Happier lawyers, happier lives
Clarissa Rayward, family lawyer and founder of the Happy Lawyer Happy Life podcast, is committed to changing the way lawyers work and live. As Director of the Brisbane Family Law Centre, Clarissa embraces mediation and collaborative law approaches to allow the out of court resolution of family law matters. Having grown her practice from a single practitioner firm in 2008 to a thriving multidisciplinary practice, Clarissa was named a finalist in the 2012, 2013 and 2014 Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards and has been featured among Queensland’s Leading Family Lawyers by the Doyle’s Guide to the Australian Legal Profession for the past 4 years. Clarissa also recently won a place on the 2017 Legal Innovation Index for her work in creating “The Club” an online mastermind for entrepreneurial lawyers.
“In terms of my business, I’ve really enjoyed trying to learn as much as I can to ensure we embrace change. We’re driven by two things: offering better services for our clients – where technology can make things cheaper, faster and easier – and providing a better workplace for us as employees.
Law is known as a profession that can be slower to embrace change. What we are seeing at the moment is a greater willingness to look at technology and the way we work as lawyers, which I think is a really good thing.”
Chief among her achievements within the firm was a successful move from time-based billing to value-based billing. “It gave better price certainty for clients and took away one of the biggest stressors in legal practice for team members,” said Clarissa.
As a small firm with limited resources, Clarissa appreciates the fact that so much technology is freely available.
“So much now is free, which enables businesses of my size to make changes very quickly. We can be a bit nimbler than larger businesses, because we don’t have such extensive chains of command and people who need to approve certain decisions.”
“The reality is that every industry right now is open for disruption,” said Clarissa. “In family law, we’re already seeing online divorce services which are owned and operated by non-lawyers that offer very good services for those going through divorce and separation. This is happening in every area of law. We as lawyers need to be mindful that there are and continue to be new players coming into the legal market, and if we don’t keep our eye on the ball, we run the risk of being significantly disrupted.”
However, Clarissa sees technology as enabling lawyers to embrace what makes them truly excellent – and useful to clients.
“Lawyers who do well will be those who really do have that human skill – a real capacity and understanding of human psychology, and all the emotion that goes with conflict. Historically, lawyers were trained to deliver only factual legal solutions, whereas the modern lawyer is going to need all of those other skills that in the past have almost been trained out of us. Skills that have been the bread and butter of lawyers for many years will be done by computers.”
In short, increasing uptake of technology will allow lawyers to be more human.
“We should start from a place of optimism,” Clarissa said. “Look at the change as positive, not negative. Consider our role from a client-centric perspective. Really think about our services in terms of what is best for our clients. Doing this will open up new opportunities, new products, and new services we haven’t provided in the past.”
In this environment, new lawyers have more opportunities than ever. “Many new lawyers are coming through with tech skills well beyond those of us that have been trying to learn along the way. You still need to be a great lawyer and to know the law, but there is a capacity to focus on other skillsets that will really help in their careers. The hierarchy that existed in practices is largely disappearing.”
“In terms of the Centre for Legal Innovation, Terri Mottershead and the College of Law have created a beautiful think tank for people to share and collaborate. That’s going to be key to the profession surviving in the future. In the past, we’ve been quite competitive and quite secretive. As a forum where knowledge sharing is encouraged, the CLI will really benefit innovation and the profession moving forward.”
You can follow Clarissa on Facebook or Twitter, sign up for her blog on her website or find out more about her on LinkedIn.