Richard Susskind about social media and Legal IT Software Suppliers

15
Sep
2010

Rob Ameerun

"Legal IT software suppliers are central players in the transformation of the profession"

This month, a new paperback edition of Richard Susskind’s last book “The End of Lawyers?” will be published. A good reason for Legal IT professionals to interview Susskind and ask him about the current status of the legal industry. Today the second part of the interview, where Susskind talks about social media and legal IT software suppliers.

Although the uptake of social media by the legal world has somewhat accelerated over the last two years, there is still a big lag, “and this does puzzle me” Susskind says. “I think there's also more specialised systems like Legal OnRamp where actually an online community will go for lawyers and the clients.

These techniques, these technologies, these systems and services, it seems to me, offer unprecedented power for lawyers to share knowledge with one another, to communicate more effectively with one another, to collaborate more usefully with one another, to maintain a network of contacts far more flexibly and comprehensively and yet most law firms continue to believe that these techniques are the playthings of their children rather than tools they can themselves embrace. So that's been a disappointment for me. That's not to say it won't be taken up. I don't think it's too late to embrace social networking, it just rather disappoints me that other professions use these technologies, and lawyers for some reason are always rather late to the party.”

“I have little doubt that within five years, social media, social networking systems, will play a central role in the daily lives of lawyers. They might not look like, or be called Facebook or LinkedIn, but the kinds of techniques that these systems embody will actually become part of the daily way of lawyers working. I have to say, I didn't two years ago think that it would take just two years for people to raise the technology. But I had hoped for greater enthusiasm, so you still meet a great deal of scepticism.”

“That said, if you look at any law firm, the trouble is they're not yet using them for business purposes. I think there's greater potential for clients, for example, to create closed communities of the law firms that advise them, for law firms to collaborate more effectively with one another, for clients to collaborate more effectively with one another. But I don't see that suddenly they will do it in an open way. I think they'll embrace the technologies and use them.”

Although good examples of effective social media usage by law firms are relatively rare, Susskind mentions an example in the first edition of the book. “Tessa Shepperson, I just always pick her as an example because she is a lady who is a landlord and tenant lawyer, and she built her whole service now around an online presence. She built the equivalent of a community and it seems to be thriving. And what I find her, apart from illustration of, is the ability for a sole practitioner, for one lawyer working on her own to embrace these technologies. And that's one of my key points, that many lawyers actually as an excuse will say that these technologies are only available for big firms who can afford technology. That's simply no longer the case. This is easy, perhaps even easier for a sole practitioner to embrace the technologies. So that's most encouraging.”

“I get emails and messages almost on a daily basis from small legal businesses around the world to tell me that they're living this kind of working practice, that they've changed the way they've worked, they've set up new businesses and so forth. The real innovation I think is happening at the level of small businesses. Now this is terribly important, I think, because if you look in, say, in England, where about 40% of law firms are actually people, lawyers working on their own, and 80% of our law firms approximately are four-partner firms or less, these changes are terribly significant for small businesses. And I really do worry about the law firms that reject these possibilities of technology. Not again over the next three to six months, but over the next three to six years it seems to me that our failure to embrace modern systems and processes will now begin to threaten their very existence. And that was only predicted in 1996, and I think it has taken two decades, but you will find across the world law firms, small law firms struggling to survive if they don't embrace modern ways of working, because the alternative, less costly, more efficient, more convenient ways of taking legal advice.”

The Legal Software market place
Asked about the possible future for legal application vendors and service providers, Susskind first focused on legal publishers. “I think a couple of things are going on. There's no doubt that the very large legal publishers on a global basis are the biggest players in legal technology, both in terms of the number of people and therefore their capacity for research and development, and also in terms of their turnover and impact on the market. And I think you'll see the major publishers, for example Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis, acquiring more and more software system development houses in the legal area.”

“But there is also, a huge need at the other end of the market for the equivalent of the trusted adviser, the more personalised service where law firms that are struggling to embrace and understand new technologies can work with them on a partnership basis, some individuals who can help bring about the changes that I and you are anticipating. So the structure, the supplier side of the market, while I see the large firms being dominant, I still see a huge role for small- and medium-sized suppliers as well.”

“The biggest challenge I see is for the suppliers essentially to change their image. I think for too long they have not been seen as part of the legal sector, as part of the legal industry, they have been seen as external to the sector. But I see them as providing key changes, I see them as being central players in the transformation of the profession. And so somehow it seems to me they have got to position themselves as trusted parts of the legal sector rather than suppliers to it. And that is I think for some firms a subtle change and for other companies a transformation. But they've got to become closer to the customer. They've got to become more respected, they've got to speak the same language as law firms. Technologists really do suffer, as lawyers do, from having their own jargon, their own ways of talking, and until, it seems to me, there's the ability from systems and software suppliers to go in and speak to lawyers in the language of lawyers and the language of the market to which they're supplying, I think there's going to be -- there's obviously going to be difficulties.”

“So the tail wags the dog often as we say, that people come in with technology solutions looking for problems. And I think the sector has got to shift perspective, try and understand the business problems that the market's facing and show how it can actually, let's see how the supply side can actually help meet the kinds of -- or solve the kinds of business challenges and difficulties that pressurised law firms are facing on a daily basis.”

Later this week we will publish the third and final part of the interview, where Susskind talks about cloud computing, video conferencing and the changing role of law firm IT management. The first part of this interview can be found here.