Are lawyers terrible at tech?

When I tell lawyers that I work as a legaltech consultant helping lawyers make better use of tech, they often say "I'm terrible at tech" and an embarrassed laugh. It's not an age thing, even the bright young things glued to their mobiles, say the same thing. And don't even mention Excel spreadsheets!

Despite their protestations, I refuse to believe that an entire profession full of smart and committed people can be terrible at tech. For a couple of reasons.

Firstly, when I show lawyers how to use tech they pick it up quickly and spot the potential. The questions they ask show they quickly understand when a tool is going to be useful.

But mostly I believe that traditional lawyers with no aptitude for computers can learn to make use of tech to transform how they work because I did it.

My first law job back in the late 1990s was in a beautiful office tower. I had an office overlooking Sydney’s shiny blue harbour. There was a fully serviced kitchen. Every morning the mail was delivered between 9 and 11. Letters went out by 4. If you wanted to look up any legislation you walked down to the library and hoped no one else had borrowed the bound A5 paper copy of the Act you needed. When you switched off the computer at the end of the day, work stayed there unless you carried it home on purpose.

Faxes became longer and more common but they were slow. If you sent a long fax to a small firm an irate solicitor on the other side would ring up and complain that you caused their machine to run out of paper.

I clearly remember when another litigation lawyer showed me how the other side was emailing him letters. I had only been using email for internal messages and I remember thinking, I’m not sure I want the other side to be emailing me at any time. But it came to be. Communication moved to email and the daily mail drop dwindled. DX fell out of use and Australia Post cut back on daily deliveries.

I discovered legaltech when I was working in a small CBD firm in a litigation team of me and my boss. When an urgent discovery job came in, there were no paralegals to help. I thought that perhaps if I didn’t sleep, I could make the deadline. In desperation I tried a no-frills version of eDiscovery software, Nuix, on a spare laptop. It took a few hours to work out how to use it, but by the end of the day I had a discovery list. I’d never managed an entire discovery in a single day before.

I was hooked.

I learned how to make the most of the tech that was available, and tried new tech tools as they entered the market. I swapped to working paperless and championed introducing new tools in the firm. I talked to anyone I could find about what tools they used.

By 2018 I was working as a litigation lawyer for a firm that didn’t even have an office. I worked from home or where my clients where – we used co-working spaces and business clubs to meet. I had cloud-based practice management software and a document management system accessible on my laptop, a mobile phone and a portable battery recharger. We rarely received mail, but when we did, it was scanned at a serviced office and emailed. My clients did not care where I was working, so long as they got help with the problems they were facing.

Having worked in a firm that tried to use less paper and a firm that was established to be paperless, the second way was much better. Going paperless requires wholehearted dedication. You must be ruthless about eliminating paper and set up systems to operate without it. But the benefits are huge. When we needed to manage large volumes of paper for a hearing we used specialist legal printing companies, who accepted files uploaded on their portal, turned them into tabbed folders and delivered them. It was so much easier than begging already overburdened secretaries to leave their dictation and squeeze in my photocopying.

I still don’t know how to code, and much of what happens within IT systems is a blur to me. But I know that becoming tech enabled helped me enjoy my work more, keep my clients happy, and gave me more options for the rest of my career. Tech makes the remote work I now enjoy possible. It keeps me in touch with a positive supportive network across the country.

Being tech enabled is a way of life I never thought I wanted but I now couldn't live without.

***

I share tips and ideas on how to make the most of your existing tech to work smarter and more efficiently. I've written a book that is a practical guide to beoming a tech enabled lawyer, no matter where you work. If you would like to hear more tips and be updated on when the book is available,?register here.