By: Jeff Carr

Jeff Carr — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 14:36:42 +0000

Dennis — I’m really looking forward to this series and commenting on it. While your list of 7 will no doubt be thought-provoking, I thought I’d throw one into the mix you may or may not have thought of. It may not be a 2007 trend/threat, but in my limited view, it promises to change the way legal services are delivered and what kinds of law firms and legal service providers survive into the next decade. Whetted your appetite? In my view, the most interesting technology trend that threatens to be the disruptive technology to effect massive change is wiki based knowledge sharing among corporate clients. If you agree with me that there are no truly new legal issues, only application of facts to those issues, then the game changer is to build networks of corporate clients to share content on “black letter” law. Unlike FindLaw and others, the wikipedia model can answer the challenge of too many articles and uncertainty over currentness and accuracy — wiki participants would ensure that the stuff is up to date and accurate. Law firms and legal publishers will use the platform to showcase their knowledged, but will be flamed if they refuse to participate in the open platform. This will permit corporate clients to get the basic legal principles, answer many questions more confidently and turn law firms back into what they should be — counsellors selling judgment as opposed to guild based vendors selling hours. Content, once again will become king and law firms will not be the provider of choice for that content. They will, of course, be the provider of choice for counselling, dispute resolution and other services — but will no longer be able to charge muliple clients to answer the same essential legal question time and time again. What does this mean for firms or more importantly for young lawyers? Reductions in head count, reductions in pay, appreticeships and massive disruption — but then again disruptive change tends to be just that. Change may be slow or may be dramatic, and will be brutally restisted by the status quo (remember what Machiavelli said about the agent of change). But there are other GC’s out there that think as I do and we’ll build it ourselves if others don’t help us.

Comments on: Announcing a Blogging and Writing Experiment: Seven Legal Technology Trends for 2007 (A Series of Blog Posts)

By: Jeff Carr