First-of-the-year projections are still arriving at my inbox.

Added to the traditional providers now there’s a lively and growing new ecosystem of law firm consultants. There are all kinds of them. They do M&A, marketing, strategic planning, headhunting, IT, cyber security, all kinds of risk management, and more. Their categories are subdividing, their numbers multiplying. And they are projecting up a storm.

Many report that demand for legal services is growing again. “Exciting,” one of them said this morning. Transactional work for lawyers at all levels is growing, they say.

But just about as many say that demand is flat. That group tends to say that relatively few firms are taking work away from everybody else.

Still others are looking a bit further out. They are assessing artificial intelligence, non-lawyer legal services providers, the growth of legal departments, and the continuing expansion of accounting firms onto old-time lawyer turf. Most of them predict different kinds of long term demise. Some not.

I’m seeing a trend, myself. Demand for law firm consultants is up (it must be because there seem to be so many of them). But, wait, maybe it’s down (it must be because they are marketing so hard with their projections and all).

Anyway, I project a growing market for advisors to law firm consultants. Consultant consultants.  Just like anybody else, law firm consultants need advisors: someone to help them with their elevator speeches; someone to advise them about their mergers; someone to think about the impact of artificial intelligence on what they do.

They need somebody to tell them to be agile. We all do.