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}}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. | }}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 [[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 | 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. | 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. | ||
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''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> | ''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% | 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]]''. | |||
But giving productivity-boosting tools to inhouse | 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. | Our metaphor of the [[bucket painters]] refers. | ||
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{{bucket problem}}}} | {{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 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. | 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? | Now: could someone pass me a bucket? | ||
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{{Sa}} | {{Sa}} | ||
*[[Legaltech]] | *[[Legaltech]] | ||
*[[The shock of the new]] | |||
{{ref}} | {{ref}} | ||