E Pluribus Unum: How to Think Like a Lawyer in the Crowd
Written by wireLawyer CEO Matthew Tollin. Originally published in Marketing the Law Firm.
I was giving a presentation at the annual LexThink.1 conference at the ABA TECHSHOW this past year when an attorney approached me afterwards and said, “Don’t use the term crowdsourcing in regard to the practice of law. It cheapens what we do. Some things just don’t lend themselves to certain technologies.” I wanted to write an article to highlight why I think this is absolutely untrue.
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.
The definition above comes from Wikipedia, the crowdsourced online encyclopedia that has forever disrupted the encyclopedia and general publishing markets. In their own words:
“Traditionally edited general encyclopedias have been displaced by Wikipedia, the free, non-profit, community-edited online encyclopedia. Former market leader Encyclopædia Britannica ended print production after 244 years in 2012. Britannica’s price of over $1000, its physical size of dozens of volumes, its weight of over 100 pounds, and its update cycles lasting a year or longer were all annulled by Wikipedia. Microsoft’s Encarta, a 1993 entry into professionally edited digital encyclopedias, was once a major rival to Britannica but was discontinued in 2009. Wikipedia’s lack of price, unlimited size and instant updates are the primary challenges for profitable competition in the consumer market.” See http://bit.ly/1o5FvQs.
Similarly, the traditional practice of law is being displaced by newer cloud models of research and collaboration. I would argue that the practice of law has always been a crowdsourced endeavor. That’s why solo practitioners, without technology, formed large firms for hundreds of years. That’s because we innately know that the crowd is smarter than the individual. It’s in our DNA.
Swarm Intelligence
Swarm intelligence (SI) is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. SI systems typically consist of a population of simple agents interacting locally with one another and with their environment. The agents follow very simple rules, and although there is no centralized control structure dictating how individual agents should behave, interactions between such agents lead to the emergence of “intelligent” global behavior, unknown to the individual agents. See http://bit. ly/1pcEymQ.
Yet there's something in our American DNA that loves the hero myth of the individual. And I find this myth nowhere more pervasive than in the legal profession. I think it’s because we attorneys feel like there is something inhuman and unintelligent about technology. I — as the professional — have spent years and copious amounts of money training my brain to “think like a lawyer.” How can a computer compete? Well ... when Deep Blue beat chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, that way of thinking was retired, and a dot.com revolution ushered in a whole new global way of thinking. I truly believe that lawyers fear being made obsolete by technology in the same way that robots and outsourcing have decimated the American manufacturing economy. There’s a new nervousness scratching somewhere at the back of our collective legal brains. That’s a dangerous way to view technology.
Cloud Collaboration
There is a great deal of talk lately, especially at conferences like LexThink.1 and Reinvent Law, about disrupting the legal profession. I believe such disruption is here and it comes in the form of online cloud collaboration: attorneys working across the globe, collaborating with each other in real-time on documents and motions. This represents a new era of rapid and effective advocacy. Cloud collaboration lowers costs and produces more intelligent documents.
Let’s examine some facts:
Fact: Over 40 million singles in the U.S have tried online dating.
Fact: One out of five relationships starts online. Whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, a mobile app, or traditional online dating sites, there are a lot of success stories.
Fact: You can meet people outside of your geographic area and social circle with similar interests. You’ll meet more people, so you can learn what you’re truly looking for in a date, mate, or relationship.
Fact: It's efficient and available 24 hours a day.
Fact: Many sites provide matching tools and send you emails of suggested matches to make it easier for you to view potential dates.
See http://huff.to/1koEeRq.
I know that these facts relate to dating, and have nothing to do with the practice of law. But 10 years ago, how many of us said we would never, ever try online dating? And now Tinder, OK Cupid and Match. com have become a very natural part of the social fabric. Is embracing crowdsourced platforms for love more acceptable than crowdsourcing business? I would say it’s infinitely more difficult to gauge sexual chemistry online than professional merit. Also, a big flaw in viewing technology is that it has to displace real-world interactions. You can meet someone online, learn something from the ample data about them there, and then meet them again offline. In the dating world, that second part is mandatory. In the legal and professional worlds, it’s often not. You can find work online, earn money online and never have to meet in person. If you feel you do need more intimate contact with a potential business partner then the option to meet in person is always there.
Crowd technologies and transactional platforms facilitate real-world interactions rather than replace them. So now you can meet other lawyers online — perhaps in remote locations — and benefit from their insights. Learn about them. Read their reviews. Examine their work product. And then invite them to coffee. You will know that person much better than if you met him or her traditionally. It’s happening on Elance every day. It’s happening on Behance every day. And, hopefully, it will begin happening with lawyers online every day.
In fact:
Elance (now Elance-oDesk), the crowdsourced workplace for engineers, has processed over $1 billion in transactions since inception.
AirBnB, the crowdsourced hospitality site for excess real estate inventory, has recently been valued at $10 billion (bigger than Wyndham Resorts or Hyatt Hotels), minting the first billionaires of the sharing economy.
Lending Club, the crowdsourced consumer lending platform, has processed over $4 billion in loans, and paid out $300M-plus in interest at higher interest rates to lenders and lower rates for borrowers than traditional banks.
The online revolution in data, transparency and collaboration is passing many lawyers by. That’s too bad when the practice has become more competitive than ever. SMLs (small to mid-sized law practices) account for 80% of attorneys, 55%- 60% of revenue, and over 90% of legal matters. They are trending upward rapidly and giving rise to the need for new business models.
Traditionally, Big Law offered the advantage of working with lots of smart people and accessing great document databases. This can be summed up in one word — resources. Today, technology can afford SMLs the same resources, and allow them to act more like businesses a thousand times their size. By leveraging crowdsourcing technology, SMLs can prove that Small is the new Big. This is creating a bold new crop of more entrepreneurial solo practitioners, and it’s increasing access for small businesses and consumers to much needed advocacy.
We should embrace this more than ever. Not because I say so. But because our DNA does.
Our Collective DNA
You are genetically collaborative — even when it hurts you. Your DNA is crowdsourced, and the American hero myth of the individual should be put away forever because s/he never existed. A more American idea is that we believe in our deepest heart of hearts in collaboration. The heart of democracy is that government is more just, better, smarter, through collaborative selection. The heart of capitalism disdains monopoly at its roots. We believe the collaborative market with many participants is better for consumers than one individual operator. Opening the practice of law to the crowd opens us up to better advocacy. And advocacy is the basis of every institution just described.
Conclusion
Crowdsourcing better insinuates you into the global economy. It allows a lawyer in Beijing to create a better document with a lawyer in New York. It allows a lawyer in Madrid to find local counsel in Mexico City. And it’s the natural evolution from books to LexisNexis (individual research) to Practical Law Company (curated research) to something that’s more novel, more open, more free and more intelligent (crowdsourced databases). If your company is not embracing some form of cloud crowdsourcing product, you are:
1. Losing money; 2. Being less efficient; and 3. Running headlong against evolution.
There is no reason NOT to crowdsource. You can now crowdsource documents, advice, revenue and vendor supplies. It is becoming the foundation of many other industries and is nowhere better suited than in the legal profession.