The Changing Role of Lawyers

In a post enti­tled “The new legal physics,” Susan Crawford writes:

When I went to law school, I had the sense that we all pretty much knew what the role of lawyers was. This view was such an essen­tial part of the legal land­scape that we took it for granted, much as we take for granted the idea that there is such a thing as an iden­ti­fi­able moment in time or a per­sis­tent “iden­tity” for any given person.

She goes on to say:

Things have changed.

In the elec­tronic world we now inhabit, most lawyers rarely argue before courts; any­one can look up a rule; and deals get done by the lawyers who have done exactly that type of deal before and can pull it off for the low­est price. We may be find­ing (like Einstein) that many of the clas­si­cal assump­tions we started off with don’t work in a world that is very dif­fer­ent from the one in which those assump­tions were born and grew up. This is dis­turb­ing. It’s just as dis­turb­ing as the notion that time depends on the observer, and the idea that each of our iden­ti­ties changes in light of our life expe­ri­ence and the influ­ence of the minds of the peo­ple around us. But it could free us up to be dif­fer­ent kinds of lawyers.

As an older law stu­dent with a num­ber of years of IT man­age­ment expe­ri­ence behind me, I find the idea of a chang­ing legal land­scape less dis­turb­ing, per­haps, but no less strik­ing. I am also not con­vinced that “any­one can look up a rule” and that the “low­est price” is so key.

Or, rather, it is true, any­one can do so, and price is crit­i­cal, but as in the tech world, where any­one can look up an algo­rithm or nab some clip art, it takes prac­tice, train­ing and expe­ri­ence to add that “some­thing extra” that is so crit­i­cal. Lawyers, like effec­tive devel­op­ers and design­ers, will need to add value. It is not enough any­more to just grad­u­ate from a top law school and then sim­ply work at a big fancy firm to earn respect (and per­haps even a lit­tle awe?). We need cre­ative­ness and intel­li­gence to do things just a lit­tle dif­fer­ently, just a lit­tle bet­ter, in order to add value to our legal services.

One of the biggest dan­ger fac­ing the legal pro­fes­sion, and one I see reg­u­larly amongst clue­less man­agers deal with IT, is the old trap of “a lit­tle knowl­edge is a dan­ger­ous thing.” Like design­ers and devel­op­ers, lawyers need to guide those who have looked up a rule for them­selves, and help them under­stand their own lim­its, and the value we can bring. And, when appro­pri­ate, we can even help them do it them­selves (although I shud­der at the con­cept of FrontPage, the legal research edition…)

Susan Crawford’s con­clu­sion is spot on, I think:

Nothing ever goes away. Law firms aren’t going to dis­ap­pear in my life­time. But it does seem to me that lawyers will have to evolve to deal with a sys­tem that is vastly dif­fer­ent from what was in place just twenty years ago. Everyone has access to all the infor­ma­tion, so lawyers can’t charge for look­ing things up. They can only stay “off the tread­mill” if they let go of the idea that they have some omni­scient brood­ing right to charge for the kinds of tasks they used to do. Like news­pa­pers, movie stu­dios, tele­phone com­pa­nies, and post offices, lawyers will have to adapt to the new physics of the internet.

(From the Susan Crawfold blog via cearta​.ie.)