We are all experiencing the immediate impact of the Coronavirus crisis on our professional lives and careers. But how will this crisis impact the legal profession over the longer term? Will we eventually return to the legal world that once was?
I think not. Rather, I believe that many of the adaptations we’ve made here in the moment are already setting in motion changes that will permanently reconfigure the legal landscape. Further, as horrific and painful as this crisis has been for so many, I believe that many of the changes that will emerge out of it will be for the betterment of the legal system and those it is intended to serve.
Here are seven ways I believe the legal system will fundamentally and permanently change as the result of this crisis.
1. Lawyers will no longer see technology as something to be feared.
Two years ago in this column, I published a two-part article on what I called “the innovation gap,” or why the justice system has failed to keep pace with technology. In Part 1, I outlined six barriers to broader adoption of innovative technologies in law. In Part 2, I offered 10 suggestions for how we “reboot” the legal system.
What I saw then as the No. 1 obstacle to innovation was lawyers’ fear of technology, even as I acknowledged that it sounded simplistic to say. But it was true, and it remained true. Many lawyers persisted in their ignorance and fear of technology, viewing it as a threat to their clients and themselves.
Almost overnight, that has changed. I thought UK legal technology journalist Joanna Goodman put it best when she wrote recently in The Law Society Gazette that the COVID-19 crisis has “reframed legal services,” and in the course of that, “technology has become a lifeline.”
In a matter of a month, any lawyers who still harbored fears of technology have of necessity come to see it as a lifeline to the survival of their practices and their continuing ability to serve their clients. Going forward, that will fundamentally reshape the legal profession’s use and adoption of technology.
2. Lawyers will no longer see innovation as a threat to the ‘guild.’
In that same two-part article from two years ago, another obstacle to innovation I saw was that the legal profession is a protectionist guild that sees innovation as a threat. Like a game of whack-a-mole, wherever experiments in alternative forms of legal services delivery popped up, the organized bar would be at the ready to pound them down.
Even before this crisis hit, the organized bar was softening its hardball stance against new models and methods of delivering legal services. Regulatory reform initiatives in several states were the most visible examples. Even the American Bar Association, once seen as a bastion of protectionism, has in recent years become an advocate for innovation, as recently as February calling for states to consider regulatory reforms and legal services innovations.
But the pandemic has dramatized, in ways no studies or committees ever could, the fundamental shortcomings of the legal system as it was. A rigidly structured guild system of courts and services delivery, designed by lawyers for lawyers as their exclusive domain, is not up to meeting the challenges of a world that demands agility and flexibility in services delivery. This had already been becoming clearer to many, but there can now be no going back.
3. Regulatory reform will accelerate.
Last Friday, the Utah Supreme Court put out for public comment a proposed set of the most-sweeping regulatory reforms in a generation. While the process that led to these proposals was underway well before the crisis, the court explicitly acknowledged in announcing them, “The current COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of finding new, affordable, and high-quality innovations as quickly as possible.”
In fact, even as it put the proposed rules out for a 90-day comment period, it offered expedited review and approval of proposals aimed at offering low- or no-cost legal help to individuals and businesses impacted by the crisis.
We are only at the beginning of what will be a major crisis in serving the legal needs of low- and moderate-income individuals and small businesses. Not only will this crisis fuel a surge in cases, but it is also like to eviscerate one of the major sources of funding for legal help for the poor, IOLTA, which depends heavily on the health of the real estate market and the economy in general.
As Utah is already doing, other states will have no choice but to follow. The traditionally strict rules on who can deliver legal services and by what means will of necessity be eased to meet demand of crisis proportions. Although born out of crisis, those reforms will ultimately, over the long term, help close the justice gap in this country.
4. Courts will accelerate innovation and online services.
Another of the obstacles I wrote about in that piece two years ago was that the courts are stuck in a vicious circle that blocks change. For years, in part because of the access-to-justice crisis and the growing numbers of self-represented litigants, courts have been overwhelmed by demand and underfunded to deal with it. Consumed with the struggle to keep up with this demand, they were unable to formulate the innovations that would help them meet it.
For the courts, it was a problem that Richard Susskind described in his recent book, Online Courts and the Future of Justice, as having to change the tire on a moving car — it can’t be done.
But now, not only has the car come to a full stop, but we are also realizing that it needs a whole new chassis and a rebuilt engine. In its current condition, there is no way to get this car back on the road.
Quite possibly the most significant change in the legal system to come out of the Coronavirus crisis will be a fundamental rethinking and restructuring of the courts. Susskind’s book brilliantly poses the core question: “Is a court a service or a place?”
As we find ourselves in a moment when that place can no longer function, the need for the service does not abate. As courts adapt for the short term, they will inevitably change for the long term.
5. More legal services will be delivered remotely and online.
Many in the legal profession are learning for the first time what it means to deliver legal services remotely. Many others have been doing it to one extent or another for years. Others still are scrambling to come up with the capability.
Turns out, Zoom (or whatever is your videoconferencing app of choice) is a perfectly good way to meet with clients and colleagues. More to the point, in many cases, it is a superior way to meet.
Why should a business owner need to trek downtown to meet with a lawyer? Why should a low-income parent need to arrange childcare and spend bus money to get legal advice? To what extent has face-to-face lawyering been an obstacle for a rural farmer or someone homebound by a physical condition?
The fact of the matter is that legal professionals can serve more clients by meeting with them remotely, and do it at greater convenience and lower cost. Now that we all understand this, remote meetings will become more the norm and less the exception.
6. Law firms will reduce their physical footprints.
For lawyers who firms were already more technologically adept, transitioning to working from home was no biggie. In fact, in recent years, many firms –- especially larger firms — were already encouraging flexible, remote working arrangements for their partners and staffs.
The driver of this trend was not just convenience, but economics. The more a firm could reduce its physical footprint, the more it could save on real estate, maintenance, and overhead costs.
Now, firms and other organizations are seeing that they can go remote on a scale they never anticipated and still function quite well –- in some cases with barely a glitch.
Susskind’s question about courts –- whether they are a service or a place -– applies as well to law firms. To what extent is a firm’s physical plant essential to the services it provides? No doubt, an office provides camaraderie, collaboration, and convenience. And not everyone has a home suitable to working remotely. But there can be no doubt that physical downsizing will be a lasting impact of this crisis.
7. Legal education will be revamped.
By coincidence of schedule, I happened to be at Brigham Young University Law School on March 12, the day its leaders made the decision to shut down physical classrooms, send students home, and teach the remainder of the semester online. I ended up recording a podcast interview with the school’s head of infrastructure and technology about how the school came to and would implement that decision.
Even then, little did anyone anticipate the degree to which the crisis would upend legal education. Just six weeks later, everything that seemed written in stone about our system for training new lawyers is up in the air — even as to the bar exam process that has been the gateway to becoming a lawyer. Utah has proposed letting law students skip the bar exam, and Massachusetts says it may offer the exam online.
As Jordan Furlong put it, “The lawyer formation process is breaking down in front of us.” And he accurately, I believe, predicts that out of this crisis “will emerge a driving need … to really rethink what we’re trying to achieve: to develop competent, confidant lawyers to service clients and society.”
I am anything but an expert in legal education. But I have no doubt that, as a result of what we are going through now, legal education — like law practice and the courts — will never again look the same.
Robert Ambrogi
is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at ambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).