Legal Cheek tech columnist i@n davison reviews Friday’s LawTechCampLondon.
Do you want to be Kodak or Instagram? I have my wife ask me this question first thing every morning. No prizes for guessing which way I respond. But it is helpful to receive regular updates of key paradigms – and remind myself of where I want to be in relation to them.
With a view to not becoming a legal Kodak, I listened intently to the new ideas that were discussed at Friday’s fantastic LawTechCampLondon, attended by leading figures including futurologist Richard Susskind and The Kernel‘s Milo Yiannopoulos. Below I have listed the five observations which made the most impression on me.
1. Open lawyering
What do I mean by that? I mean treating clients like a social network, and, what is more, not being afraid to crowdsource with colleagues. But most of all open lawyering is about the three Cs: collaboration, collegiality and quality.
2. Time for the game-changers to change the game
Problem: new lawyers can’t compete with older, more experienced lawyers. Solution: change the game. For example, why not give legal advice using a Pinterest? Hey, why not go one better and Skype the Pinterest?
3. Take the Quality Solicitors model to the Facebook generation.
I think it’s great that we’re seeing lawyers in WHSmith. But I’d like to see the world go a step further and source lawyers for the Apple Store!
4. “New is the new old”
But what is the old new?
5. 2017
Richard Susskind, who has long been a hero of mine, forecasts that 2017 will be the year when many of the change agents we have seen in Law UK fuse to galvanise a major paradigm shift. With that thought in mind, I’d like to remind readers of the Dodo. It was fat and couldn’t fly. Personally, I’d rather be the one with the wings.
i@n davison is a senior in-house lawyer at a leading global solutions management company. There is more from i@n here.