Generation Y trainees about to shake up Legal and Legal IT
We’ve been away this Easter weekend to visit my wife’s family and whilst out yesterday I happened to get into a conversation with an ex-trainee of a Big Law firm. As I got on to explaining that I worked in the IT dept of a rival firm it was interesting to hear his questions and thoughts on Legal IT.
It left me thinking that anyone waiting for the current tech savvy trainees to give us Legal IT professionals an easier time ought to stop reading this post now as I’m about to depress you!
In fact if this trainee was typical of those joining law firms then the demands on Legal IT are going to get worse (or better if you’re up for the challenge). A couple of points stood out:
- Frustration at the pace of change in corporate IT. The bemusement at why law firms can’t keep up with software like he could at home. “We were still on Office 2003!” he commented as though this was a ridiculous situation. My comments on the difficulties of upgrading thousands of PC’s got a kind of “So what?” reaction.
- They do understand the IT dept but only the roles of those at the coal face. The service desks and IT support staff. They are unaware of the size and roles in the rest of IT.
Now this may have just been the situation in that particular law firm, but I doubt it. The challenge that stands out to me from this is twofold:
- The struggle of getting the old lawyers to use computers is going to change rapidly into a demand from new lawyers to use the latest computers and software. This I’m sure is starting to happen already, but it will only increase. Why shouldn’t a lawyer be able to do with his work kit what I’m doing now with my own kit (writing a blog post on my laptop travelling up the M5 whilst connected to the internet via my windows phone which is acting as a wireless hotspot! **).
- There needs to be better engagement at the trainee stage with IT. Get the trainees involved in the IT strategy early in their careers may reap benefits later.
Things are not going to get any easier for Legal IT, the demands on the corporate IT dept won’t drop off they’ll just be different.
Oh and the challenges for Law Firms generally won’t get easier either. This guy got disillusioned with the long hours, no life culture of city law and quit to pursue other interests. Generation Y is going to shake things up in law in more ways than one!
** to the iPhone users out there. That windows phone is not only acting as a wireless hotspot, it’s also playing MP3’s through the car stereo and scrobbling to tracks to last.fm. That’s multitasking!
I was in a magic circle firm last month and asked a Chief Exec this question. Looking ahead ten years, how do you see generation y changing the way lawyers work? Their reply was surprising.
“I don’t think it will. We have trainees join with huge enthusiasm for new ways of doing things and the latest technology, but we just make them conform.”
I think the big dilemma is drawing the line between new technologies to make you do your existing job better, or technology that actually changes the process and the way you work. Slates, gesture based interfaces, cloud computing amongst others all have the power to change the way lawyers and their firms work, hopefully for the better. But will the big firms embrace these if it means changing some of the core processes in their business? The jury is still out..
“…but we just make them conform” Sigh!
It’s not just legal where people don’t get technology. Take a look at the following tweet that Tom Harris posted tonight (@TomHarris4MP)
“Just been warned that if I want to be taken seriously in the next parliament, I have to give up the blog. #gutted”
[...] that Jeffrey Ritter webinar last week this morning when I stumbled across this post by Jason Plant, Generation Y trainees about to shake up Legal and Legal IT. Specifically it was this quote from Jason that I found interesting. The struggle of getting the [...]
While I have not supported a Big ## law Firm, I have been the involved with Corporate Legal Dept (General Counsel), and the bigger issues I see is the sheer fact that the Gen-Y’s do not see an issue with Corporate (Insider/non-public Info) on the web… In one case we needed to get the requirements of Reg 23A/Reg O report, and the lawyers statement was …”can’t I just get it by going to Google”??!!!! To which my retort was sure, if you can get the Bank’s Directors to sign off on it I will gladly put on “Google”, but I still need to know how you want the report to look and what information is pertinent (basic design and content)….Seriously this hasn’t happened just once and only with one lawyer but with many of the Gen-Y’s…..I don’t know if Gen-Yer’s are ready to be as mobile as they are used to in a corporate environment, all your client-confidential data maybe willing exposed to Google, and not a thought as to why this is an issue.
I have always thought that the main hinderance of big law or any law firm embracing the change to more sophisticated software and hardware is their training. And that training has to be begun in law school. The problem is that older attorneys don’t care to konw the inner workings of the IT world, and the y gen’s don’t know enough about the ‘under the hood.’ They still have that ‘get it done’ attitude, but because their world goes faster, they expect things to happen faster.
I’m purposing at a conference of Legal Teachers in America this year that the law school curriculum needs to include more legal specific technology. Once the young ones make it in big law or any law firm, they can ask and with confidence as well as explain to the older attorneys why they need to be more sophisticated in using their IT skills.
[...] As I mentioned in an earlier post, the new generation of lawyers will start to demand better software. Software that works like an application on a smartphone with an interface designed to make things easier! If legal IT providers don’t think about their integration with Office 2010 they’ll stand out like a sore thumb (and probably give the lawyer as much grief as one too!) [...]