Perhaps Lawyers And Technology Can Never Be Just Friends

It's time to realize some lawyers are just 'Mean Girls.'

A lot of digital ink is spilled annually over whether or not lawyers and technology can really get along. The parameters of the legal technology conversation dictate that we daily fret about whether technology is a panacea to be embraced or a cancer to be rejected. As Overton Windows go, it provides solid fodder for those of us covering the space.

But the phrasing of Mark A. Cohen’s latest piece for Forbes — “Lawyers and Technology: Frenemies or Collaborators?” — suggests that the whole debate is overdue for a recalibration.

It’s a small rhetorical choice, indeed the article itself could just as easily fit under the traditional tech narrative with a title like, “Reasons Why Lawyers Must Embrace Technology,” but it alters the frame of the article and captures the lived reality of legal technology more accurately than the discourse we’ve pursued for years.

Because the luddites are largely gone from the legal industry, if they were ever as significant as imagined for the sake of polemics. Even the crustiest lawyers understand that technology is critical to their practice. Whether it’s their aging Blackberry or the electronic filing system they pay their assistant to understand, they know the industry relies on tech, and their embrace or rejection of that fact is entirely situational. Word processors good! Artificial intelligence bad! Smartphones good! Social media bad! It’s not productive to view any lawyer as opting out of the technological age — it’s time to look at the landscape as those who throw themselves into the change and those who passively embrace tech while telling everyone behind its back that they’ve heard that tech is a whore.

Lawyer qualms about technology reflect the industry’s ongoing transition from a lawyer-centric, labor-intensive guild to an interdisciplinary, tech and process-enabled competitive marketplace. Lawyers are not driving the change—consumers, entrepreneurs, technologists, and other professionals are. An insular industry rooted in precedent and reputation is morphing into an interdisciplinary one that values innovation and data. Many lawyers, to borrow from T.S. Eliot, are ‘no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation.’

To use the old maxim that the three choices at any juncture are to “lead, follow, or get out of the way,” we’re done debating “follow or get out of the way” and it’s time to debate whether lawyers need to “lead or follow.” How involved will you be in the development of the future of the profession? Because that future is going to be driven by technology, and if you don’t join the collaboration, it’s going to be drafted by a programmer whose legal know-how is limited to two seasons of Suits. Get on a tech committee, learn what’s out there, take a seat at the table before the next game-changing event.

And it is game-changing. As Cohen points out, technology has altered the whole flow of legal service delivery:

Sponsored

The days of law firms handling matters from start to finish are over; consumers now select the appropriate resource and the right provider for the job. Demand for law firms is flat in an expanding market for legal services. An increasingly bright line separating legal practice and delivery expertise is turning the traditional law firm partnership model on its head. Legal ‘practice’—differentiated legal expertise, experience, and/or skills– is narrowing while the ‘delivery of legal services’–the business of law/legal operations— is expanding.

That’s where the clients are going. When evaluating technology in the legal profession, attorneys have to ask if they plan to lead or follow.

Lawyers and Technology: Frenemies or Collaborators? [Forbes]

Earlier: This Is Why You Absolutely Have To Get On Your Firm’s Tech Committee


Sponsored

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

CRM Banner