Trust Darwin: How Tech Will Disrupt, Save the Legal Profession
This post has been viewed 2,479 times.
Charles Darwin was right. It’s not the strongest, nor the most intelligent, who survive—it’s those who can best adapt to change. (Never mind that some people claim Darwin never actually said that.) If ever there was a time when the legal industry needed to pay attention to that advice, it’s today. We face profound challenges, and if we don’t man (and woman) up, we are all in for some serious hurt. But the flip side of the equation is there has never been a more exciting time to be a legal professional. Because technology changes everything.
* * *
It’s old news that clients are fed up with hostage-style lawyering. They want their outside legal teams to recognize the difference between routine “commodity” assignments and bet-the-farm, win-or-die showdowns. They want to participate in decision making, they want transparent billing and they really, really do not want to pay a firm to train its new lawyers.
* * *
It’s not like Big Law hasn’t had plenty of warning. Academia has been screaming from the sidelines. London’s Richard Susskind has made a 20+ year cottage industry out of cautioning Big Law that it must rethink how it operates. He urges firms to differentiate “commodity versus bespoke” work, use technology and bill accordingly—or risk the same fate as the Titanic.
Read original articleTags:
