[Financial Post]
Five years after the onset of the global economic slowdown, there are signs that the legal services industry is slowly starting to reshape itself in Canada.
Surprisingly, the greatest innovations in legal service delivery are coming from small nimble players who are doing much more than their big firm competitors, but using fewer resources. Many of these lawyers saw the rewards of “big law” – and rejected them.
Peter Carayiannis left the Toronto office Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP several years ago to strike out on his own. He serves a select cadre of clients who want his legal services, but delivered in a more personal and cost-effective manner than they received at a large firm. He soon realized that there was demand for a new breed of law firm that sought out efficiencies without sacrificing quality. In mid-2012 he created Conduit Law P.C. – a firm which he imagined would be lean and responsive to clients’ needs “unfettered by traditional law firm constraints.” Conduit Law now serves a corporate client base with three types of offerings: long-term embedded lawyers, short-term gap lawyers, and specific project targeted lawyers.