This company, Axiom, represents the type of innovation within the legal industry that we are talking about in class. The company recognized the problems of traditional law firms– over billing, the partnership pyramid, and combined with economic factors, the overall loss of interest in practice by their own people.
They recognized an opportunity to innovate and now their business model is almost like a cross between part-time attorneys and the Legal Zoom online lawyering model. The result is lower rates than a traditional law firm
I am glad that you posted about Axiom because I actually worked for them for about two years in between undergrad and law school. You are absolutely right: in addition to some of the technological innovations Axiom has developed in the corporate legal space, they have also created an alternative model to traditional law firms where corporation clients can engage attorneys via secondments. The result is that Axiom attorneys serve as an extension of the in-house legal team to help out with special projects and work spikes, rather than sending off work to a law firm and receiving a finished product. Although it requires a bit more oversight and effort from the in-house team, it also helps in-house corporate counsel by letting their teams focus on more important work and helps them more directly manage legal work at a fraction of the cost of traditional law firms. I was on the business development team for Axiom and we often could provide attorneys for 40-75% less than the cost of law firms.
But Axiom also leverages technology and large teams of lawyers to work on big projects as well. Here is a Forbes article from 2015 about a $73 million deal Axiom closed with a client to fundamentally change and improve a client’s processes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2015/02/12/legal-services-firms-73-million-deal-strips-the-mystery-from-derivatives-trading/#579c4dd7fcca