Attorneys are smart people.
I once taught attorneys in the Legal Department of the Office of the Mayor–New York City how to use the Workshare app for document comparison, a critical component of negotiating agreements between opposing counsel.
I was so embarrassed when the head of the Legal Department asked me to meet with her privately at the midday break. Part of me was expecting kudos but deep inside I knew my presentation wasn’t working. After I settled myself, it didn’t take her long to say, “This isn’t working.”
“What?” I was defensive. At the break earlier in the morning Bob Boomer, Esq. had emailed her that my “call for transparency” was totally “inappropriate.”
- Workshare shares documents in a secure, online workspace, but “We’re not sharing our IP with anyone,” said Mr. Boomer.
- Workshare gathers signature pages and assembles the closing binder fast, but “Not so fast,” Bob said. “We need to carefully verify everything.”
- As for document comparison, Workshare allows everyone to immediately see all revisions as the negotiation progresses. Bob was quick to caution against transparency because it exposed internal negotiations privy to one side only.
This all happened years ago. Today, would a Millennial lawyer react the same way? I think not. Today’s tech-savvy millennials value transparency and collaborative workflow.
Developers are smart people, too.
Another story: At a global AmLaw 100 firm in New York City, I wanted to encourage the use of Redlines with tracked changes to create the latest version of an agreement in negotiation between parties. What could be more efficient than accepting/rejecting changes, then saving the comparison as a new version, especially when responding to the other side’s revisions?
My tests proved otherwise. The current technology generates a Redline in a file format that does not support “fields.” In the comparison document, the Table of Contents (TOC) turns to text and all the Cross-references break. After doing the accept/reject thing, you still have to regenerate the TOC and insert all the Cross-references before you can save the comparison as the latest version.
Though certainly an improvement over inputting opposing counsel’s revisions by hand, this efficiency comes at the cost of document automation. Both are critical to a lawyer’s business process.
Developers of document comparison software offer lawyers a powerful lever to streamline the negotiation process, but most developers have no place to stand inside a lawyer’s shoes. Archimedes made this point more than 2000 years ago when he said, “Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.”
He conjured the image of Atlas standing in outer space to push on a lever lodged under planet Earth. Are very smart developers standing outside the Legal space to build text comparison software?
What technology do lawyers think they need?
In the delicate discussion around investing in process improvement, all stakeholders must agree on one premise: Is the technology useful? Only context, a nuts and bolts understanding of the business process – and the business goals at stake – can bring about that agreement. Only in a business critical context can stakeholders identify the ROI they need to buy.
That’s why I teach attorneys tech. Lawyers need to articulate their workflow in a way that developers can hear it.
That’s what this blog is about: articulating the workflow of practicing law in a way that reveals how technology can improve it. So if you’re anxious about technology making your job obsolete, this blog will dial down the fear factor, and in the process, may identify some process improvement opportunities that can boost your bottom line. The Legal space is long overdue for innovation with a capital A“I.”