conversation without mentioning AI. AI is driving a lot of cost out of providing legal services which is going to continue to disrupt the industry. We work in a very risk adverse industry which is intentional because most people don’t hire lawyers to take risks, they hire them to reduce risk. This makes the adoption of technology slower than most industries. As these methods of using technology to find facts and cull out unrelated information become more accepted by the courts we will continue to see costs go down and it will increase the speed to resolution. This also creates opportunities for legal technology providers like Consilio because we serve so many clients we can spread the cost of new technology across many clients where law firms cannot do this as effectively. This creates a natural and valuable partnership between tech savvy early adopters like Consilio and outside counsel.
There are very interesting market forces acting on the legal space. There are 3 market forces creating unique opportunities and challenges. You can start at the law school level. They are pumping out more and more lawyers at a higher burden rate. The average lawyer graduates law school with $130,000 in debt.1 Secondly, COVID has created an unprecedented tight labor market for lawyers. Law firms have to pay more while also finding themselves in a race for talent because the job market is so competitive for lawyers right now. Every legal recruiter I speak to says they have more job openings than they have candidates. This drives up outside counsel costs to an already cost sensitive in-house counsel end client. Finally, the demand for legal services is increasing as costs are rising which is creating an opening for new entrants into the legal space such as traditional consulting firms and Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSP). In the end, there are a lot of legal and legal adjacent services that ALSPs can perform at $100-$300/hour that outside counsel would charge $500-$700/hour. My company functions in this space where we can create a partnership between in-house counsel, outside counsel, and the vendor to provide cost effective legal outcomes and more efficient legal processes.
What gets you out of bed in the morning? What actually gets me out of bed in the morning are my kids, my dog, or my early morning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes. Professionally speaking what gets me out of bed are my clients and my love for solving problems. I have the best job in the world because I get to solve problems with really smart people. Being in the trenches with your clients creates an exciting work environment and it creates lasting bonds and trust. My 5 year goal is to work so hard and do such good work, that in 5 years I only work for my friends.
1. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/09/23/aba-report-shows-impact-law-school-debt-young-lawyers#:~:text=About%2090%20percent%20of%20the,amount%20of%20debt%20of%20%24130%2C000.