Having spent years building a conveyancing business based on the principle that great lawyers are even better when supported by great technology, I don’t need convincing of the benefits that technology can bring. However, judging by some of the comments I read online, clearly, not everyone agrees with me.
Which is strange, given that almost every aspect of our lives has been enhanced to a greater or lesser extent by technology. Obviously, not all is positive, such as the hijacking of social media platforms, but overall, we’d be hard pressed to say that technology has not improved our lives.
Why is it then, when people continue to queue outside Apple shops for the latest iPhone release, there are those that walk among us who blame technology for delays and inefficiency, and accuse those who embrace innovation as failing to understand the issues we all face?
Why is technology’s importance increasing?
When the term “legaltech” is mentioned, it’s often followed by a damning indictment of “Conveyancing Factories”; conjuring up visions of dark satanic mills full of palid-faced wage slaves sitting in semi-darkness using Random Enquiry Generators (REGs) churning out thousands of irrelevant questions about conservatories on first floor flats. My experience of large conveyancing firms is their working environments with air conditioning, coffee machines and raised floors hiding the trip hazards of rats-nests of cabling, are pretty appealing, and I’ve never actually seen a REG in action.
The challenge with the term “legaltech” is it not defined beyond technology that helps lawyers be more efficient in their work. Which means the Microsoft holy trinity of Outlook, Word and Excel fall under that category, which despite being incredibly complex and sophisticated software, are universally accepted because they solve issues for lawyers.
I mentioned recently that lawyers needed to use technology to protect them against hostile clients. This is because technology is excellent at storing information which can then be found quickly, whereas with humans, it’s a lot more hit and miss, whose specialist Mastermind subjects would be interpretation and human communication.
This was brought into sharp relief last week when we received a Google One star review from someone who hadn’t used our service, as they were the other side’s client. They warned that people shouldn’t use our firm because “we raised unnecessary questions and delayed matters”. Given it’s easier to work out how Word’s numbered lists work than removing an invalid review from Google, we needed a short and effective reply. Which is where law tech helps – we could fact-check and respond quickly, and more importantly, succinctly.
Whilst dealing with inappropriate reviews is annoying, if this was an actual client raising a potential claim, technology becomes vital. Whilst quite negative, dealing with complaints and claims are part of our working lives, and how we deal with them is critical. It is not productive fee-earning time and is a drain on time, money and morale. Unfortunately, unlike my recent experience of someone fraudulently redeeming my Sainsbury’s vouchers which was resolved by an online chat session in 5 minutes, when it comes to dealing with problems in conveyancing, things are far more complicated.
The devil is in the detail
The harsh reality is when problems arise with conveyancing, the level of detail required goes far beyond the recall of a brilliant conveyancer. As a business owner, I am responsible to protect my colleagues, which extends into the areas of ease of recording evidence in a way that it can be retrieved easily.
The issue does seem to be that technology is often dismissed because most of the stuff being demonstrated skirts around the periphery of what is the heart of our role; being able to give informed advice to ensure our clients are protected against problems in the future.
The positive news is that solutions are closer than we might imagine, with the advent of the large language models popularised as artificial intelligence ( AI). Changing the way that lawyers store data is difficult, but at least, AI can help retrieve unstructured information quickly and efficiently. Which by itself justifies the time, effort and costs involved investigating new technology.
3 responses
The criticism of legal tech is two fold-1 the over promising of the efficacy of it and 2 the over reliance on it by some businesses at the expense of employing qualified staff.
1 can be got round by recognising its limitations and being sceptical in the future but 2 has extended completion timeframes and affects consumers adversely.
Firms who value legal thinking seem to manage to complete transactions a lot quicker when the factories aren’t involved. I couldn’t care less how much they raise for charity or whether they play 5-a-side. I do care that they’re giving conveyancing a bad name.
The tech spews out bog standard non transaction specific Enquiries which add to the delay in completions. Those operating the technology have no idea what they are actually doing or why, other than following the checklist.
The HSBG and the digitisation evangelists are barking up the wrong tree. Resistance to the propaganda advanced in favour of technology isn’t some Luddite protest but a demand for those who regulate lawyers to do something about the time wasting and de-professionalisation of conveyancing.
Digitisation isn’t the answer because data processing isn’t the problem.
The over reliance on technology by some businesses is making things worse and that’s where the problem lies.
“But they can’t be that bad. People still instruct them.” Force fed work through the payment of referral fees.
Enough! Conveyancing needs qualified staff and the proper use of effective technology not more tech at the expense of legal thinking.
There is a firm where conveyancing meets technology. The best argument against technology and for competent qualified staff. I rest the case for the majority of conveyancers.
Unfortunately I have come across too many firms now where they either have one of the other 1) Tech at the expense of decent, qualified people and treating our job as a glorified administrative exercise or 2) Employing decent, qualified people but not investing in tech. I have rarely seem firms invest in tech and in staff. Several times during the course of my working life I have been told that ‘tech does not make money’. Decent tech can easily reduce the amount of time working in a case by 1-2 hours. You do that across 10 cases a month and you can see the advantage especially in billing and staff happiness. A relatively young staff member came to me in a previous job expressing frustration that they were not picking up on matters that I was in the title check. It all comes down to experience and experience counts above all else in this job.