The Upside of Disruption
We can all sense that big changes are afoot in the legal profession, but there does not seem to be consensus within the profession as to what exactly those changes are and what will be the implications for practicing attorneys. Those open questions have inspired some trepidation amongst attorneys.
I firmly believe there is a major upside to the disruption currently upending the legal field.
Often, public discussion about change taking place in the legal industry gets framed in terms of:
- The exciting new technologies that are being applied to legal work; and
- How much of a threat they pose to traditional large law firms.
The headline of one article — “Can Elite Law Firms Survive the Rise of Artificial Intelligence?” — is exemplary of the sort of trepidation many attorneys have about the growing role of legal technology. But there’s a better way to think about these issues, on both counts.
With regard to the first point, I would never dissuade anyone from getting excited about new and potentially groundbreaking legal technology. Certainly, we at Casetext love thinking about and working with natural language processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. They are all fascinating, and the inventive ways that they are being applied to legal work is well worth discussing. But it’s also true that the buzz around AI sometimes frames the technology as a kind of shiny object, distracting us from more mundane realities about the real value of AI. One of those realities is this: the reason technology, including AI, is being brought to bear on the legal industry is that it offers solutions to everyday inefficiencies that plague legal practice.
It’s not sexy, but it’s true. Bloated legal teams with junior lawyers racking up long hours on sometimes-unnecessary drudge work, among other wasteful practices, have long been a fact of life at law firms. Corporate clients began pushing back in earnest at the start of the Great Recession, a movement that opened the door — and the minds — of law firm leaders to the use of technology to combat inefficiency. In an important sense, then, much of the tech being introduced now is not futuristic at all. Instead, we are playing catch up — bringing to the legal profession a focus on efficiency that companies in manufacturing and other sectors have been contending with for decades.
On the second point, conceiving of legal tech companies as an outside threat to law firms is also misguided. The impetus for the current tech revolution in law came from lawyers themselves. Corporate legal teams have been pushing aggressively for firms to adopt measures — on billing, staffing, and, yes, technology — that will lower the cost burden of legal services. But lawyers at Big Law firms, too, have been at the center things. Some, including us, started companies (and hired former Big Law colleagues) because we saw a way to use technology to improve the way legal tasks are performed. Even law firms themselves are getting into the act. Denton’s NextLaw Labs and Orrick Labs are just two examples of law firms realizing the potential of legal tech, and deciding to play a role in driving things forward.
You can describe the disruption that’s going on in any number of ways. But for me, it’s more about what the tools can do than about what sort of technology the tools rely on; in other words, it’s more about efficiency and doing better work than about artificial intelligence. And it’s more about the legal community than outsiders. Like many who see the true value of legal disruption — from legal tech providers to practicing litigators — I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next.
