In the past, legal work, particularly in-house legal work, simply felt—well, simpler. Take the discovery process, for example. Before the digital era, a company involved in document discovery could simply meet with their attorney, gather physical documents, and hand them over for review.
Yes, it involved bankers’ boxes. Yes, sometimes redactions needed to be made by hand, with a giant marker, and Bates stamps were actual stamps. Yes, it might not have been the most speedy or efficient practice. But the process was simple. It was straightforward. It made sense.
Fast forward to today and the typical corporate discovery process is anything but simple. For large corporations and other data-rich organizations, discovery can trigger a byzantine labyrinth of processes, as litigation holds are placed, custodians and repositories identified, vendors evaluated and procured, data analysis and culling procedures performed, etc. In such cases, it’s not unusual for a “simple” process to end up looking something like this:
It isn’t just discovery processes that can seem overly complicated, either. Contract review, due diligence, intellectual property management, etc., all can trigger a legal Rube Goldberg machine.
Of course, this approach to corporate legal work is great for vendors and experts, who’ve leveraged this complexity into billion-dollar industries. For most in-house legal professionals, though, it’s miserable.
For professionals in emerging corporate legal departments, such complexity can seem even more excruciating. Already forced to wear many hats—to handle internal and external matters, to reconcile corporate interests with legal considerations, to stay on top of industry trends—there’s typically little room left for managing convoluted processes. Indeed, many lawyers, in-house professionals or not, would prefer a return to the straightforward processes of an earlier era.
But there’s no going back to the 80s.
For today’s in-house leaders, the question isn’t how can we go back to the old ways, but what if we could bring that simplicity to today’s overly complicated processes? What if we could make complex processes simple? What if we could cut out the middle men? What if you didn’t need certifications or training to operate legal technology software? What if you could find legal technology so intuitive anyone could use it?
The key is simplicity—a North Star that has guided many transformative user experiences.
Take, for example, finding information on the internet. In the earlier days of the web, it could be incredibly frustrating to discover websites. Search engines like Lycos, AltaVista, and Yahoo! were an exercise in maximalism. Cluttered, confusing imitations of the Yellow Pages, they made navigating the web much harder than it needed to be.
Google’s primary innovation was stripping out all that extraneous and distracting noise—by focusing on the problem the user was trying to solve when they use Google: just getting information. Not building a website, not signing up for a forum, not shopping for a new computer. Just getting answers to your questions.
Consider the amount of “googling” you do today. Nearly all the world’s public knowledge stacked up before you, a seemingly insurmountable amount of information to get through, yet accessing it is as easy as asking a simple question. It’s simplicity, accomplished by powerful, complex technology that is simultaneously incredibly straightforward to use.
Now let’s return to legal tech. Imagine eDiscovery software, for example, that was as focused on solving the primary problem eDiscovery poses—the need to, defensibly and accurately, review and produce documents—a solution so powerfully simple that it could be used by legal professionals with a wide range of experience and sophistication, from the tech-savvy lit support guru to the family law attorney who rarely handles discovery.
That should be the goal of all legal technology: to strip away overly complex processes; to remove the need for downtime, slow processing, and expert services; to create an interface that makes accomplishing tasks incredibly straightforward.
Of course, not every tool is appropriate for every use. Highly complex matters, those, for example, involving billions of documents and armies of lawyers, may merit highly complex tools, with six-figure price tags and the accompanying bells and whistles.
But for most matters, those difficult tools aren’t necessary. Indeed, difficult products cost you money in the form of inefficient processes, expensive experts, and increased risks that things will go wrong.
For the vast majority of cases, what is needed is simply simplicity.
Want to learn how to find and implement solutions that will make your in-house legal processes simpler? On December 5, Evolve the Law, Above the Law’s Legal Innovation Center (ETL), will hold its inaugural Roundtable, “Emerging Legal Departments: Legal Tech 101”, at Logikcull’s San Francisco headquarters. Leading the Roundtable are industry innovators, Monica Zent and Stephanie Corey.
Designed for general counsel of emerging legal departments, legal ops professionals and legal tech solution providers, the Roundtable will focus on how law departments can on-board legal technology and the preparation, questions, options and solutions that must be considered in doing so. This event is open to ETL members and others by invitation.
Joining Corey and Zent on the panel are:
- Ashlee Best, Legal Operations Manager at Asana
- Jane Froyd, General Counsel at Flynn Restaurant Group
- Laszlo Kupan, General Counsel at J.D. Power
- Paul Porrini, General Counsel at Smartsheet
Doors will open at 9:00am for networking and breakfast provided by our host and sponsor, Logikcull. Programming will run from 10-11:30am. Stay afterwards for continued networking and demos from ETL member companies.
Click here to register for free.
Casey C. Sullivan is an attorney in San Francisco, where he leads education and awareness efforts at Logikcull, the leading provider of cloud-based Instant Discovery solutions.
