What do law students need to know about law and tech?

Why law students need to know about tech

Law firm application processes

When I was a law student, I attended a conference at which somebody was speaking about the importance of this thing called “commercial awareness”. “Who can tell me the current price of oil?”, the speaker asked the audience. A few sensible estimates were dismissed as being incorrect. The correct answer was, apparently, “which type of oil are you talking about?”.

I never once got asked anything like this in any of my interviews. The closest I got was “what is a share?”. It seemed like a bunch of myths were flying around about commercial awareness questions, and that many students were directing research in the wrong areas. I’m keen to avoid this happening around law and technology, which is a very popular subject in law firm application processes.

Skills you need as a lawyer

I remember once working with a first seat trainee, who quite legitimately asked, “why does everyone print documents all the time…why don’t we just use track changes?”. Fast forward a few years, and I saw the very same person, now a 2-year PQE lawyer, marking up documents with a red pen against the glow of their desk lamp.

Those new to the legal profession will be the ones shaping it in future years. Many of them come in with a fresh perspective and enthusiasm to do things differently. I want to share my thoughts on how this enthusiasm can be harnessed and preserved for as long a possible.

#1: Level of technical competence

What you do as a junior lawyer

I often hear law students concerned that they need to spend time skilling up on the technologies that lawyers use in their day-to-day work. Perhaps the best starting point here is providing a bit of clarity on what junior lawyers actually do. This varies from week-to-week, person-to-person, practice area-to-practice area, firm-to-firm etc. Personally, as a junior lawyer, these things generally took up the most of my time in a given week:

• Whirlwind. Receiving emails that contain things you need to do and working out how to prioritise them.
• Project management. Creating a team “to-do list” to progress a transaction or dispute (e.g. closing checklist), and chasing for updates.
• Research. Understanding legal implications of the facts in a transaction or dispute and producing a document that summarises this.
• Writing. Creating first drafts of emails, court documents, contracts and memos for others to comment upon. Collecting the input from various people on documents and making sure that input is reflected.
• Document analysis. Reviewing documents and drawing conclusions or identifying risks (e.g. due diligence, document review, fact-finding).
• Progressing things. There are a bunch of “non-legal” tasks you are required to own and progress, e.g. “get me a list of the German claimants”, “double check the numbers match the spreadsheet” etc.
• Calls and meetings. Often attending calls and meetings means listening and taking notes, rather than speaking.
• Admin. Things nobody wants to do so it gets pushed down the chain (e.g. billing, printing, arranging meetings). And time recording.

Most of my time was spent on “non legal” things…

The question then becomes, if these are the things you will be doing day in day out, do you need to have a baseline ability in technology to do them?

In practice

Although you won’t get tested on these things at interview, I do think it is important for all lawyers to have a decent grasp of the basic tools they will be using everyday. My advice is to try to avoid falling into one of these traps:

• Trap 1: don’t just delegate it because you’re bad at computers. This happens a lot, e.g. when you need to make a PowerPoint that sets out the key steps in a transaction (a “steps plan”). People get scared by PowerPoint, so a common behaviour is to scribble on a piece of paper, and hand it to somebody else to create in PowerPoint. The problem is that things get lost in translation, scribbles don’t convert well to PowerPoint, and it’s hard to make changes. By learning basic PowerPoint skills, all of these things could have been solved. (Note —don’t get me wrong, lawyers should probably learn to delegate more in other areas…).

There’s a time and a place for delegation, but not knowing how to use basic software is generally not a good reason to delegate something

• Trap 2: don’t admit defeat if you don’t know how to do stuff. Some admit defeat too readily when they realise they are out of their comfort zones using new technology (e.g. Microsoft Excel). I find this odd. Lawyers have the initiative and research skills to navigate niche areas of law. The same principles apply to working out how to use basic office software. All you need is a bit of initiative, and you’ll not only work through your current problem but have knowledge to apply it in the future.

You have two choices…either admit defeat…or do some basic research and not only complete the task, but acquire knowledge to use in the future

As a practising lawyer, you need basic technology skills and the ability and willingness to research how to do things a little out of your comfort zone. You can impress people very easily by having a basic level of technical competence, particularly in times of pressure and tight deadlines. You don’t need to learn to use legal technology tools before you start.

Useful materials

• Crafty Counsel Microsoft Office Hacks — great tips from practising lawyers on productivity hacks in Microsoft Office
• Twitter threads from me on Excel, Word and PowerPoint — a few short examples of tips I picked up that might prove useful
• A beginner’s guide to Excel — it takes 20 mins of your time and will save you more than 20 mins over the course of your life

#2: Level of knowledge about legal tech

Buzzwords

There are lots of buzzwords flying around in the legal tech world. Here are the most common buzzwords I hear in the legal tech world, along with some definitions (experts can pick these apart if they like but I have purposefully oversimplified them):

• Artificial intelligence. Computer doing something magical.
• Machine learning. Computer being able to spot patterns in data.
• Blockchain. Like a database but not administered by one single entity.
• Smart contracts. Contract where clauses are automatically performed.
• Robotic process automation. Program that automates clicks.
• Chatbot. A bit like an online form but in WhatsApp-like chat format.

The thing about buzzwords is that they are mostly focused on underlying technologies or solutions. In my view, people spend too long focusing on underlying technologies and solutions, and not enough time on the point of them. For example, you could invest millions in a fancy AI solution, but if nobody ever uses it, you’ve just thrown millions down the drain. Focusing on technology alone ignores the multitude of other important things that make up a successful legal tech solution (or, indeed, any solution).

Coding / technology is just one part of the equation…it’s merely a means to providing value, rather than being value in and of itself

Buzzwords are commonly used as marketing tools to persuade people who don’t understand them that a piece of technology is more valuable than it actually is. I think it’s important for law students to be able to cut through these buzzwords so that they can engage with the real issues at stake — such as “what’s the point in this” — and not be confused by marketing and hype.

Outcomes and problems framework

A good framework through which to answer “what’s the point in this” is to think in terms of outcomes and problems. An outcome is a high level positive change you want to deliver. For a law firm, it might be something like increasing profitability, retaining talent or diversity. Once you identify outcomes, you ask, “what problems do we need to solve to get there?”.

Start with overall outcomes, identify problems you need to solve to get there, and only then talk about solutions

The value of this framework is that you first identify high level goals, and then work out what you need to do to get there. Technology is merely the means through which you solve problems and achieve outcomes — it comes last. Thinking in this way means more emphasis is placed on value delivered from the technology, rather than the technology for its own sake.

The difficult thing is that this approach goes against our instincts. We are naturally drawn to start with tech, and try to identify use cases from it. Usually this happens because it is easy to get excited about new tech.

Start with solutions and you might end up with some use cases — but they might not be valuable use cases, and the solution might not be the best one for that use case…

If you fall into this trap, you are looking for outcomes through the lens of a particular solution. The net is narrower, and you might miss higher value opportunities that cannot be delivered by that solution. Even if you do identify valuable use cases, the right solution might not be the one you started with. Dare I say it, the best solution might not even involve tech at all…

Your search for how to add value is narrower if you look for value through the lens of a particular solution

When thinking about legal tech, my advice is to be inquisitive around what value it delivers. Cutting through buzzwords will help do this. Adopting this approach will serve law students well in interviews (to cut through hype and engage with the real issues) and in practice (to add value in the right places).

Examples

To apply this framework, it is helpful to understand the key outcomes law firms are trying to drive and how legal tech fits in. Here are two examples:

• Profitability. Two ways in which law firms can become more profitable are by estimating project costs more effectively, and by staying under that budget. Firms can use knowledge systems and form-based tools to capture information from projects to move budget estimates away from “finger in the air” exercises and towards data-driven exercises. Things like transaction management solutions reduce time on lengthy email trails and help projects become more predictable.

Simplified summary of how technology can increase profitability

• Service delivery. Some legal work involves so many documents and so many different issues that law firms cannot advise with humans alone. Things like e-discovery solutions help manage disclosure exercises in litigation. These solutions manage the review of documents, and some use machine learning to spot patterns in documents that would not be obvious to humans. Similarly, complex and time-sensitive transactions that require thousands of documents to be implemented cannot be done by humans alone, and may require contract automation tools.

Simplified summary of how technology can help a firm take on work that would not be possible otherwise

There are, of course, plenty of other examples and plenty of other legal tech tools, including the following (among many, many others):

• Contract automation. Instead of filling in square brackets in a Word document, users can fill in a form that creates a first draft (see, e.g. Contract Express, Avvoka).
• Contract management. Used mainly by in-house teams, that help negotiate and execute documents (see, e.g. Juro, Ironclad). Often incorporates contract automation and e-signatures.
• E-signatures. A way of signing documents using a computer or a mobile device, instead of pen and paper (see, e.g. DocuSign, Adobe Sign).
• Transaction management. A way to project manage transactions (replacing Word document “checklists”) and signature collection (see, e.g. iManage Closing Folders, Legatics, Transact).

I’ve adopted a narrow definition of legal tech here, but there is an interesting (if not perhaps a little academic ) discussion to be had on what legal tech actually is. I am actually an advocate of saying that legal tech is more a movement towards change in the legal industry, so I would say it includes any tool that can create a positive impact on the lives of lawyers and clients.

As a law student, it probably helps to have a few examples up your sleeve of how legal tech is applied in practice. I would encourage people to think beyond the tech, and understand what outcomes that tech is delivering.

Useful materials

• LawTech Glossary— a useful (and funny) take on legal tech buzzwords
• Definition of Legal Tech — some takes on the definition of “legal tech” (on the discussion referred to above)
• Lawtomated — an incredible resource that helps you dig deeper on pretty much everything mentioned in this section
• Legaltech Hub. A taxonomy and directory of legal tech tools — which goes way beyond my examples above.

#3: The reality of legal tech

The reality

It would be easy for those new to the legal industry to think that today’s lawyers are messaging each other on Slack, using predictive analytics to drive their decisions and managing their complex work in modern systems. When you spend time speaking to and working with lawyers, you realise that the reality is very different. In many areas, people are still working the same way they have been doing for decades. Here are a few examples:

• Project Management. Law firms take on work that has value going into the millions and billions. The work is extremely complicated, with lots of people to organise and lots of documents to produce. The most common tool to manage these processes is a table in Microsoft Word.

This is how, even today, most legal projects are managed

• Communication. While things have improved over the last 18 months, lawyers still put most of their communications through email. The importance lawyers place on things like privilege, not sending the wrong document to the wrong people and not “missing things”, all mean that adopting other platforms such as Teams or Slack can be difficult.

Many lawyers get comfort from 100% of their asynchronous communications being in email

• Collaboration. One of the main tasks you do as a lawyer is taking input from somebody else, and reflecting it in a document. Tools such as co-authoring help people do this, but adoption of them has been slow. While the days of manuscript markups (i.e. handwritten changes that are typed in) may be numbered, many still struggle with track changes and co-authoring. As a result, document collaboration can be very manual.

Having strict segregation between document versions allows lawyers to retain control

Don’t get me wrong, things have changed in the legal industry, and things will change. Indeed, I have had some success in shifting the dial somewhat in all of those examples I have given. But we are so far from many of the sweeping statements you might read about in the mainstream press. One of the main reasons for that is that getting anyone to change — let alone lawyers — is really, really hard.

How can lawyers help?

I think it is important to set expectations for those entering the legal profession. The bar is very low, and people shouldn’t think you need some shiny tech to improve things. It’s also key to understand the challenges behind getting people to change. In my opinion, people generally talk too much about the technical (solutions) side of things, and not enough about why people should care about adopting those solutions.

For those entering the legal profession who would like to be part of changing how people work, there are a few things I think could help:

• Legal tech internships. Knowing about legal tech before you start practising as a lawyer is helpful because you will learn about how people work now, why people work as they do, and what a better way might be. Recently, internships in this area have been offered by both law firms and legal tech companies.
• Speak to IT/innovation teams. When I worked in a law firm innovation department, I was always on the prowl for lawyers who wanted to talk to me. I wanted to hear everyday problems they encountered, and collaborate to make things better. It’s a great idea to understand who you need to talk to to influence things when you start practising as a lawyer.
• Learn the right skills. I believe the main way in which lawyers can contribute to change in the legal work is not by learning to code, but by gaining business analysis skills. An ability to pick apart processes, understand motives and experiment with better ways will be invaluable.
• Ask questions. I have picked up a habit of being extremely inquisitive of everybody I speak to. At social events, I always like speaking to people in other industries to find out what they actually do on a day-to-day basis. The same approach should be adopted more by lawyers, especially when talking to clients. Be inquisitive, ask open questions (i.e. questions to which the answer cannot be “yes” or “no”), and you will be able to deduce a bunch of ways in which you could help clients more.

Useful materials

• Legal Tech Vacation Scheme — offers the chance for law students to hear directly from people in the legal tech industry.
• Burn the Business Plan — a great book about entrepreneurship, and how to scale ideas into greater things in a meaningful way.
• Good Services — some principles on how to deliver a better service, many of which are directly applicable (but in reality not applied) to law.
• Marketing Made Simple — this teaches amazing communication skills that emphasise clarity over jargon

#4: Commercial awareness through tech

What is commercial awareness?

Commercial awareness is something that pretty much every big law firm talks about, but tends not to define. When you hear about commercial awareness, I think this is something that is distinct from (but may in part be informed by) commercial knowledge and commercial interest.

Commercial knowledge, commercial interest and commercial awareness are different things

• Commercial knowledge. This is where you read the Financial Times everyday, and have an in-depth grasp of the derivatives market and the current price of oil (or, preferably, the tenacity to ask “which kind of oil”…). Commercial knowledge is probably the least important of these three. I did an interview once where somebody asked a detailed question about the high yield bond market at the end, clearly based on a couple of articles they had written. The ensuing discussion wasn’t that interesting.
• Commercial interest. This is where you can show interviewers you are actually interested in the commercial world. Commercial interest is largely shown by your curiosity and willingness to learn more about the commercial world. Commercial knowledge can indicate commercial interest, but simply parroting back things you have read in the Financial Times does not always work.
• Commercial awareness. This is more about how you think than what you know. It requires commercial interest, but perhaps only a baseline of commercial knowledge. You can show commercial awareness by thinking about all angles of a problem — especially the practical side of things that may have a legal impact, and knock-on effects of particular developments. This is a skill you will continue to develop in your career.

I remember in my first ever training contract interview, the interviewer asked me a few questions about how a law firm might be run. One of the questions was, “do you think our cleaning staff are employees or contractors?”. It was an open-ended question that required limited knowledge, some interest, but above all it expected me to think about something in a commercial and practical way.

Legal technology + commercial awareness

In my view, being able to discuss the influence of technology on a law firm’s operating model is a great way to show commercial awareness. You are showing how you are thinking and the subject matter is the profession you are entering into.

Everybody on a firms interview panel is likely to have some sort of view on how technology will impact the legal profession, so it’s a great subject for discussion — e.g. how technology might interact with how most law firms make money. Here are a few things to think about here:

• Impact on business model. Does a tension arise where a technology makes lawyers more efficient, but the law firm makes money based on how much time lawyers spend on their work? If so, does it make sense for law firms to be paying for tools that decrease the amount of time lawyers spend on their work? Using the outcomes and problems framework here might direct you to the best areas of value, e.g. where law firms are charging based on fixed fees rather than billable hours…

Working out “why” law firms should use tech is not always straightforward…

• Client experience. One thing you will probably hear from many lawyers is that regardless of business models, it is important to adopt technology to improve the client experience. This is easy for technology the client directly experiences. It is less easy for “under the hood” efficiency tools, because the client experiences them indirectly. In those instances, perhaps it makes more sense to talk about how exactly the tool translates to the client’s experience, e.g. quality of work product, turnaround speed etc. Again, applying the outcomes and problems framework, you can use these kinds of things as starting points, rather than starting with the tech.

• Managing without it. Lawyers have been operating as they do for decades without legal technology. To the extent law firms already think they are providing a great client experience, and are already very profitable, it might be said that they don’t need legal tech to improve. I hear this a lot — but equally, there will doubtless be some areas where they need technology. This might be where clients expect it or have demanded it, or the sheer volume of documents involved in a project means you need technology to assist humans to deliver it.

The reason I love these topics is that is usually puts interviewer and interviewee on a level playing field. Asking about drivers to buy and adopt legal tech is also a great way to find out more about a firm’s culture. Is legal tech valued at the firm? If so, is it purely a marketing exercise or do they understand exactly why they think it is valuable?

The legal industry as a whole

Most of this discussion has focused on law firms rather than issues affecting the legal industry as a whole. For clients of law firms, technology as a whole is changing their businesses. Lawyers have to keep up to speed with these developments for two reasons:

• Legal issues. Seems obvious, but technological developments affect the kind of issues clients are likely to request advice upon. For example, business are holding more data than ever before, and need law firms to guide them on how to process and store this in compliance with the law. Many business are investing in building their own technology, and this will thrown up a whole host of issues that lawyers will have to understand — e.g. whether businesses training machine learning algorithms using similar data sets might give rise to anti-competitive behaviour.
• Processes and operations. Clients expect law firms to really understand their businesses, and how they operate. For example, in-house legal teams are adopting contract management systems more and more and are requesting structured datasets from their law firms after deals complete, rather than a bunch of randomly-named PDFs. Law firms need to ensure they are keeping up to speed with the operational aspects of how their clients work. Some law firms have started to go further, and actually consult on these subjects.

Useful materials

• Sign here: the enterprise guide to closing contracts quickly — a book by Alex Hamilton that provides insight on (among other things) how law firms could provide a better client experience in contracting processes
• Hello World: how to be Human in the Age of the Machine — not legal specific, but includes some real world examples of the kind of issues artificial intelligence throws up

To sum up…

Hopefully this has given people some idea of the kinds of things law students could think about both before and after they start practising. Here are some key takeaways:

• Get rid of all notion that you are “bad at computers”. This is, nowadays, as important as things like attention to detail and legal analytical skills. The most important thing is to have the initiative to learn how to do things.
• You don’t have to know how to code. You don’t have to know much about tech. But it helps to have some basic understanding of what legal tech is.
• There is a temptation to think that legal tech is all about tech. It’s not. It’s about what the tech delivers, how you can get it used and adopted, and the impact it has on law firms and clients.
• Don’t be scared by buzzwords, and don’t be misled into thinking that all law firms have completely modernised the way they work. There is still huge room for improvement, and junior lawyers are in a great position to be a real part of making legal tech embedded in legal practice.