Lawyer acceptance factor
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The design of organisations and products
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When implementing any change, and particularly one involving technology, it behoves one to consider how it will present itself to the legal eagle whom you expect to use it. Contrary to received wisdom and however proudly they may, as a class, declare themselves prehistoric when it comes to technology, lawyers are not universal Luddites, and will hoover up tech that makes them get where they think they are going faster.
Mobile email, for example, got accepted so quickly that it barely was an innovation: it went from science fiction to the commonplace overnight, skipping a phase transition altogether, like dry ice subliming to CO2. Likewise, automated document comparison, remote working, and a host of other neat recent tricks.
But those innovations, however brilliant they may, in the abstract be, that don’t make a lawyer’s life easier: that are imposed on her to make someone else’s life easier — usually a bean counter’s — and ones that deprive her of her autonomy, or reduce her to a form-filling, button-pushing functionary — expect these to take a little while longer[1] to “catch on”.
See also
References
- ↑ i.e., until the Apocalypse.