Luddite Lawyers Continue To Shoot Themselves In The Pocketbook
Seriously, the cloud is just better.
(Image via Getty)
No one expects lawyers to live at the bleeding edge of technology, but is it too much to ask that lawyers be able to see the bleeding edge from where they are? Clients live digital lives and get in digital binds. Lawyers can’t really — ethically — approach modern problems and demand that everyone treat it like they would’ve back in 1981. I mean, what’s next? Building law around the rantings of witch hunters from the 1600s?
Oh.
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Well, be that as it may, lawyers should still seek to bring their practices up to the 21st century at the very least. And it’s not just for the clients because running a modern practice just makes more money.
The folks at Everlaw and the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists just released the 2022 Ediscovery Innovation Report: Leaders and Laggards providing a wealth of information, but really zeroing in on the gap between the cloud-based technology haves and have-no-clues. Unsurprisingly, it’s better to be one of the former. But more interesting is the perception gap afflicting the laggards.
Respondents using on-prem ediscovery solutions say the cloud is hard to learn and expensive, but leaders who are already in the cloud disagree: 45% of on-prem users cite “learning a new system” as a downside, yet only 30% of cloud users echo that sentiment. 59% of on-prem users said that cost was a downside, yet only 26% of cloud users did. Users of on-prem discovery software were also much less likely to cite speed and scalability of cloud platforms as advantages, despite being far more likely to cite these as issues they face in their current process.
Or to put it visually (blueish representing tech “leaders” and orangeish representing “laggards”):
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These gaps, especially on cost, security, and the ability to learn the system provide the call to action for the eDiscovery field. Years into cloud-based discovery, it’s not that some lawyers haven’t hopped on the train, it’s that they honestly don’t realize that the train is cheaper, easier, and more secure. Their colleagues are mostly out here shouting it from the rooftops, but most of the laggards just aren’t hearing it.
And one of the most expensive pain points for these laggards comes in the form of extras. While the “as a service” business model gets a lot of deserved flack for opening the door to dastardly microtransactions, the reality in most cases is that these options make the whole package more scalable and predictable.
For example, BMW (in Korea) is planning to make its seat-warmers a subscription on top of the cost of the car. That feels like it should be a war crime. But in theory, they’d be lowering the overall price of the vehicle and letting buyers select features they want. Now, I suspect BMW has this priced so the cost of the subscription over the life of the car ultimately trumps the price they’d have charged for the feature outright, but the point is a buyer in a hotter area may not need the warmers at all. Since warmers are often bundled with other luxury features, this could actually mean getting a lot more “free” features for less.
Back to legal tech. The study finds that on-prem users are routinely paying extra for features they can just scale into for free with cloud tech.
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Because on-prem is a cheaper solution right up until it’s not. Many of these outside-the-box features are standard on cloud solutions and the ones that aren’t are probably cheaper. There’s a queasiness to subscribing to something you used to be able to buy, but just trust all the people out there doing it — the benefits outweigh the costs.
There’s a lot more in this report, so check it out.
2022 Ediscovery Innovation Report: Leaders and Laggards [Everlaw]
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
