Originally published on November 23, 2009 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.
I recently caught a rerun of Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, a brilliant film that asks whether people would heed a warning from the future about the future. Apparently the answer is no. In the film, psychiatrists diagnose a messenger from the future as a sociopath and lock him away. There's a message in this movie for small law firms.
If someone told you that everything you took for granted would soon change or be swept away altogether, would you believe them? I didn't think so. Besides, we small firm lawyers are too busy running our offices, connecting with clients, staying current, doing research, keeping pace with technology, and trying in vain to have a personal life to look ahead more than a few years.
When your day revolves around deadlines, to-do items, calendar events, and meetings, you have no choice but to focus on the present at the expense of the future. And if it ain't broke, why fix it anyway? Whether it's a dated piece of hardware, a 10 year-old chair, Windows 95, or a Compaq gathering dust in the corner, the devil we know is better than the devil we don't.
2001: A Web Odyssey
Even those of us wedded to our traditions would probably jump at the chance to make our professional life easier, right? At least that's what I thought when I created a Web site to gather the body of legal information and programs slowly building on the Internet in the late 90's.
In 2001 I introduced eLawCentral at the ABA Tech Show as the first interactive Web portal for lawyers. Back then most people used Yahoo if they were online at all. eLawCentral was built on the theory that as knowledge-workers, lawyers would want to save time and money by using and sharing resources online. Despite some initial curiosity however, interest dropped off fast.
It seemed as if the vast majority of lawyers simply could not figure out how the Web could help them, much less why they should spend time on the site. We limped along for another year but after the dot-com bust in 2001 I closed shop, returned to lawyering full-time, and channeled my enthusiasm back into law practice … for a while.
2004: Kicking It Old School
Despite my efforts to remain focused, by 2004 I was on the lookout for Web innovations again. This time I found blogging. The first blogs I developed were for the bar association committees that I chaired. That year I also began giving seminars about the future of law practice, contributing to discussion groups, and doing whatever I could to share my vision.
What was that vision? Home pages for every lawyer and judge, downloadable decisions with embedded hyperlinks, oral arguments as podcasts, RSS feeds for every courtroom, etc. I saw it all as if those innovations already existed — because most of them did. It's just that nobody wanted to use the tools.
Local attorneys who read my blogs were tepid about the suggestions at first, and then declared angrily that they had gotten by fine without the Internet, and eventually stopped reading my posts altogether. But the more they ignored my warnings the more emphatic and provocative my writing became. Ultimately, it was no use. Lawyers circa 2004 had not acclimated to the Internet and nothing could change that but time.
As for the judges, they were not as polite. The bench was openly hostile to the Internet and considered it a source of misinformation, depravity, or worse. Maybe they resented having to learn how to use a computer, preferring to thumb through books in a library, or did not care whether they had all pertinent information before reaching a decision. Maybe they were simply creatures of habit.
Whatever the reason, I got the message loud and clear at the annual bench-bar conference in 2004. As I stood before the gathered judges and bar leaders I reeled off the reasons why they should incorporate the Web into their research, embed hyperlinks in their opinions, create homepages with RSS feeds, publish their decisions online, and all the rest of it. I was shouted down before I got to the end of my speech, but it was probably for the best. The court was no more prepared to accept the future than my peers.
2005: Pinging Me Softly
By 2005 the legal Web was showing signs of developing real traction. For several years, lawyer-bloggers like Dennis Kennedy and Bob Ambrogi, as well as lawyer-entrepreneurs like Tim Stanley and Richard Granat, had demonstrated that technology could liberate consumers of legal services (including lawyers and judges).
By then the Web had become integral to my practice. In the decade since law school it had enabled me to leverage information, compete with better-funded rivals, establish a virtual office, secure bigger clients, and work with people from around the country. The forces in motion by then would inevitably change the profession whether that change was welcomed or not.
Most of the innovations brought about by the Web involved sharing information. Large firms eclipsed small firms in the adoption of these technologies, perhaps at the behest of their clients. Only now, five years later, have small firms begun to catch up.
Back to the (Future) Drawing Board
So what about the future? Frankly I'm not sure. I don't live there anymore. I decided that being timely was better than being ahead of my time — or at least less bruising to my ego. But I'm hopeful.
Although the profession took its sweet time incorporating the Internet, it seems to be making up for lost time. Scarcely a day goes by that I don't find another innovation designed for lawyers: Basecamp, Bill4Time, Clio, DocStoc, JDSupra, LegalMatch, etc. The Web has become a commodity like electricity and running water.
The biggest surge of creativity in this space may lie ahead of us. Maybe the End of Lawyers isn't around the corner after all. But given my experiences, I refuse to make any predictions. Instead, I'll get back to you in a few years.
Written by Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.
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