Comments on: Generation Y trainees about to shake up Legal and Legal IT

By: Office 2010 – Legal IT vendors polish your interfaces | No option for Law Firm

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 10:18:53 +0000

[...] 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!) [...]

By: Anita Evans

Anita Evans — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:36:56 +0000

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.

By: Damion

Damion — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:49:34 +0000

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.

By: The Many Faces of Mike McBride » Blog Archive » Changing Focus of Legal IT

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 01:50:48 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 22:45:30 +0000

“…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”

By: Jes Breslaw

Jes Breslaw — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:59:11 +0000

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..