You can lead a horse to water: Difference between revisions

← Older edit

You can lead a horse to water (view source)

Revision as of 09:04, 14 October 2022

3,046 bytes added , 14 October 2022

no edit summary

Amwelladmin

Bureaucrats, Interface administrators, Administrators

82,891

edits

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{a|work|}}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, but all that pales into infinitesimal irrelevance compared with the task of getting any lawyers to use it.
+{{a|work|
+{{image|Ouroboros|png|}}
+}}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.
-Unless it is a management-sanctioned monitoring or measuring tool, like time recording of document management, in which case you can guarantee noone will use it, but the [[middle management ouija board]] will bloody-mindedly persist with it in the face of utter failure — that is, if it really is user productivity booster —a formatting fixer, or a deltaview application, management will quickly implement a use monitoring process with the express goal of concluding noone is using the software, so it can be junked in a cost saving drive.
+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 officer]] 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>
+Yet the legal ops team remains ''fixated'' on [[legaltech]]. This is not just because its personnel are easily led, but also because they have been told: “GET OUT THERE AND [[Innovation|INNOVATE]] SO HELP ME”. This is, needless to say, management code for, “you must use [[legaltech]] to shave 15% off the legal budget and at the same time make us look like digital wizards.”
+As ever, the single, unrelenting focus — notwithstanding four good decades of academic unanimity that it is the ''wrong'' thing to focus on — is reducing ''[[Cost reduction|cost]]''.
+That, in turn, is predicated on the belief — widely shared by [[Thought leader|thought leaders]] and [[Daniel Susskind|wishful academics]], however  absurd — that [[legaltech]] is a cheap way of replacing lawyers. This is the [[general counsel]]’s desperate hail-Mary: some snappy [[legaltech]] will demonstrably, and quickly, ''save hard dollars''.
+But giving productivity-boosting tools to [[Inhouse counsel|inhouse lawyer]]<nowiki/>s does ''not'' save hard dollars. To the contrary, it ''costs'' hard dollars. ''Lots'' of hard dollars. As soon as this dawns on the [[Legal operations|legal ops]] team it will stampede to remove it again.
+Our metaphor of the [[bucket painters]] refers.
+{{quote|
+{{bucket problem}}}}
+Unless it is a management-sanctioned monitoring or measuring tool, like time recording of document management (in which case ''no-one'' will use it, but the [[middle management ouija board]] will bloody-mindedly persist with it in the face of utter failure) — that is, if it ''really'' boosts productivity: a formatting fixer, a [[Redline|deltaview]] application or something of that nature — the moment the first invoice arrives management will implement a use-monitoring project with the express goal of concluding no-one needs it, so it can be junked in a cost saving drive.
+Now: could someone pass me a bucket?
+To ''paint'', obviously.
 {{Sa}}
 *[[Legaltech]]
+*[[The shock of the new]]
+{{ref}}