Technology

My SoLI Next Steps: Less Talk, More Action

When it comes to innovation, we need help and should not be too arrogant to look outside the law to business and other professions, here and abroad.

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You know when you fly in a plane and your bag of chips expands, and then upon landing, it sometimes doesn’t deflate — and sometimes explodes when you try to open it? I asked my engineer husband why this happens, and I got the law school “it depends” type answer. Where were the chips packaged versus where you get on the plane; is the bag perfectly sealed or not; how thick is the bag; and so on. However, it has to do with pressure differentia,l and if it is big enough, the bag will explode. As I prepared for SoLI, turning over various sound bites and statements, I thought of how the change movement in the law is a bag of high-flying, unstable chips.  We get all puffed up when we attend conferences, like the bag of chips, and the outcome is usually gradual deflation as normal life resumes. But after SoLI 2018, I remain ready to explode with action.

Personally, I did not have enough time to make all my points as I followed the SoLI 10-minute limit faithfully. Below are a few thoughts that I wanted to get out that I may have missed.

Stop the Protectionism

I wrote here about how the Florida Bar is threatening access to justice with unauthorized practice of law (UPL) claims, and I firmly believe that any continuation of this type of protectionism puts the profession at risk for irrelevance. I will repeat John Grant’s quote from my ABA article because it echoes my frustration about the four in five Americans who are not served well.

We lawyers need to consider the possibility that we are simultaneously doing excellent work for the clients we have and yet still failing large swaths of society as a whole. For lawyers to largely abandon entire segments of the population but then lock the gates to the marketplace behind us is borderline unconscionable.

UPL is a pacifier for regulators. Until the numbers flip, and we have 80% served, and I refer to everyday Americans not only Fortune 1000 companies, the regulations and enforcement need a serious overhaul. We need to provide a myriad of options, including legal technicians, document preparers for pro-bono, low-bono, and solutions for moderate means Americans, online dispute resolution for all and so on.

Change the Narrative to Clients

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Number one mission of all legal professionals should be to serve clients by solving problems and facilitating justice. Our bar associations and the ABA should have clients listed first in their mission statements.

No More Reports

Let’s use the good work already done in so many states and abroad to make changes and experiment with pilots. There is no need to set up 50 task forces to solve the same problem and pretend to prop up UPL in the name of consumer protection.

And Stop Defining and Framing

I will not engage in any more definition and discussion of the problem. Frankly, it’s not important whether my definition of access to justice differs from yours, it’s a massive problem. Same for this notion that technology will create more problems. Discussing statistics and sources, it’s just stalling, and I am done with it.

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I did not become a lawyer to talk about all the ways I cannot help people. Debating whether tech savvy means using applications, which it does, but not exclusively. Tech savvy is a mindset and being open to experiment and change, using data to drive decisions. That said, lawyers can learn to code but it’s not necessary any more than doctors or engineers.

Look Outside the Law and the U.S.

We need help and should not be too arrogant to look outside the law to business and other professions, here and abroad. I tried to work in my recent Game of Thrones reading (part way through book two) but ran out of time at SoLI. I did ask everyone to “go to the wall”, in other words become like the black and do not fight for one King or organization but the entire realm, or here, the law itself.

We need to be wise about how we move the practice of law forward. The current regulations and “door shut” is more like a perpetual battle amongst many silos, all with different objectives and certainly, it’s all about valor and not about serving more Americans. As Catelyn Stark pondered, “…Teach him wisdom as well as valor? …Did you teach him how to kneel?”  It’s time to kneel to the clients and re-design and re-regulate.

Walk the Talk

At SoLI, my call to action was to have a group that will move change in the law forward, without a political agenda or for self-serving reasons. It might be too naïve or Pollyanna, but I think a mixture of legal professionals, business people, and clients can effect change, one project at a time.  I might be a lawyer, but I have my business hat  on always. To that end, my action items:

Stop attending futures and similar conferences – For at least the next year, I will only present to educate: Traklight business risk and intellectual property; legal CLEs and around key performance indicators (KPIs); data driven law practice; and technology.

To that end, I am happy to do webinars (without charge) as long as I can mention my KPI book and my soon to be released book, The Business of Legal: The Data Driven Law Practice. Also, I am excited to teach The Business of Delivering Legal Services at Suffolk Law’s Legal Innovation & Technology Certificate program in January 2019.

Join WSBA’s Young (& New) Lawyers committee in Washington State & Continue to serve on Group Legal Services Association (GLSA) Board – I am excited to participate and support the committee in any way possible as long as we are improving access to justice. And I do believe the legal plans or insurance is a big part of the access to justice for Americans.

Take an LL.M. in Global Legal Studies & Conflict Resolution – Back in school at Arizona State’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law (ASU Law), I am developing an access to justice class for law students, for in-person and online delivery. I am also writing on law school reform because it forces me to look outside our system.

Practice what I have been preaching and use technology in my new practice of law – I will be working as of counsel for Nimbus Legal and will be using my software as legal checkup for business and a bit of GC in a Box plus other technology for my solo practice.

Of course, I will continue to write here and elsewhere. Stay tuned for next time when I interview Patrick Palace about his amazing SoLI presentation around partnerships between his law firm and technology companies — it was based on real life. Patrick made the changes, gathered the data, and this is an inspiration to attorneys everywhere.

Also, if you are interested in participating with a group of like-minded people to make change in the law, join me Friday night at Elevate by LegalShield on June 29th in Florida or hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn. #onwards

Mary E. Juetten

Mary E. Juetten lives on the West Coast, holds a J.D., and is both an American and Canadian professional accountant. Mary is passionate about metrics that matter and access to justice. She founded Traklight and Evolve Law and consults as an Access Advocate for LegalShield. You can reach her by email at mejuetten@traklight.com or on Twitter: @maryjuetten.

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