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{{a| | {{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 [[iatrogenic]]''': Because the provider’s primary interest is its annuity, ''[[iatrogenics|the cure tends, in practice, to be worse than the disease]]''. | *'''It’s [[iatrogenic]]''': Because the provider’s primary interest is its annuity, ''[[iatrogenics|the cure tends, in practice, to be worse than the disease]]''. | ||
*'''It’s expensive''': Every participant is in it to make a turn. Their interest is in ''participating'', and ''making a turn'' first, and only then in the “desired outcome”. | *'''It’s expensive''': Every participant is in it to make a turn. Their interest is in ''participating'', and ''making a turn'' first, and only then in the “desired outcome”. | ||
*'''It’s | *'''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? | |||
*'''It’s prone to competition''': 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? | |||
==The problem== | ==The problem== | ||
===[[Rent-seeking]]=== | ===[[Rent-seeking]]=== | ||
We’re yet to find a [[ | 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> | 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> | ||
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[[Technology]] promised a revolution but appealed to our basest instincts. [[Technology]] made contracts ''worse''. What reason is there to think it will suddenly stop now? | [[Technology]] promised a revolution but appealed to our basest instincts. [[Technology]] made contracts ''worse''. What reason is there to think it will suddenly stop now? | ||
It won’t, if the [[ | 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> | ||
===The fault in our stars=== | ===The fault in our stars=== | ||
Our friends in the [[management consulting]] profession (also [[rent-seeker]]s, needless to say) encourage this disposition through the dogma of [[outsourcing]]. Here the gist is: if you have a convoluted process that is costing you time and money, [[Outsourcing|outsource]] it, to someone better specialised, incentivised and remunerated to do it, who can do it cheaper, better and — thanks the magic of {{author|Adam Smith}}’s invisible hand — at the optimal cost. In this way do we ''entrench'' [[rent-seeker]]s, by building an entire ([[rent-seeking]]) infrastructure around this newly articulated [[process]] — with its own [[middle management]], [[operations]], [[compliance]], [[internal audit]], [[procurement]], you name it — yes, even [[legal]] — without ever asking ''whether the process was all that important in the first place''. | Our friends in the [[management consulting]] profession (also [[rent-seeker]]s, needless to say) encourage this disposition through the dogma of [[outsourcing]]. Here the gist is: if you have a convoluted process that is costing you time and money, [[Outsourcing|outsource]] it, to someone better specialised, incentivised and remunerated to do it, who can do it cheaper, better and — thanks the magic of {{author|Adam Smith}}’s invisible hand — at the optimal cost. In this way do we ''entrench'' [[rent-seeker]]s, by building an entire ([[rent-seeking]]) infrastructure around this newly articulated [[process]] — with its own [[middle management]], [[operations]], [[compliance]], [[internal audit]], [[procurement]], you name it — yes, even [[legal]] — without ever asking ''whether the process was all that important in the first place''. | ||
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{{Tablebottom}} | {{Tablebottom}} | ||
===[[Satisfaction]] is unsatisfactory=== | ===[[Satisfaction]] is unsatisfactory=== | ||
[[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 [[ | [[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> | [[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> | ||
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So these [[feedback loop]]s drive us ''away'' from the place we want to go. Instead of a self-service ethos of simplified, standardised, user-friendly<ref>And no, the “user” is ''not'' the [[legal eagle]]: the user is the ''client''.</ref> components that, though continual refinement, are honed, standardised and simplified, we have processes which keep their existing convolution, get worse, all the time supporting a more elaborate infrastructure that purportedly is there to support them. | So these [[feedback loop]]s drive us ''away'' from the place we want to go. Instead of a self-service ethos of simplified, standardised, user-friendly<ref>And no, the “user” is ''not'' the [[legal eagle]]: the user is the ''client''.</ref> components that, though continual refinement, are honed, standardised and simplified, we have processes which keep their existing convolution, get worse, all the time supporting a more elaborate infrastructure that purportedly is there to support them. | ||
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 [[ | 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? | 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? | ||
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Spend good money ''here'', instead of throwing it after bad money you’ve spent ''there''. Design an open source, open-architecture system with [[feedback loop]]s that push us ''towards'' a simplified, standardised centre, rather than away from it. Emphasise transparency and commonality, not proprietary technology. In essence, build a [https://github.com/ GitHub] for legal terms. | Spend good money ''here'', instead of throwing it after bad money you’ve spent ''there''. Design an open source, open-architecture system with [[feedback loop]]s that push us ''towards'' a simplified, standardised centre, rather than away from it. Emphasise transparency and commonality, not proprietary technology. In essence, build a [https://github.com/ GitHub] for legal terms. | ||
See [[ | See [[LegalHub]] for a high-level technical articulation of the platform. | ||
{{outsourcing}} | {{outsourcing}} | ||
*[[ | *[[LegalHub]] | ||
*[[Legal services delivery]] | *[[Legal services delivery]] | ||
*[[Why is | *[[Why is legaltech so disappointing?]] | ||
{{ref}} | {{ref}} | ||