Drills and holes: Difference between revisions

His message for those involved in the legal profession is this: do not assume that users of the legal system are irrevocably tied to how it currently works. Clients want ''outcomes.'' How the legal machinery by which these outcomes are delivered ''works'' is of little interest to them; what matters is (i) that the outcome ''works''; (ii) that it is ''cheap''; (iii) that it is ''quick''.  

So: all this nonsense with law reports, dusty legal opinions, horsehair wigs and so on is just bunk. No-one, necessarily, wants it. Heed this warning, or risk being driven out of business.

Professor Susskind first made this warning twenty-five years ago. Now presumably, someone [[Digital prophet|visionary]] enough to have read his book, or any of the several he has written subsequently on the same theme,<ref>It sounds like he stepped away from the drills and holes trope [https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/december-2019/cyber-court/ a couple of years ago].</ref> would have long since revolutionised the legal market.  

To be sure, many seem to have read Professor Susskind’s books: he has been a perennial favourite of [[thought leader]]s over the quarter of a century since {{br|The Future of Law}} came out. But — and it’s easy to be wise in hindsight, readers, but let’s do it anyway — the seismic shifts in legal industry he anticipated seem to be taking a long time to happen. [[Clifford Chance]] seems to be still in rude health, as far as anyone can tell.

To be sure, in the meantime the legal market ''has'' incrementally changed in response to the digital revolution: it has [[Change adoption|absorbed every innovation]] — [[fax]], [[email]], [[internet]], mobile telephony, [[BlackBerry|mobile internet]], cloud computing, [[Downgrading|offshoring]], [[outsourcing]], and it is currently embedding what it can of [[neural network]]s and [[natural language processing]] — ''but not really in the ways that the [[thought leader]]s had in mind''. It is an ongoing source of frustration for the legal imagineers out there, that the fundamental structures of the legal profession ''haven’t'' been revolutionised. They’ve ''rolled with the punches''.  

Yet we have had all manner of changed circumstances thrown at us since the developed world lost its [[David Bowie|major stabilising influence]] in January 2016: political insurrection. Disease. Dislocation. War. Prince died. About the only constant since then has been the ongoing good health of the traditional legal industry.

 

''The revolution has not come''.  

But it is Llewelyn Thomas’s quip that has the ring of truth. We go to [[Allen & Overy]] not because it gives the best advice, but ''because it is [[Allen & Overy]]''. Ex-[[Magic circle law firm|magic circle]] [[partner]]<nowiki/>s routinely find this to their disappointment. No-one got fired for hiring [[Big Law]]. It isn’t the ''hole'' people want: ''it’s the drill''.  

We can believe it is not so, but only by denying facts as they ''appear'' to us in favour of a mental model that ''appeals'' to us.

The legal ecosystem developed in the way it did not ''despite'' customer demand but ''in response to it''. But not just customer demand: practitioner demand, societal demands, and the all the other multifarious demands, contingencies, [[Power structure|hierarchies]] and doctrines that the wider [[complex system|system]]. The legal system is, well, a ''[[system]]'': a web of [[complex]] interactions: stocks, flows and feedback loops, subroutines, submerged agendas and [[Conflicts of interest|conflicting interest]]<nowiki/>s that push it into a gently morphing pseudo-equilibrium.  

Re-imagining this whole system from scratch through the simplistic lens of a four-box chart<ref>There is a lot of this in Susskind’s {{Br|The End of Lawyers?}} (2010)</ref> ignores the institutions, conventions, [[Power structure|hierarchies]] and deeply ingrained structures embedded in glacial [[Pace layering|pace layers]] that are there, in significant part, to protect the system from sudden shocks and, yes, that protect the selfish interests of the multitudes that thrive within it. That deliver [[certainty]]. That provide the stability that is necessary to deliver a reliable hole in the wall, or — if that is what the customer wants — that deliver a shiny new drill with lots of buttons, lights and a badge saying “[[A&O]]” on it.

Revolutions are not ''driven'' by industry [[thought leader]]s. They put thought leaders up against a wall. (Usually, one that already has holes in it).

And technology has ''obliterated'' some forms of legal process outsourcing — though it’s a done deal now, we have banked it, and thought leaders tend not to talk about it. But secretarial work, proof-reading, couriers, mailrooms, prospectus printing services, even media and marketing services — have vanished. Lawyers type their own stuff now.<ref>When the [[JC]] was a young clerk in short pants he asked for a terminal, and was told, “we don’t pay lawyers to type, son.”</ref> They send their own [[email]]. They manage their own branding, do their own webcasts of the same dreary [[continuing professional development|seminars]]. They even host podcasts. All of these changes have happened iteratively, by the effluxion of time and the gradual change of behaviours, not by revolution.

Now none of this is not to say a great deal of the legal work product is not preposterous. It is. ''Most'' of it. What is more, it is demonstrably ''more'' preposterous than it was thirty years ago: there are more lawyers, legal agreements are longer, legal prose ever more tortured, [[La Vittoria della Forma sulla Sostanza|form ever more imperiously towers over substance]] — and technology has been the ''enabler'' here. The profession has used the tools of the [[information revolution]] to ''further complicate'' everything.  

The problems with law today are not technological problems. Technology cannot solve them. They are ''sociological'' problems. They are deep. They stem from inherent [[agency problem]]s that arise in any intermediation activity. The arise from natural barrier-protection activity that goes on around all substantial [[Paradigm|paradigms]] and [[power structure]]<nowiki/>s, and the practice of law is a heavily-fortified, deeply-entrenched power structure.