Reg tech
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JC pontificates about technology
An occasional series.
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Why is reg tech so disappointing?
Document assembly has been around for a good 15 years — they thought it was “Lawyer-killing disruptive technology” in 2006[1] and, well, the cockroaches — we cockroaches — are still here, ladies and gentlemen, and document assembly technology still doesn't work very well.
Why?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- —Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law
Where “magic” is in the eye of the beholder, and one measures “sufficiently advanced” relative to the person bewitched. When your beholders inhabit the legal or compliance departments - the technology doesn’t have to be awfully advanced to seem magical. Especially in a proof of concept[2]. Just airily drop in expressions like “blockchain”, “chatbot”, “natural language processing”, “algorithm” and “AI” and you will sail through.
And so you do. Thus it should come as no surprise that reg tech really isn't that clever in the first place. It is sold by big-talking[3] small-thinking, big-blagging startups who are faking it till they make it. If your reg tech was started by a guy who was an associate at Shearman it isn't going to be much chop. I mean, is it?
If you want to see real AI and real powerful algorithms at work have a look at a modern digital audio workstation like Apple’s Logic Pro X. The tech is genuinely ground-breaking, the user interface is designed to be manned by the user, the expectation is no software-as-a-service because the software is so intuitive you don't need it.
- Doesn’t disintermediate: still requires external IT (SAAS, right?), internal IT, management, procurement, a process through which whatever value the concept offered will be bloated, deprecated, rigidised and commoditised to the point where using the tool is a chore. An imposition.
- Doesn’t provide user flexibility: policy will see to that. The product will calcify, it is too hard, requiring too many approvals and too many business cases to develop.
- Doesn’t provide out of the box usable content: to be usable the will require lawyers, and there are generally precious few of those, and they generally are refuseniks and low-cost-location rent-a-seat types who can follow instructions but aren't any good at writing them.
What none of this does is put useful tools in the hands of the user.
- Pricing model req
References
- ↑ See Darrel R Mountain’s OUP monograph on the subject from 2006 “Disrupting Conventional Law Firm Business Models using Document Assembly”
- ↑ One could define the terms of reference of a successful POC as being extensive enough to show off the clever bits, but limited enough to conceal the rubbish.
- ↑ blockchain, chatbots, AI - you know go you are.