I blame cable TV.
It has sucked the meaning almost completely out of these words:
- incredible
- unbelievable
- absolutely
- awesome
It’s unbelievable.
I blame cable TV.
It has sucked the meaning almost completely out of these words:
It’s unbelievable.
The statistics about the courts are so extreme that you can’t believe them: 30 million people a year are unrepresented in state courts; 86% of the civil legal problems of low-income people go with little or no legal help.
You can’t relate to numbers like this. There’s a phrase for it: “psychic numbing.”
The 30 million cases are mostly low-dollar, routine kinds of things. So the most representative stories aren’t all that dramatic. They are numbingly mundane.
The real story is about the system.
Nobody loves the system. But the system is the infrastructure for the rule of law. And the rule of law keeps the economy moving. The growing burdens on the system are the result of an increasingly complex society. The system is overloaded.
Innovations are needed.
A response is beginning to gather. Where a high volume of low-dollar, routine traffic is choking the system, the idea is that you don’t need a Juris Doctor to handle those problems, even though you do need somebody who knows what they are doing. The response that’s gathering support is to create a new category of legal services, or a new cohort of legal services providers, ones that are focussed on limited legal processes or procedures. Ones that focus on the mundane.
Call them navigators for now. They don’t need a three-year legal education in order to know what they are doing and to do better than non-lawyers representing themselves.
I’ve come across three articles today that grapple with artificial intelligence. |
One says that automation and artificial intelligence will take over all human jobs within 125 years (half in the next 25 years). Another says, well, OK, but lawyers have at least 7 skills that no machine will ever take. And the third says that all routine lawyer jobs will be taken by the machines, but maybe not the exceptional, non-routine, jobs.
All businesses will be (are) information in some fashion. Virtually all information can be digitized. Ultimately, all that information will be obtained, accessed, and understood by means of automation and artificial intelligence.
Virtually all evidence in virtually all business and commercial cases will be obtained and accessed as it comes into being. Discovery will be completed before there is a complaint.
The role of lawyers will be something new. Or, maybe it’s more accurate to say that the role of lawyers will go back to the origins of the profession.
One of those articles says, “Lawyers Are in the Information Business. Get Over It.”
Maybe instead, information companies are in the law business.
Lalita Clozel at the Wall Street Journal is reporting that:
Fed Vice Chairman for Supervision Randal Quarles said the agency’s policies on bank control have been difficult to parse, except for people “who have spent a long apprenticeship in the subtle hermeneutics of Federal Reserve lore, receiving the wisdom of their elders through oral tradition.“
Wall Street Journal, April 24, 2019, Lalita Clozel, “Fed Moves to Ease Rules for Bank Investors.”
So, the Federal Reserve is promulgating new rules intended to elucidate (and loosen) its bank control policies. And so begins the lustration of yet another once tidy and “pleasantly remunerative” corner of MidLaw’s erstwhile law practice.
This must be among the final steps in eradicating law practices where obscure practitioners could dispense subtle hermeneutics for a fee. Shame that.
O tempora, o algorismi!
Cartoon by P.C. Vey, New Yorker, March 9, 2009
First graders this year will graduate in 2030.
By 2030 up to 800 million workers around the world will have lost their jobs to automation.
In a presentation at Westtown School recently, New York Times journalist and Westtown graduate Kevin Roose said, “Things are going to keep changing rapidly… People who are able to adjust to [new industries] rather than clinging to the old way of doing things are going to have a big advantage.”
Eric Hoffer famously said,
In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exits.
In 2030, today’s first graders will need competencies such as creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, adaptability, and empathy.
Next fall, Guilford College will bring forth “The Guilford Edge.” It is designed precisely to develop the learners. Learners first, learned later.
Kai-fu Lee, leading artificial intelligence exponent, makes the following observation about lawyers and artificial intelligence. He’s in line with MidLaw’s dogged confidence in the prospects of lawyers who focus on core (indeed, 19th Century) lawyer skills and MidLaw’s confidence in the mid-sized law firms that provide the best setting left for cultivating those skills.
Top lawyers will have nothing to worry about when it comes to job displacement. Reasoning across domains, winning the trust of clients, applying years of experience in the courtroom, and having the ability to persuade a jury are all examples of the cognitive complexities, strategies, and modes of human interaction that are beyond the capabilities of AI. However, a lot of paralegal and preparatory work like document review, analysis, creating contracts, handling small cases, packing cases, and coming up with recommendations can be done much better and more efficiently with AI. The costs of law make it worthwhile for AI companies to go after AI paralegals and AI junior lawyers, but not top lawyers.
10 Jobs That Are Safe in an AI World
MidLaw has been saying so:
Observations made in the field over the course of decades confirm that the two words most abhorrent to the greatest number of practicing lawyers are “mandatory” and “retirement.” (The former is virtually universally despised.)
Recent surveys report that 73% of lawyers in the United States plan to “die at their desks.” Seventy-seven percent (nearly 78%) of law firms have no retirement policies.
Is there is a law firm management problem here? If you die at your desk, were you doing your best work just before?
After age about 60, some issues become statistically significant for everybody:
For most people the statistics are not alarming. But 9% of people between ages 65 and 74 will encounter some form of disability. It gets worse later.
So, lawyers thinking about their lives and careers must face INELUCTABLE facts. At some point, you will not be able to do some things as well as you did when you were younger. Deal with it.
And, while individual lawyers in good health may find a 9% chance of disability a reasonable chance to take, their firms don’t have the same luxury. Sixty percent of law firm partners are older than 55. In that context, a 9% dysfunction is a strategic issue. How many partners does a firm have in the 65&up zone? Multiply by 9%. Adjust for 75&up.
What are the implications of this? Dying at your desk is problematic. “Mandatory” and “retirement” are not getting the job done. Problems are growing as Baby Boomers burgeon into their “maturity”. Strategic problems.
Some thoughts about this anon.