LegalHub: theory: Difference between revisions

{{a|projects|}}The [[legaltech]] proposition is obvious: replace this laborious, error-prone, analogue, ''human'' process with an authenticated, governed, audited, straight-through processed, ''fast'' online digital interaction. So why doesn’t it work, and what can we do about it?

[[legaltech]]’s shortcomings present in different ways but boil down to the same thing: ''[[rent-seeking]]''.  

*'''It’s prone to ''use-case'' [[obsolescence]]''': Its [[proprietary]] nature means [[legaltech]] tends to be tightly controlled, top-down managed and targeted ''abstractly'' at a ''perceived'' demand and an ''anticipated'' future state.<ref>[[Thought leader]]s are no better at predicting the future of [[Legal services delivery|legal services]] than they have been at anything else.</ref> But the future, as imagined by the [[thought leader]]s of the [[legaltech]], was forged in the ''now'', which tomorrow will be the past. Just as previously imagined futures from the past have proven — flying cars, off-world replicants, the colonisation of Mars, the [[singularity]], [[A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond - Book Review|a world without work]] — predicting the future was, and remains, ''hard''. The answer is not to try: to leave the architecture open to users to imagine as they go. No-one predicted SETI@home, after all.<ref>The internet was revolutionary because it imagined ''no'' future, but left that — and continues to leave it, right? — to users. By the way, [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ BOINC] is a bit of a clue to where this is all going.</ref> But “leaving everything to the user” doesn’t give a [[rentier capitalist]] much to do, so [[rent-seeker]]s tend to constrain their products, requiring paid-for development, and consigning them to short-term [[obsolescence]] ''without continual maintenance''. And maintenance means ''rent''.  

*'''It’s prone to ''competition'' [[obsolescence]]''': To treat what should be a ''utility'' as a ''profit opportunity'' exposes you to another source of obsolescence. ''Competition''. How can you know ''your'' platform will be ''the'' platform? How do you keep that position once you’ve got it? ''Friends Reunited'' ring a bell?

We’re yet to find a [[legaltech]] provider whose business model does not involve ''extracting [[rent]]''. This they commonly justify by reference to the ''value'' their product provides, which they equate to the ''total cost of labour and infrastructure'' it saves. Historians, and those who enjoy irony, will notice how, in equating the value of a service to the net amount of labour it requires — or in this case “saves”, this resembles the [[labour theory of value]].

You might ask how a vendor could know. You might also wonder what there is to gain by cutting the wage bill of some school-leavers in Bucharest, if you pay most of what you save away again, to a start-up in Old Street which bought some code from some school-leavers in Bucharest. Especially if that vendor will then be able to intermediate your process for the hereafter, adding the cheerful chime of a clipped ticket each time his machine spits out another document, or while your stuff collects dust on his server.<ref>This is called “hosting” and it seems to be a cash cow. But aren’t terabytes of data storage, like, ''pennies'' these days?</ref>   

Wasn’t the promise of the [[Information technology|information revolution]] ''grander'' than that? Weren’t things meant to be ''free'', not just ''marginally cheaper but a lot more complicated''?

'''''[[Iatrogenic]]''''' — it is a cure that is worse than the disease<ref>This is a super concept and if you haven’t come across it you owe it to yourself and {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}} to read about it in his superbly bombastic {{br|Incerto}} series.</ref> — in that in promising to ''alleviate'' the [[tedium]] of all that [[boilerplate]] — all the pernickitiness and the low-level wrangling over [[representations and warranties]] — technology throws open the window on a world of exactly that kind of low-level tinkering. The cost of pedantry has ''plummeted''.  

In the olden days, the [[Anal paradox|anality]] of contracts was bounded by any lawyer’s natural capacity — deep, to be sure, but ultimately finite — to hold a superstructure of piecemeal salutary conditionality in her head. Nowadays, [[contract]]s can be infinitely, infinitesimally varied and endlessly customised. One can cater for any [[Pedantry|predilection]], whim, [[For the avoidance of doubt|doubt]] or [[proviso]]. We can put one in every line, if that is our wish. We can command that a space between words must be, or not be, ''italic''.<ref>When the great [[J. M. F. Biggs]] first isolated and documented a [[Biggs hoson]] in the wild — the celebrated [[bold full stop]] in a “Boats” [[repackaging]] — it was a once-in-a-generation event.</ref>

This should not be a surprise. The word-processor did not ''shorten'' legal discourse. [[Email]] did not truncate communication. When Andy gaveth, it was not Bill, but ''our yen for verbal diarrhoea'' that tooketh away.

It won’t, if the [[legaltech]] [[Rent-seeker|rent-seekers]] have any say in it. Note the misalignment of interests: vendors have a direct incentive — in fact, a ''need'' — not just to fix, but to ''continue'' “fixing”, because “fixing” is how they get paid. They design their disintermediating machines to only disintermediate ''so far'': users must remain dependent enough on their code, their systems and their expertise, that they have to pay an annuity for it. To pay ''[[rent]]''.<ref>I have lost count of the times that that a tech provider has told me users cannot have edit or configuration rights on a piece of software. There are two explanations for this, and neither is edifying: one is that the software is so fragile or poorly designed that allowing a user to tinker with it will make it break; another is that it is so basic that allowing users to see it will reveal how simple it really is.</ref>

[[Mick Jagger]] and [[Keith Richards]] composed [[Satisfaction]] in 15 minutes whilst sitting by a pool in Florida. They are still, 55 years later, reaping colossal dividends from that inspired quarter hour. Fair play to them: this may be the law, but it is not good law. It is a bad model for [[legaltech]].

[[Rent-seeking]] encourages us to squirrel away [[Verbiage|verbal mush]] on the grounds that it is “proprietary technology”. There is ''nothing'' — utterly nil — that is special, clever or even ''desirable'' about legal [[boilerplate]].<ref>I take a liberal view of [[boilerplate]] as “anything that doesn't make it into the termsheet”.</ref>

[[Boilerplate]] is the point where [[marginal utility]] touches zero. That ISDA schedule — yes, friends, the whole god-forsaken thing, even the customised {{isdaprov|ATE}}s? No-one ''cares''. No-one ''likes'' it. No-one ''wants'' it. It is a regrettable externality; a grim fact of life. [[Legal]] [[negotiation]] is the dreary formality one must go through ''to get to the heart of the deal''. It is not the sausages; it is [[Ask nicely|the mask you need to put on so you can go into the supermarket]] and ''get'' the sausages.

Recall once again, {{author|Yuval Harari}}’s observation about the domestication of wheat,<ref>Harari’s suggestion, which owes something to [[Douglas Adams]] and his [[The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy|pan-dimensional hyper-intelligent mice]], is that ''wheat'' domesticated ''homo sapiens'' and not ''vice versa''. See https://www.ynharari.com/topic/ecology/ </ref> and apply it here: is your [[legaltech]] implementation, and its attendant support structure, some kind of [[extended phenotype]] that has evolved: a marvellous beaver dam; an adaptation wrought magically on the environment so this delicate but vital process can survive?

Or is it the ''opposite''? Is the ''process'' it purports to fix the adaptation, the [[extended phenotype]] upon which the whole [[rent-seeking]] infrastructure depends to survive?  

See [[LegalHub]] for a high-level technical articulation of the platform.

*[[LegalHub]]

*[[Why is legaltech so disappointing?]]