Chutzpah

Legaltech News publisher Zach Warren uses this Yiddish word to describe one of the qualities needed to launch a legaltech Startup. In addition, he says, it takes vision and the ability to think oneself into the situation of the desired user as precisely as possible. There's a lot of truth to that.

Many founders fail at even describing their customers. You often hear "all lawyers" or "all attorneys". Maybe one should also generally move away from this customer group-based mindset and instead ask the question, "what pain are you trying to solve with your new product?" Then it's time to show your colors.

One example: from the current study by Wolters Kluwer, one can read that the standardization of contracting is a very important topic for law firms and for corporate legal. But why is that? Is it about the speed at which new contracts can be created, or is it about ensuring quality? In the former case, systems like Bryter or top.legal can actually help by analyzing the most important contracts and putting them into a question-answer grid with all the options provided. In the second case, it is more about the internal workflow and ensuring that all valid templates and text modules are actually stored and, above all, maintained in a defined location and that all employees are obliged to access only these quality-checked modules.

Certainly, the answers will mostly be ambiguous. But the message is: you have to understand your customer very well and know his pains as good as possible before you start developing a new software product. And exactly the same applies to customers facing the introduction of new tools. First define the pain and then deal with possible solutions!

With these meaningful words, Leginnside says goodbye to summer vacation. We will be back in mid-August. Stay healthy!

Chutzpah

 

Never in my life would I have thought that the word "chutzpah" existed in English. The editor of Legaltech News, Zach Warren, uses it to describe one of the character traits it takes to launch a legaltech startup. In addition, he says, it takes vision and the ability to think as precisely as possible into the situation of the desired user. There's a lot of truth to that.

Many founders fail at even describing their customers. You often hear "all lawyers" or "all attorneys". Maybe you should also generally move away from this customer group-based mindset and instead ask the question, "what pain are you trying to solve with your new product?" Then it's time to show your colors.

One example: from the current study by Wolters Kluwer - I already mentioned it last week - you can read that standardization of contracting is a very important topic for law firms and for corporate legal. But why is that, really? Is it about the speed at which new contracts can be created, or is it about ensuring quality? In the former case, systems like Bryter or top.legal can actually help by analyzing the most important contracts and putting them into a question-answer grid with all the options provided. In the second case, it is more about the internal workflow and ensuring that all valid templates and text modules are actually stored in a defined location and that all employees are obliged to access only these quality-checked modules.

Certainly, the answers will be mostly ambiguous. But the message is: you have to understand your customer very well and know his pains as well as possible before you start developing a new software product. And exactly the same applies to customers facing the introduction of new tools. First define your pains and then deal with possible solutions!

PS: Even if founders have defined the parins and found a solution, it will still be a very long journey that requires a lot of chutzpah.

Digitization of legal studies (cont.)

Last week I wrote about an event of the Department of Innovation and Digitalization of Law at the University of Vienna (Prof. Nikolaus Forgò). A panel discussion had also addressed the question of the low level of digitization of law studies in Austria. Today I would like to take up this topic and dig a little deeper.

Thesis 1: Digitization is preceded by standardization

If we assume that there are about 20,000 active law students in Austria, then this would be an attractive number for a digitization project. However, if you look at how diverse the teaching and examination methods are, even outside of Corona, the number quickly becomes relative. Oral and written exams, multiple choice, comprehensive papers, course exams - the list goes on. There are good reasons for each individual form of examination - from the perspective of the respective faculty/university and the examiner/department. But what does one want to digitize? Teaching or learning?

Thesis 2: Before digitization comes the why

The finding that the study of law has not really changed for decades is correct. In other fields of study, things are different; medicine, for example, students now learn in a case-oriented manner in dialog with their professors; in the past, they had learned thick volumes by heart. But when we talk about change, we should first clarify what the real goal is:

• Is the teaching itself to be digitized? 
• Is the learning-process of the material to be supported by digitized methods/means?
• Or is the real goal to provide students with knowledge and skills of digitization as such via the digitization of studies? ("Computer skills")

Depending on that, answers and possibilities will be highly different. One thing should be noted, however: If the high goal of legal studies is to give students an understanding of structures and to enable them to recognize contexts, then this is the highest of all development levels in relation to digitization. It will be correspondingly difficult to make progress here - even if standardized teaching and examination methods were agreed upon.

Modern legal service - a note

 

Alisha Andert recently published an article in the newsletter of the Bucerius Center of the Legal Practice on the topic of WHY MODERN LEGAL SERVICE IS NOT A QUESTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL CASE that is well worth reading. In it, she calls for a holistic approach to legal advice, arguing that the traditional view of individual cases falls short in the digital era. We agree with the result, but only to a limited extent with the underlying assumption.

The author assumes that individual case thinking and legal detail determine everyday legal life and that standardization is therefore rather alien to the legal profession. Americans defend this approach as "bespoke lawyering". In many cases, however, the reality is not quite like that: "I haven't done a new contract in ages," confessed one lawyer during a recent interview. "The cases are so similar to each other that there are matching templates in the office for practically everything."

Now, of course, one can object that this is perhaps an isolated case, and moreover, everything is different in a large law firm anyway. Maybe, maybe only the dimensions change.

The point is this: If the example of the quoter is correct, then it is in fact the law firm staff who draw up the contract on demand, and from an economic point of view this process is quite efficient. Then it would also be understandable that many lawyers vehemently resist digitization and standardization - because in truth they have already standardized and therefore supposedly have little to gain.

But, once again emphasized, this should in no way call into question the author's conclusion based on her practically chosen example.