Drills and holes: Difference between revisions

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 === No-one got fired for hiring Big Law ===
-The first thing to say is that Professor Susskind’s founding observation, that people want outcomes — ''holes'' — and don’t really care about the machinery that delivers them — ''drills'' — is not some new disposition, vouchsafed by the [[information revolution]]. If it is true that we want holes not drills, it was as true in 1790 as it was in 1996, as it is today.
+The first thing to say is that this observation — that people want outcomes and don’t really care about the machinery that delivers them — is hardly new. It does not depend for its validity upon the [[information revolution]].
+If it is true that we want holes not drills, it was as true in 1790 as it was in 1996, as it is today.
 ''If''.
-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 when the phone stops ringing.
+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 when the phone stops ringing.
 It isn’t the ''hole'' people want: ''it’s the drill''. We can believe this is not so, but only by denying facts as they ''appear'' to us in favour of a mental model that ''appeals'' to us.
 === Law as a [[complex system]] ===
 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 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 lens of a four-box quadrant ignores the institutions, conventions, [[Power structure|hierarchies]] and deeply ingrained structures, embedded in glacial [[Pace layering|pace layers]] — the ways we have all worked out of comfortably working — that are there, in significant part, to protect the system from sudden shocks and, yes, to protect the selfish interests of the multitudes that presently thrive within it. They deliver [[certainty]]. They 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 “[[magic circle]] certified fresh{{tm}}” on it.