What do you do when you’ve had enough of seeing the world through the TradLaw green-coloured glasses?
You throw out the old way and start again from scratch, of course! At least that’s the path that Dugald Hamilton has taken.
Dugald is the Founder and principal of 23 Legal, a boutique law firm offering traditional dispute resolution, restructuring, insolvency and commercial legal services with a modern-world approach. They’ve designed their services around the expectation that clients will demand better value, more flexibility, greater tech know-how and unreal service. In response to this, 23 Legal adopt a flexible approach to litigation practice, focusing on commercial outcomes, not on court processes.
After hearing some interesting comments from Dugald in another interview, I started our conversation with asking him why he started his firm and quickly understood that he was fed up of seeing the world as dollar signs. Instead, he prefers to collaborate with his clients, learning about their big picture objective and helping them work out how best to spend their legal budget.
Dugald is a self-professed tech geek, so of course we talk about what technology he uses in his firm and he shares his prediction that we’ll soon see the death of email!
My favourite part of the interview, though, is Dugald’s advice for people wanting to do law differently. You’ll have to listen in to hear that bit!
Here’s some of the highlights:
3:10 Fed up of seeing the world as dollar signs
We don’t see clients in person, so we become disconnected
Making a point of understanding the end goal, not just the legal issue
Working out where to spend and where not to spend
Doing a game plan advice – here’s the problem, here’s what we think the answer will be and here’s how we keep on track
The only approach is the collaboration approach
The meaning behind 23Legal
How a self-professed tech geek approaches tech in his firm
Don’t just confine yourself to the world of legal tech. Look outside law
Email security and email encryption
Will we see the death of email?
Simple, cheap and effective steps for cybersecurity
“Throw out the old way and start building from scratch.”
Links
- Find Dugald and 23 Legal at their website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn
- Dugald’s interview on the Happy Lawyer, Happy Life podcast
- Subscribe to Doing Law Differently on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify
- Discover how I can help you escape the billable hour, eliminate the grunt work and do more of the work you love with productised services
- Trustifi email encryption
- Connect with me on LinkedIn
- Are you keen to share how you’re Doing Law Differently? Get in touch here.
