Lawyers who
are likely to survive changes are those who forge new alliances,
new efficiencies and new modes of training.
THERE IS nothing
like the turn of the millennium to stimulate chatter about the
"Long Run View." As far as what we litigators will
encounter in the future, I can guarantee there will be a Y3K
problem.
Beyond that, I
can only hunker down and speculate like the rest about the shape
of things to come, whether shapely or misshapen, as a
consequence of digital technology's relentless revolutionizing
of every way we work and play.
Remember, the Age
of Digital is just beginning; it won't be over until the Digital
Fat Lady sings, and she is unlikely to sing anytime before about
the 27th century. If you doubt me, how long have we been working
off Gutenberg's hunch that people would buy and read printed
books?
"What
technology will happen?" is a question of secondary
importance; "What will change?" is the operative
question. Here's a first peek at one of many possible future
changes that will make litigation practice radically different
from what we know today.
Metamorphosis
One
Litigation
Metamorphosis One: The Virtual Guild: For the last few
years, the IPO crowd has been talking about what the 'Net is
good for and, if you are selling stock, the answer is always
making lots of money.
One much hustled
piece of jargon has been that the 'Net allows for selling to
affinity groups. An affinity group is any like-minded, dispersed
group of people. For instance, ocean kayakers. Nobody knows many
of them, but worldwide, there are a lot of them. They don't
bunch up real well in front of the same advertisement. But we
can bunch them up on the 'Net because they want to read and
learn about what they share an interest in-- ocean kayaking.
Hence, we can stimulate them to buy paddles and compasses and
inclement weather gear cost efficiently by fusing them together
with wires and the Web.
But there is an
alternative concept of the affinity group that is not being
advertised much because no one is selling stock in it. That is
the affinity existing among those of us who share a stock and
trade; for example, the legal profession. We have a profound
professional and economic interest in enhancing the scope and
quality of our practices any Web way we can. But we tend to be
better imitators than we are innovators, and we have always
dwelt on the monkey-do end of the spectrum when it comes to
boldly going on the Web where no lawyer has gone before.
Lawyers have
imitated merchants in using the Web to sell services or market
themselves. What we have overlooked is the great benefit that
the Web affords attorneys is not in quantifying their services
in the marketplace, but in qualifying lawyers for the fang and
tooth professional competition to come.
The traditional
means of marketing legal skills for the great and small lawyers
are collapsing around our ears. Firms mean nothing, geography
means nothing, old-school ties mean nothing. The burgeoning
digital economy allows naught for personal allegiance, brand
loyalty, and the obsolete economies of centralized legal
services within one honking big firm.
The lawyers who
are likely to survive the changes are those who forge new
alliances, new efficiencies, and new modes of professional
training. All three will emerge from a new application of the
Web, The Virtual Guild.
The Virtual Guild
is a label for lawyers using the Web to combine all the
essential knowledge and expertise from their respective
specialties, to pool intellectual work product to common
benefit, and to collectively underwrite research, issue analysis
and contacts within supporting disciplines. The technology is
quite familiar: a private Web site to which admission is
password protected and comes at a price paid by the user in
either cash or in kind, or both.
What membership
offers is a multiplication of intellectual force, the power of
the many afforded the one, an online resource for every statute,
commentary, case synopsis, law link, valued expert, relevant
case, current motion practice, the vast combination of all the
work product of the membership that would be helpful to other
members of that professional affinity group. With such an online
foundation of instantly accessible expertise, the bar is raised
for every participating lawyer with access to a computer. The
professional power of the practitioner, gifted with the
intellectual resources of his or her professional virtual guild,
would grant the underdogs of our legal system a whole new bite.
The legal and
social consequences of digital information about the profession
being "unionized" amongst groups of specialists would
change the balance of power in the litigating world.
So far, private
enterprises have combined and collated information to make it a
marketable product. In many ways analogous to the farm
cooperatives of another American generation, the costs of
information assemblage are not so prohibitive that professions,
or even specializing professionals cannot afford to finance the
work. Including absolutely everything you would ever need to
know to do quality work in your area of practice would be the
content goal of these systems for expert advice and support.
With the current capabilities of Web-based information
architecture, there is nothing unrealistic about this goal.
Imagine how
different your law practice would become if the entire known
universe of information and practice guidance for what you do
were available to you in one multimedia hyperlinked desktop
electronic book? While such a resource would never diminish the
advantage of the brightest and most creative among us, it would
provide an upward ratcheting baseline for practice standards
that both the least and the greatest of us could build upon.
The expertise
obviously exists within our profession to build Internet tools
of this kind for our collective use. The question the future
will answer is whether we are expert enough in the ways of the
coming information economy to understand the enormous societal
and professional advantage such a Web fount of practice guidance
would afford us? Those who can see the future will own it.
