This past weekend I replaced a door. Rather, I was intending on replacing a door. The storm door on the back of our house was old and had seen better days. So about a week ago I took some measurements and went to Home Depot to get a door. One thing led to another and I had to put off hanging the door until this past weekend.
I’m far from being a handyman, but if anything only needs a hammer, screwdriver, and a drill, I can probably handle it. Hanging a door falls into that category, so off I go. I remove the old door and door frame. Unpack the new door, read through the instructions. Read through the instructions again (“Measure twice, cut once”). Assemble the door. Go to hang it up…it doesn’t fit. No matter how I adjust it, it won’t fit. There is always a gap a the top or bottom. I go back to the instructions, make sure I followed every step. Become frustrated.
Finally, I get out a tape measure and measure my old door again. 80″ on the dot. Look at the door I bought, it’s labeled 80″ as well. Measure the new door…it’s 79″. One inch off. No matter what I do, or how I adjust the door, it will never, ever fit. Despite that the new door fits 99% of the way, it useless to me. It doesn’t work. One inch is all the difference in the world when what I need is a door that fits my house.
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A Perfect Fit
This week is #ILTAcon. Maybe you’ve seen talk about it on Twitter or the coverage here on ATL. There is lots of talk about algorithm this or automatic that. Technology is the panacea that cures all legal ills. Breathless enthusiasm and over-the-top bombast about how legal tech companies are going to re-shape the practice of law. My prediction? 90% of the companies at ILTAcon this year won’t be around three years from now.
Legal + tech does not automatically equal magic. Legal work is weird and hard and full of one-off situations. While some portions of legal issues are boilerplate, large swaths of it are not. There is a reason a lawyer’s first answer to most questions is almost always: “it depends.”
Almost every time a client walks into a lawyer’s office, there is going to be some crinkle in the situation. For example, a client says, they just need a will, they don’t have much, it’s not complicated. They’ll assure the lawyer it’s a standard situation. They almost used LegalZoom, but decided they wanted to check with a lawyer, “just in case.” Tech cheerleaders would say, “Yes! Automate this! Low level work! Perfect for tech!”
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But the more the lawyer talks with the client, the more will come out. The client starts to talk about the farm they live on. Inherited from generation-to-generation. They’ll talk about abutting lands and a private road from another farm. A power line easement that is set to renew in 15 years. Their children from three separate marriages and a girlfriend they just left their wife for. Before they know it, the lawyer is knee-deep in a Whiteacre/Blackacre hornbook problem.
Or a contract is being drafted between two businesses. Or a there is a DUI stop. Or a computer is seized. Or an immigration problem. Again and again, lawyers are faced with issues and situations that, on their face, largely similar. But once you get into the weeds, once you begin to thoroughly explore the situation, anomalies arise. Unique problems that are only applicable to this one instance must be addressed.
While an off-the-shelf, algorithmically generated solution might solve 99% of the client’s problem, the 1% is what really matters. The 1% is whether or not that farm goes to the right child. Or if an arbitration forum selection clause can be enforced. Or if someone gets deported. And, unfortunately, many clients largely don’t understand this and will opt for the cheap, “off-the-shelf” solution. They’ll see something that is labeled 80″ door and figure that it will fit their 80″ door frame. Then it doesn’t. Whoops.
But you can return a door, you can’t return a jail sentence or a breach of contract. There’s no un-ringing that bell.
An Imperfect User
It’s not that there is something fundamentally wrong with the integration of technology into the practice of law. Technology is actually a great thing, if it leads to improvements in efficiency and effectiveness while benefitting clients. The shift from reporters to online case law research, email, practice management systems, ediscovery platforms, smartphones, etc. have all changed the practice of law for many lawyers. But most legal tech startups aren’t email, or anything even close to it. They’re a slightly better mousetrap. And that’s being generous. Many technology solutions are just flights of fancy that somehow got VC funding while desperately looking to shoehorn it onto a problem that doesn’t exist then burying their head in the sand when people point out that their idea is stupid Foxwordy. No matter how much they want their baby not to be useless and ugly, it doesn’t make it so.
The thing with technology, any improvement, or platform, or solution, whatever you want to call it, is that it is merely a tool. If you need to put a screw in a wall, a wrench is useless. Even if you have a screwdriver, you need to make sure it’s the right type (phillips/flat/hex/robertson/etc) and the right size or it won’t work. That one percent matters. No matter how much spin or hype someone wants to give something, if it’s not the right tool for the job, it’s useless.
Even if it’s the right tool for the job, it’s useless unless the hand wielding it knows what to do with it. In Accelerated Expertise: Training for High Proficiency in a Complex World (Expertise: Research and Applications Series) (affiliate link), Department of Defense researchers found that:
…all our lessons learned in cognitive systems engineering and complexity theory imply that more automation may result in simplifications, but they will hide deeper complexity, and at those moments where resilience and high-performance are needed, there will have to be greater operator expertise.
It doesnt’ matter how simple or clean or useful your tool is, if the hand that wields it is inept. You can build a storefront with a hammer – but you can destroy one too.
Keith Lee practices law at Hamer Law Group, LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes about professional development, the law, the universe, and everything at Associate’s Mind. He is also the author of The Marble and The Sculptor: From Law School To Law Practice (affiliate link), published by the ABA. You can reach him at [email protected] or on Twitter at @associatesmind.