Yesterday, someone retweeted someone who retweeted someone, and by some means I saw the following tweet:
Which was from Sarah Glassmeyer, a law librarian. It was in response to a story about a new legal tech startup called Stampery, which uses Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology in order to verify and authenticate documents. Stampery’s stated goal is to replace notaries:
Today we are launching Stampery.co to send notaries on vacation forever. We have nothing against notaries as Über has nothing against conventional taxi drivers or Airbnb against hotels. It’s just that sometimes technology gives a response to real human needs in a way that is radically different to how it has been done for decades, or in our case centuries.
Notaries, simplifying, are any authority with a given power to guarantee and certify, documents, creations, transactions, contracts or identities and sometimes they are needed to store the certified information, or to allow only relevant information to be stored in other official databases.
Their service is centralized and therefore creates oligopoly and by definition scarcity. The cost of certifying though is high and inefficient.
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There’s more in their post if you want the details. While Stampery is happy to try and replace the millions of notaries in the U.S., they really want to break into the highly regulated European market where notaries have a much greater role in legal transactions than they do here.
In the initial story, Levi went on to say the above quote in Glassmeyer’s tweet, to which I had a similar reaction as she did — to scoff and laugh. Yet, blithely ignorant, self-assured confidence is something that comes up again and again when tech people try to do things in the legal industry.
Tech people who have little to no exposure to the legal world want to come in and do something they believe is going to be “disruptive.” You can come up with the most fancypants, fool-proof, tech/math-based system in the world, but judges don’t have to accept squat if they don’t want to.
Just because you’ve made something new and you think it is beneficial or world-changing, doesn’t make it so. Glassmeyer, who had initially tweeted with such promise, then let me down with the following:
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To which I responded:
It would be like lawyers with no computer experience walking into a hackathon and starting to tell developers how to write code. It’s just nonsense. But the tech crowd doesn’t want to hear it.
Want more proof? Look at the parody Twitter account of Startup L. Jackson, who regularly lampoons the the technology industry and startup culture. In a post at re/code, Jackson is lauded as being able to tell the truth because of his anonymity:
Jackson’s anonymity is a natural solution to tech’s cult of positivity, where criticism is vilified and sunny optimism and support are applauded. Many are afraid to be entirely honest, lest they hurt their professional relationships. With the safety of secrecy, Jackson can “cut through all the bullshit,” said Matt McGunagle…
Newsflash: If your industry requires anonymity for honesty, it sucks.
That’s the thing with practicing lawyers and the tech crowd. It’s not that lawyers are anti-technology, it’s that they are anti-bullshit. That’s why clients come to lawyers, they need someone to cut through all the crap and find a resolution to their legal needs. It needs to be done effectively. It needs to be done efficiently. But most of all, it needs to be done correctly, within the confines of the law, for their specific scenario.
Yet so much of what is introduced with a flourish of puffery into the legal industry by people from the tech crowd is gone within a year. Mostly because they have no real experience with how lawyers actually function or work. And as soon as their amazing new widget hits the real world, it falls apart.
That’s not to say that there are not legitimate, beneficial changes to be made within the legal industry by introducing technological efficiencies and solutions. Lawyers have adapted numerous technologies over the past decades. But they do so slowly because it’s not about what they want, but what is best for their clients. And just because some kid developed some new SaaS thinks he knows better, doesn’t make it so. More than likely they’re falling victim to the Fallacy of Chesterton’s Fence. But as is noted above, technology companies circle the wagons at the slightest hint of criticism.
Here’s the thing, lawyers are not all on the same team. We’re an adversarial, feisty bunch that march to our own drum. The sooner technology companies realize that, and stop acting like they do, the better. When a legal tech company that actually has a useful product/service helps bolster those that do not, it’s to their detriment. Lawyers that might have been open to the company will now view it with skepticism.
So just a friendly heads up to tech people who want to move into the legal space — cut the crap. Come in, be honest about your product/service, and expect a beating. Lawyers are going to dissect whatever you bring in every way possible to see if it actually works. If it does, great, people will adopt it. If not, then it will be cast aside. But no one is going really give a crap about your feelings either way.
TL;DR?
Want to come into the legal industry from the tech world? You’re Michael.
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.