How technology will change legal practice
Ask most people to imagine a lawyer and you will be given one of two scenarios:
- A slightly older man in a suit, sitting in a wood-panelled office with papers strewn across the desk, possibly reading a will to grieving relatives.
- The Harvey Specter character from Suits. Professional, ambitious and cut-throat.
Both types exist and both have something in common. They are working in an industry which permeates every aspect of our lives yet operates using outdated methods.
This inefficient working style was written about earlier in the year by @sarahreedVCGC in her article: Lawyer, Disrupt Thyself. I largely agree with the points raised in the article.
Sarah’s article was a rallying cry to lawyers to join modern working practices, something that would benefit themselves and clients. This is my answer to that call.
Lawyers (mostly) don’t understand technology
I mean this in a nice way. We’ve spent years upon years studying hard to understand the law, and trust me, it’s not easy. It’s not an industry which is self-taught, nor is there a ‘break things and move fast’ mentality. It is a naturally cautious, analytic, and measured industry. All positive traits that people want in a lawyer.
These traits can cause issues when it comes to improvement however.
We currently operate in a manner which is still heavily reliant on paper, treats fee-charging metrics as cutting-edge, and survives on poorly-coded, outmoded technology which is procured at great expense. We’re also generally too busy to do anything about it. As with many corporate cultures, we keep things around if they work.
As a profession we should be looking at how we can improve, rather than how can we preserve.
What technology can do for law
Lawyers live their lives in six minute units. Every six minutes is — at least in theory — chargeable. Make a coffee? You’ve lost money. Colleague asks you about your weekend? You’ve lost money.
Technology can stop the bleeding. A lot of chargeable time comes from tasks which are vital for a client’s case, but are routine and easily automated. The majority of lawyers are not aware of the potential to replace routine tasks with programming.
For example, the drafting of court documents could be rapidly automated in the same manner as RocketLawyer does for high-volume tasks. Of course, drafting the details of a summons remains the preserve of a highly-trained, skilled lawyer, but making up the actual paperwork is a mundane task that should not be taking precious time from either lawyer or client.
Similarly, clients are often treated poorly when it comes to legal process. This isn’t the fault of the lawyer, it’s the fact that other areas have massively improved on client care and the profession has not caught up.
We are still fielding client queries via telephone and email in 2014. There is certainly a place for this type of communication but there are far more effective ways of communicating routine information.
Take a house sale for instance. This is a transaction that a great many of us will take part in, yet is quite opaque to a non-legal client. Compare the traditional paper and phone call model to AirBnB. Clients should be able to log into a dashboard and see a progress report on where their transaction is and what action points need to be addressed by them. This would speed up a transaction immensely and drive down fees.
Likewise for selecting a firm and settling on a cost. Of course, this will vary depending on your requirements, but increasingly firms are working on a fixed-fee basis. I can only see this trend growing as clients seek predictability in their outlays (though litigation may prove to be an exception).
The way that lawyers are currently selected is through a tender process for larger bodies, or by individual clients coming in for meetings and being provided with a fee-estimate. This is inefficient and again takes time away from both lawyer and client.
It seems incredible that a Skyscanner/Money Supermarket style tool is not available for pricing routine legal work in the market.
There are countless ways in which we can use technology to improve the legal market, the more pressing issue is how we get there.
So how do lawyers change their working practices?
Of course we cannot change too quickly, this risks disrupting work to an unacceptable level for the profession. But firms must change or risk being left behind as startup-style companies take business away.
This can be achieved by changing the hiring profile. Currently firms are hiring bright young graduates fresh out of law school and putting them through a training program which typically lasts for two years. In this time the graduates are exposed to legal work and build up their skills.
Law firms should continue hiring the next generation of lawyers, but also data scientists, programmers, marketers and mathematicians. Law is not a world unto itself, and it cannot afford to continue treating itself as one. The legal industry must modernise and become more technologically aware or risk being left behind.
