Contemporary legal practice faces the paradox of both fragmentation and consolidation through the effects of globalisation of legal services, of clients, and arguably of the law itself. Increasingly, thanks to rapid developments in technology, non-lawyers also deliver legal services.

At the convergence of these influences, lawyers increasingly work outside their ‘home’ jurisdiction: travelling and working internationally, managing matters for international clients, or dealing with laws that bear an international context. They also face competition from law start-ups that are unconstrained by jurisdiction, and consequently lawyers’ work includes interdisciplinary technology-related contexts.

This innovative work represents a research-based approach to identifying legal practitioners’ skill-sets necessary to deal successfully with the wide range of issues encountered in the delivery of legal services in the contemporary global environment.