Talk of change in the legal profession is a hot topic. The back-to-back conferences this month in New York—LegalTech New York, LexRedux and ReInvent Law—all addressed particular perspectives of where the future lies.
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Change is messy. Technology is an easier answer than remaking the rules that create the bounds within which the legal profession works. Lawyers can move to the cloud individually largely without regulatory interference, where remaking themselves as an alternative business structure or multidisciplinary practice requires a group effort.
The benefit the people thinking up the change bring is to highlight the aspirations of what might be: better tools for self-represented parties, broader definitions of who can practice law, and how they can do it. The failure of the cogs of aspiration and reality to mesh is why the discussions seem to revolve around the breathless and the mundane and not practical ways forward.
