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Old guard shakes off threat from legal disruptors
Mature law firms have everything to gain from the government’s $1 billion innovation statement, so long as they are “prepared to disrupt themselves”, says a MinterEllison partner.
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This month the federal government announced its plan to spend almost $1.1 billion over four years on innovation in business. The package will fund business-based research and offer significant tax breaks to start-up investors.
Far from this being a cause for concern, Mr Cunningham said support for innovators in the legal industry is “actually a good thing”.
“It's a good thing provided law firms are prepared to think differently,” he said.
“[Law firms must] re-imagine what they do and the way they do it and be prepared to disrupt themselves to some extent. I think it's a bad thing if they are not prepared to change.”
Mr Cunningham said the innovation statement was by no means a “silver bullet” but that it had created “a wonderful buzz” in the business community and had started a “national dialogue” about change.
“I think the prime minister has made clear that this is a start so it's not the end of the process,” he said.
“There's an enormous amount of innovation potential in existing mature businesses and markets like law,” he continued. “There is a real opportunity for law firms to lead by example.”
While mature law firms are unlikely to directly benefit from the government package, the initiative will still have a positive effect by developing a “culture of innovation”, according to Mr Cunningham.
Innovation in law will also benefit the wider community, he continued. The services sector, of which law firms are a part, generates 80 per cent of Australia’s economic output according to the Why Australia Benchmark Report 2015.
“Innovating in the services sector has the potential to very significantly add to the [Australian economy],” Mr Cunningham concluded.