Starting with Yes: How Lawyers Can Become Early Adopters of Technology
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Attorneys are trained to say no. Jules Miller from Evolve Law encourages them to start with YES when evaluating legal technology.
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Starting with Yes: How Lawyers Can Become Early Adopters of Technology
- 1. Leveraging Tech for Legal September 21, 2016 @evolvelawnow #EvolveLawLive @Patterson_IPLAW @RoeFrazer @cicayda @VentureBilly @FBT_law @traklight @JulesEMiller @maryjuetten
- 2. It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. -Charles Darwin
- 3. What is Evolve Law?
- 4. Darwin Talk
- 5. Starting with Yes How Lawyers Can Become Early Adopters of Technology
- 6. You’re wired to say NO.
- 7. Lawyers are Skeptics Lawyers Average Source: Herding Cats: The Lawyer Personality Revealed, Dr. Larry RIchard You say NO for a Living and Risk Aversion Serves You Well with Clients 90th Percentile 50h Percentile
- 9. Lawyers Have Low Resilience Lawyers Average Source: Herding Cats: The Lawyer Personality Revealed, Dr. Larry RIchard Average of 30th percentile & 90% score below the 50th Percentile 30th Percentile 50h Percentile
- 11. You have been trained to say NO.
- 15. You’ve had career success saying NO.
- 16. You get very good at saying NO.
- 17. So what happens when you see new technology?
- 19. Resist the urge to say NO.
- 20. “You didn’t grow up driving…you figured it out.” -Gary Vaynerchuk You’re Smart, You can Figure it Out!
Editor's Notes
- .
- Hi everyone I’m Jules Miller, co-founder of Evolve Law. We’re happy to be here and Nashville, and if you haven’t been to one of our events in the past, we end each Evolve Law event with something called a Darwin Talk. Darwin was pretty radical in his day, but it’s this type of radical thinking and discussion that leads to scientific and social progress. So hopefully we’ll inspire you to think differently just a little bit.
- The title of this Darwin Talk is “Starting with Yes: How Lawyers can become early adopters of technology.” For the lawyers in the room, this title alone might make you uncomfortable. And the reason for this is….
- You’re wired to say no.
- There’s a lot of really great data showing that lawyers are natural skeptics. This study by Dr. Larry Richard called “Herding Cats, The Lawyer Personality Revealed” used a personality test called Caliper and the results showed that lawyers were on average in the 90th percentile in terms of skepticism. This way way higher than the average population, which is obviously in the 50th percentile, but also way higher than every other profession.
- Because you’re skeptics, you’re initial instinct is to see the risk in things, to see the reason why something won’t work. Your initial reaction is to say no to most things. That’s just how your brain works!
- On the flip side of that, lawyers have incredibly low resilience. This is the ability to bounce back from things quickly and not think too much about them after the fact. Entrepreneurs, for example, tend to be very resilient. But lawyers are not. In fact, they are the lowest profession in terms of resilience averaging in the 30th percentile. 90% of all lawyers score below average on resilience. This means that if for some reason you try something new and do say yes, like a new tech product…If doesn’t go well, you will NEVER TRY IT AGAIN.
- This reinforces your instinct to say no even more. This obviously isn’t great for encouraging early adoption of new technologies, which might not be perfect at the beginning. But it gets even worse.
- You have this natural instinct to say no, but then you actively choose a profession that trains you to say no.
- Law school actively encourages you to hone in on your skill saying no. You do a lot of around issue spotting and identifying potential problems.
- Now I didn’t go to law school but I imagine all the classes are basically the professors doing this. Just kidding…but not really.
- So when you graduate law school you feel super empowered by your awesome ability to say no and identify risks that you embrace it enthusiastically.
- Which is great, because it helps you do very well in your career as a lawyer.
- At your law practice, you’re rewarded for being good at saying no when identify risks for your clients, and it reinforces all of this even more.
- So then what happens when you see new technology? When you’re presented with a new way of doing things that could change the way you’ve been working? Especially when that way of working has been pretty successful for you so far?
- Of course, your first instinct is to say no.
- But please, resist the urge to say no! One of the first reasons you might want to say no is that you haven’t been using these tools in the past and it will take too much time to figure it out.
- I just came here from Clio’s Cloud conference in Chicago and Gary Vaynerchuk did the keynote there and he had a great quote saying that “you didn’t grow up driving…you figured it Does anyone wish they hadn’t invested the time to learn how to drive? No? I didn’t think so. It took some time, it was new, but it made your life much better. out.” You’re a smart person, you’ll figure it out.
- One of the other things Gary said, which I totally agree with, is that technology is moving really fast now and it’s creating clear winners and losers. There is no in between. You’re either going to get with the program and use technology to evolve your practice, or you’ll lose. It won’t be easy, it won’t be immediate, and not everything that you try will work, but over the course of the next 5-10 years this will play out and the legal industry will be different.
- There’s a pretty terrible movie with Jim Carrey called Yes Man where he gets a curse put on him so that he can only say yes to people. Of course he was miserable before when he was saying no, and even though it was hard by saying yes he got the job, the girl, and happiness eventually. Go watch that bad movie and be inspired!
- Then, when you’re in the right headspace, go to www.evolvelawnow.com and check out our Legal Tech Toolkit. This lists nearly 100 legal tech companies who are doing innovative things in the legal industry, and you can sort by practice area or category.
- Then, when you click on the listing for Traklight, for example, which happens to be Mary’s company, and you have a client to needs an IP assessment, you do what?
- Say yes!
- Then, if you’re a litigator and you click on the listing for Factbox, which is a great tool to organize and aggregate the facts and notes from your case, you’ll do what?
- Say yes!
- And if you’re a corporate attorney who reviews a lot of contracts and does due diligence, and you click on eBrevia’s listing that describes their artificial intelligence contract analysis tool, which tests better than a 3rd year associate, you’ll do what?
- Say yes!
- And when you come across any new tech tools that seem like they might be interesting and help you do your job better, faster and cheaper, you’ll do what?
- Say hell yes!