Abstract
There is currently a robust debate among progressive lawyers and contract and commercial managers about how to deploy a relatively new economic actor, the online platform, to create a one-stop legal shop: a shared source of legal knowledge, including templates, clauses and commentaries on new legislation, as well as offering a neutral place for contract negotiations, professional discussions, exchange and learning. One area of debate involves questioning how legal knowledge is created, stored, updated and shared. Another is more fundamental and controversial. It questions access to, and the cost of obtaining, legal services. Legal service providers across all sectors, in both the public and the private domains, are engaging in this debate, from the restructuring and rationalisation of old ways of working to a transformation in the way that legal expertise is made available within both organisations and society. One of these efforts revolves around the fine-tuning of a vision for a free online Common Legal Platform (CLP). The opportunity offered by the free online CLP is about changing not just the way legal services providers participate in the market, or “play the business game”, but the game they play.
“Let me have men about me that are fat, sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights, yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous” [Let me be around people who are fat and satisfied. Cassius looks lean, hungry and ambitious. Such men are dangerous] is a frequently referenced line from William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, believed to have been written in 1599.
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Chomicka, B. (2020). “Let Me Have Men About Me That Are Fat.” Using a Common Legal Platform to Expand the Legal Services Providers’ Pie. In: Jacob, K., Schindler, D., Strathausen, R. (eds) Liquid Legal. Law for Professionals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48266-4_1
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