We’re struck by the assertion of Weightmans’ managing partner Paddy Gaul in this week’s Lawyer: “You can’t be a proper lawyer,” opined Gaul, “unless you understand technology.”
A bold statement, but leaving aside the thorny problem of whether it’s defamatory of a huge swathe of technophobic but eminently well-qualified lawyers, is it true? If one is a legal Luddite, is one an improper lawyer?
Gaul’s view rests on the intersection of law and technology. He told The Lawyer: “All legal work has got to be more efficient. This is largely about technology, you can’t be a proper lawyer unless you understand technology. There’s got to be a lot more investment of time, energy and money.”
But how much technology needs to be understood before a qualified solicitor can proudly declare himself to be ‘proper lawyer’? To find out, we conducted a survey of m’learned friends. The methodology was simple: we despatched several messenger pigeons around the metropolis and asked them to land on the window panes of key legal eagles. Said eagles would be unable to resist the temptation of pigeons, or so we assumed, and thus would reach out and remove the piece of paper on which our questions were written. Then, clutching the pigeons to their slavering beaks, they would complete the survey, before sending them back to us. Remarkably, all this came to pass. Here, then, is the result of our survey:
1. Ability to change a lightbulb
This demonstrates a modicum of technological awareness and is a step in the right direction, not least when we remember that for many lawyers, the whole point of life is to have someone else change their lightbulbs. However, it would be wrong to maintain that because one can change a lightbulb, one is a proper lawyer.
2. Ability to answer a phone
Again, this reveals a commendable commitment to the utilitarian. However, a proper lawyer is not merely he – or she – who knows how to answer a phone.
3. Ability to turn a PC on
A number of lawyers have now mastered this skill but sadly, it doesn’t confer proper lawyer status.
4. Ability to use a dictaphone
M’learned friends have made a virtue of the dictaphone for years. Many insist that it assists with things like shopping lists and generic instructions to general factotums. Or factotae. If you are of this ilk, the chances are that you are on the way to being a proper lawyer.
5. Ability to send an e-mail
At last, we’re getting somewhere. 105% of respondents said that a proper lawyer was someone who could send an e-mail, and 57% put themselves in this category. As Alan Hansen might say, you can’t argue with percentages.
6. Ability to send an attachment with an e-mail
27% of respondents claimed that they knew how to send attachments via e-mail, but only 13% succeeded when asked. We were thus tempted to conclude that this noble 13% were deserving of proper lawyer status – for what more to technological wisdom is there than sending attachments via e-mail – but felt compelled to ask one more question:
7. Ability to write and maintain a blog/general commitment to social media
At this juncture, all but one lawyer replied by querying the meaning of the word ‘blog’ and 117% objected to social media on the basis that the law is not about being sociable. The only one of m’learned friends left in the ring was an individual of Irish/Gallic-sounding hue, who said that conducting a survey about technology and lawyers by messenger pigeon was “absurd – no proper lawyer would bother with it.”
Meanwhile, bemoaning the congruence of their name with that of a TV star, the pigeons took flight to Oswego, Illinois, where they joined Starbucks but, thanks to the proper Drive Thru resident lawyers captured by Flickr user brookenovak, prompty issued injunctions threatening legal proceedings in the event that their images were used. So sorry, folks – no messenger pigeons today, still less Melinda Messenger, for what on earth, really, does she have to do with a post about law and technology?
