Chris Walker, Office Managing Partner, Lippes Mathias LLP

In an interview with Invest:, Christopher Walker discussed Jacksonville’s thriving legal market and explained how technological advancements and evolving client demands continue to spur growth, not only for Lippes Mathias, but also for Jacksonville’s economy as a whole.

Can you share a few of your firm’s highlights from the last 12 months?

We’ve focused on expanding our talent base and bringing in high-quality counsel, including employment attorneys, litigators and corporate lawyers as well as expanding our firm’s solid foundation. We have also focused on bringing increased value to our clients as we continue building out our team, while also ensuring we’re informing clients and providing them access to the full breadth of the firm.

What are some of the greatest opportunities for the legal industry right now, and what are the general issues your clients are facing?

There is an abundance of incoming sophistication, in that players, investors, operators and companies are coming to our market, and a lot of the local groups are now being approached by these more sophisticated entities that perform more refined deals. The transactions may not be for the traditional buy-sell, and maybe instead for a joint venture, restructuring or pref-equity, but we are analyzing new ways in which to perform new deals. Many of these companies are arriving as a result of the increasing level of legal sophistication around the deals.

We are continuing to see growth in the legal market, but we are also seeing increased sophistication of the types of transactions, which puts pressure on law firms to evolve. This sophistication is putting pressure on smaller law firms, which may not be accustomed to this more complicated structuring, to start partnering with larger, already-established firms. It’s also putting pressure on some of the larger firms, in that it lets them know that we’re still not a thousand-dollar-an-hour market, and you need to partner with some folks who have the resources to do this at a market rate. That’s the flux I see in the market at the moment.

Have you observed any changes in terms of industry-specific demand for the services you provide?

I don’t believe there is one industry growing more than the other because what more clients are realizing across industries is that whether you need a lawyer to handle the front end of a transaction, the middle, or the end, a lawyer is not a one-off transactional investment. Lawyers truly become part of your operational team, and many of our clients are beginning to grasp the old phrase “pay me now or pay me later, but you’re still going to pay me.” Clients are starting to see that if they have their attorney involved throughout the entire life cycle of a deal, it removes stress and makes the job ultimately easier because the lawyer knows the entire development of the transaction.

Are there any developing trends in the legal field that you are taking note of?

AI is going to continue to be both an opportunity and a risk for lawyers, law firms and their clients. It is imperative for law firms to begin contemplating how to integrate AI both into their own practice as well as into their clients’ work. We’re already starting to receive questions surrounding AI chatbot communications – are these companies responsible for what the bot says to their clients? The answer is that they are possibly liable. Regarding our own day to day work, at what point do law firms truly adopt AI in furtherance of the practice of law and not just in the back office?

What are some of the challenges faced by your firm, and how are you addressing these issues?

You’re only as good as the people around you, so cultivating and driving talent remains one of the most integral aspects of our growth. You also need to have the right combination of culture, pay, expectations, location, flexibility and benefits. 

Another challenge involves reminding ourselves that lawyers and law firms to a large degree ebb and flow with their clients. When the markets change, interest rates go up, real estate deals go down, acquisitions go down, and these fluctuations necessitate strategic thinking about how to become valuable to our clients in creative ways.  

What are some common legal mistakes made by your clients that could be easily avoided?

Both the answer and the preventative measure would be to pick up the phone and call me. Some of the most common mistakes involve sophisticated, large clients getting into deals or simply agreeing to business terms without discussing the details with their lawyer first. The best way to navigate this is for clients to understand it’s okay to call their attorney when contemplating a business deal, to provide some of the terms and to ask if the lawyer has any issues with them. Then your lawyer has the opportunity to review and respond that from a business standpoint this decision may make sense, but legally here’s why we’ll probably want to do it another way. Involving lawyers on the front end saves our clients a huge amount of time and money.

How are you benefitting from business relocations and expansions, as well as the population growth in the Jacksonville area?

We’ve seen an uptick in the volume of people reaching out to consult with our firm on varying issues. Jacksonville is the smallest “big town” I’ve been a part of, and it’s still a “who do you know” neighborhood, so cultivating local relationships has definitely been a requisite part of Jacksonville’s growth. 

What is your outlook for Lippes Mathias, as well as the legal field as a whole, in the coming years?

I believe the legal landscape in Jacksonville will continue to grow and that we will continue to see mid- to large-size firms consolidating smaller offices. There’s a need for firms to have more sophistication and practice areas, like a one-stop shop, versus having five or six lawyers at different firms handling separate issues, so you’re going to see increased consolidation of firms. 

Jacksonville is home to many tech companies, fintech companies, and SaaS – software as a service – companies, and it will also be a hotbed for lawyers to understand how to integrate AI into their practice and to see how their clients use AI.