As I write this blog, I am remembering a lovely quote from Kingsley Amis who said: “If you can’t annoy somebody with what you write, I think there’s little point in writing.”
I have spent a lot of hours studying how to get people to change their behaviours and habits. Tech is only as good as the people using it – so we don’t feel that introducing new software or processes is effective if we haven’t also helped legal teams adopt the changes.
I made it my mission to learn about the way that we create habits as humans; what it takes to successfully change habits; how companies can nudge/manipulate us to behave in certain ways (even before I started to talk about algorithms!); how to communicate change; how to get all stakeholders to embrace the project; how to ensure everyone understands the “why” behind the change; and how to lead change.
Those areas are vital to successful change management of any project, but even if every element of change management is rolled out well, it still doesn’t 100% mean that Lawyers will adopt the changes you are presenting to them.
I should clarify (for the purpose of this blog) that by Lawyers, I don’t just mean qualified members of staff. My experience is that non-qualified members of staff can, and do, behave in the same way as the Lawyers – like attracts like, after all, and teams mould together. I should also stress (before I cause offence) that the results below apply to me too.
In the course of our work, I discovered Dr Larry Richards, an American non practising Lawyer, who is famous for his profiling work on Lawyers and their personalities. Some of his results below help explain why it might be that Lawyers don’t like change.
- In the area of Autonomy, the average score is 50%. Lawyers have an average Autonomy result of 89%.
- In the area of ‘Scepticism’, the average score is again 50%. Lawyers score an average of 90%.
- In the area of ‘Resilience’, the average score is 50%. This time, Lawyers have an average score of 30%.
In summary, Lawyers have a VERY high result for wanting to do things OUR way (Autonomy) which combines with a VERY high result for Scepticism (doubtful that the other person is telling us something true/correct). Plus, we have a lower than average Resilience score. Resilience is a really interesting personality trait – it indicates how quickly we do or do not bounce back after setbacks (include making mistakes in this definition). So, as Lawyers, we want to do things our way, don’t recover very well from being made a fool of, and probably suspect that most people are idiots. There – I said it!
To get Lawyers to change (apart from the change management tips I referred to above), you also need to understand and work with these personality traits.
As an additional point from my experience over the past decade – change has to be made easy and painless for Lawyers to adopt because they rarely have time to stop and implement change.
What doesn’t generally encourage Lawyers to change is patronising them; or pestering them with sales calls (even if they really like you as a human). And never use the tactic “no one else has raised that objection, so it’s fine”, because that sentence translates to us as “nobody else has looked at it properly”.
This also isn’t our “first rodeo”. We’ve seen HIPS collapse. Tesco Law did not take over. Y2K didn’t have an impact. The Land Registry chain matrix and Veyo from The Law Society both failed. Some tech products that contain all the right buzzwords in sales pitches, aren’t actually being used in the industry. We aren’t stupid.
And the most important point above all else – Lawyers have clients to look after, and they care about them. And as a profession, we are also painfully aware that we have to try not to make mistakes (low Resilience remember), and that even when we haven’t made mistakes, the courts can penalise us because we carry Professional Indemnity Insurance (Dreamvar and Mischon de Reya).
Suffice it to say that I don’t know of any Lawyer, team or practice that has changed their work behaviours or habits because people thought that they should.
The current debate around the introduction by The Law Society of the new versions of the TA6 and TA7 in Conveyancing are a good practical example. Telling Conveyancers that they need to adopt a new form will not make them adopt the form. Why? Because until 3rd June, there was no explanation from The Law Society of why the changes were being rolled out, no consultation, no advanced warning, and (worse), no clear guidance on where the risk lies for Conveyancers by adopting the new forms. The new forms are not just the next iteration of the form, they are a step change in how a residential transaction can and should be progressed. To have rolled them out with more ease, explanations, guidance, training, advice from professional indemnity insurers and even the regulators, and some examples, would have helped significantly.
I am not saying that as a profession we shouldn’t change. I am at the front edge of leading the change – it’s what we do at The CS Partnership. And a large part of that change will be the greater adoption of technology and the modernisation generally of the way that law firms deliver their services. But shouting “How stupid are you Dodos?” hasn’t worked to date, and nobody wants the profession to disappear. If it does, they will be no checks and balances against the abuse of power (and the power of A.I.). Addressing change management from the Lawyers’ perspectives can see proper change happen.
Sarah Keegan is a qualified Solicitor, Legal Project Manager, and Co-Founder of The CS Partnership.
You can contact her at sarah.keegan@thecspartnership.com or on www.thecspartnership.com.
4 responses
Conveyancers deal with change all the time. The law changes, more responsibility gets dumped on us. We are NOT averse to change.
What we are averse to is being bullied by vested interests and the people who are supposed to be sticking up for us who aren’t (and continue to pedal a confected narrative about ‘tech’ and ‘speeding up transaction times’).
Also there the phrase is ‘checks and balances’ not “cheques and balances”. Guess that “cheques” is the word here, someone has got to be using it as an income stream which is not fair on the clients and also for the conveyancers who are still expected to do this work at rock bottom prices. The Law Society needs to swallow their ego and pride.
What you have forgotten also is that lawyers are people pleasers.
Anonymous – thank you for correcting my error. Whilst the blog was ready internally and externallym, I am hanging my head in shame that it contains a mistake(low scepticism!), and arranging for it to be corrected by Today’s Conveyancer.
Your other comments and my blog are on the same page, in my opinion. As a profession, we need to know why change is necessary (changing law clearly would be a necessity for change) and we are suspicious of change for the wrong reasons.
Thank you for taking the time to comment too.
“probably suspect that most people are idiots” – this is how Conveyancers are being treated by representative bodies.
A really fascinating and thoughtful article, containing some helpful things to bear in mind when we are trying to change behaviours within our organisations. I can see that I fall right into the description of a typical lawyer although I have always been excited by tech and keen to be an early adopter of anything I thought was worthy of implementation (and within my budget). I would not, however, characterise the latest TA6 form as something that just needed better advance warning and explanation in order to smooth the way to its acceptance. It has not changed the way conveyancing is carried out, it has just made the task more onerous and risky without producing any benefit that has been scientifically identified. It was someone’s hobby horse, not well thought through, though no doubt well-intended. Change to conveyancing needs to be by major process change through legislative changes, not by tinkering round the edges with things by people who do not do the job (but according to the Law Society president “advise people every day” about – you would think he would have stopped and thought before uttering that one!). Enough said about the TA6. I think Ms Keegan has provided us with a very good and clear profile of just about all of us and it will repay close study for those of us whose roles require us to get people doing things differently – and find it extremely diffictult!