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You can lead a horse to water: Difference between revisions
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[[File:Ouroboros.png|450px|frameless|center]] | [[File:Ouroboros.png|450px|frameless|center]] | ||
}}It is one thing designing an order-of-magnitude-better, revolutionary app; quite another to get it through the ''Hunger Games'' experience that is [[procurement]] and [[information security]] clearance — budget | }}It is one thing designing an order-of-magnitude-better, revolutionary app; quite another to get it through the ''Hunger Games'' experience that is [[procurement]] and [[information security]] clearance — budget 18 months in spent time and five to ten years off your life — but all that pales into infinitesimal irrelevance compared with the task, once installed on the desktops, of getting any lawyers to ''use'' it. | ||
This presents a further hurdle to | This presents a further hurdle to [[legaltech]] implementation, seldom spoken of but every bit as gruesome. For if take-up is not immediate and universal, in an obscenely short period of time, some officious twerp from the [[Chief operating office|operating office]] will be along with a clipboard asking ''why'' no-one is using it, whether it is really value for money, and threatening to off-board it before quarter end. This is the dilemma: ''before'' you buy it, [[legaltech]] is the promise of [[innovation]], [[performative]] [[Thought leader|thought-leadership]] and [[digital prophet|digital prophecy]]. ''After'' you’ve bought it, [[legaltech]] is an ''operating cost''. An operating office is attracted like a moth to both, so they turn out to be symbiotic. | ||
Here is the thing: the [[legaltech]] promise is to ''boost productivity''. In [[Private practice lawyer|private practice]], enhanced productivity is, at least in theory, correlated with increased, hard-dollar, revenue. | |||
''But [[In-house legal eagle|inhouse]], it is assuredly not.'' [[Inhouse counsel]] ''don’t'' generate revenue; they are not ''allowed'' to. They ''cost'' revenue. This is not just ''by coincidence'': the [[legal department]] is ''by its very [[ontology]]'' a cost centre.<ref>As the JC is fond of saying, the last time a big firm tried to turn one of its [[control function]]s into a profit centre, [[Enron|''it didn’t work out so well'']].</ref> | |||
So, here is the inhouse dilemma insofar as it relates to [[legaltech]]: The legal ops team is ''fixated'' on legaltech. This is not just because legal ops personnel are easily led, but also because they have been told: “GET OUT THERE AND INNOVATE SO HELP ME”. This is, needless to say, management code for “you must use [[legaltech]] to shave 15% of the legal budget and at the same time make us look like digital wizards.” That, in turn, is predicated on the belief, widely held thanks to [[Thought leader|thought leaders]] and [[Daniel Susskind|wishful academics]], that [[legaltech]] is a cheap and easy way of replacing lawyers. Thus: legaltech must demonstrably, and quickly, ''save hard dollars''. | |||
But boosting inhouse productivity does ''not'' save hard dollars. To the contrary, the eye-watering licence fees for [[Software as a service|legaltech “as a service”]] applications ''cost'' hard dollars. ''Lots'' of hard dollars. [[Legaltech]] increases bottom-line spend. As soon as this dawns on the Legal Ops team they will stampede to remove it again. | |||
Our metaphor of the [[bucket painters]] refers. | |||
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{{bucket problem}}}} | {{bucket problem}}}} | ||
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*[[Legaltech]] | *[[Legaltech]] | ||
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