Legal Tech and the Changing Legal Services Industry

Quote of the Week

“Rogers — he of adoption curve fame — opens his textbook, Diffusion of Innovations (5th Ed), with a case study of a health worker who spent two years failing to convince a Peruvian peasant village to boil water. The village had a public health crisis. Boiling their drinking water would solve it. Only 11 out of 200 families accepted and incorporated a simple practice that was free and would deliver immediate, tangible benefits...

How about doctors? There is an eerily similar story to tell about the decades it took doctors to accept and start to apply the empirical evidence that washing their hands before surgery was in the best interest of their patients...

Each story resembles the legal market in some way. We want to pull our hair out because it often seems like only outliers are willing to incorporate the obvious and practical (boiling water). A major impediment to innovation is autonomy-loving professionals resisting reasonable recommendations to modify their behavior for the benefit of their clients (unhygienic doctors). Mix in some exogenous shocks—like the Great Recession—and some automation anxiety (chess). And you get slow, uneven movement towards a new normal (NBA) as regulations, systems, skills, and mindsets incrementally co-evolve.” (D. Casey Flaherty)

(If you’re interested in a very interesting, albeit very long read, the full article is available here.)

Who to Follow

Interested in learning more about Legal Tech?

Consider following Casey Flaherty (@DCaseyF), a legal tech consultant and former in-house counsel at Kia Motors. Casey also blogs regularly at geeklawblog.com.