Richard Susskind’s keynote address to the ABA Tech show this spring summarized his recent book, The End of Lawyers? (note the question mark), which has created a fair amount of controversy. His basic tenet is that, driven by demand for lower cost and more efficient services and the use of the Internet as a platform for services (so-called “Web 2.0”), that legal services have a logical progression. Starting from the traditional totally Customized (or “bespoke” to use his British terminology) services (billed hourly) through Standardized, Systematized, Packaged and finally to Commoditized, services will tend to move along that spectrum toward the right (toward Commoditized).
Bespoke –> Standardized –> Systematized –> Packaged –> Commoditized.
Furthermore, these changes, which are already underway, will be significantly accelerated by the demands of the current economy (do more for less), although they will be different for different types of law (and even different areas of the same firm or same engagement). In this connection, he identifies a series of “disruptive” technologies which are bound to change the way the law is practiced and legal services delivered, from Document Assembly to what he appropriately terms “Relentless Connectivity,” online legal communities (both closed and open in wiki-type configuration).
By and large, his scenarios are already starting to take shape. One of his more persuasive points is that when what he terms the “Net Generation”–everyone who cannot remember when the Internet was not the primary place you go to interact or look something up–makes up the majority of the population, it will demand the availability of legal services over the internet. For example, if you routinely consult WebMD before seeing a doctor or as a way to cut through the medical gobbeldygook, why wouldn’t you consult “weblawyer” (an imaginary name) before going to see your lawyer? Similarly, rather than an “initial consultation” why not just fill out a client intake form online and have the attorney get back to you? For basic everyday things there will be on line services available, you won’t even need a lawyer.
The second critical point is that the specific forms that exist today – LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, Twitter, etc. may not exist in the future in the same form, but the type of communication they represent will dominate in some fashion. Thus objections to these services as they exist today are not on point because while the form may change, the underlying process remains the same.
Many of the trends he identified just 2 years ago are already starting to come about, such as a rating service about lawyers (Avvo) which recently drew a lot of fire. Many more are sure to prevail in the next few years (although it is perhaps anybody’s guess and to which ones).
One of the fundamental tenets of the book is that these developments will be driven by, and can come about only through, the workings of IT, or more succinctly, advanced software. This is particularly the case of the advanced expert systems he discusses as a basis for document assembly.
In particular, he predicts that the traditional “billable hour” will largely (though not totally) be replaced by flat-fee billing. Larger engagements will be broken up into pieces, many of which will be out-sourced on a flat-fee basis, although some pieces may still be done by the hour. He points out, for example, that 75% of the work contracted out by Cisco’s legal department is already on a flat-fee basis. Given the pressure to reduce costs through greater efficiency and the fact that, as he says, “efficiency is the enemy of the law firm that charges on an hourly billing basis.” he regards this trend as inevitable. While he admits that “it is not easy to convince a group of millionaires [i.e., senior partners] within clear sight of retirement that their business model is wrong and then should change direction and embrace new technologies,” this resistance will die out over time.
Susskind speaks mainly of in-house counsel for large corporations and generally large-scale programs and expert systems. One central problem he does not adequately address, especially when his larger “expert systems” are scaled down to smaller clients/firms, is the issue of the quality available on a smaller scale.
Expert systems are what he terms “disruptive technologies,” that is, they fundamentally disrupt the traditional workflow of law firms. He admits that while these may currently be of a lower quality that what users demand, as they evolve, they may rapidly become competitive. One can see this in the current state of Web-based practice management programs such as Clio or Rocket Matter.
However, what will be the quality of some of the document assembly/expert systems? He cites the example of Wikipedia, claiming that an independent study showed that the quality of some 70 or so of its articles on science was the equivalent to the Encyclopedia Britannica. That begs the question, however, since the issues at hand will be much more contentious than science articles (say, evolution or abortion – there is a reason may universities have banned using Wikipedia as a source in research papers). Another expert program he refers to positively is the software used to predict the risk factor of derivatives and swaps. As is now known, this software catastrophically failed to accurately assess mortgage risks because it’s assumptions were either wrong or incomplete, and thus played a non-trivial role in sparking the mortgage crisis and the current economic situation. You rely on such programs at your peril.
In terms of software when he speaks of “disruptive technologies” and “innovation” he is talking about something akin to what was more traditionally known as a “killer app,” that is, something that makes it possible to do things that could not have been done before, and makes previous methods of work dramatically inefficient. The first “killer app” was of course VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program.
It is fairly easy to see how complex document assembly or other expert systems fit into Susskind’s scheme. You answer a series of questions and the computer assembles one or mor documents based on the answers. But what about other software, document management or practice management software? Stay tuned for the next installment.
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