Yesterday, I made a presentation with Ethan Katsh to several Massachusetts Bar Association lawyers in Springfield on the occasion of launching the Internetbar.org Insititute (www.iboinstitute.org) . The internet culture is upon us and the legal profession has its first opportunity to learn the tools, access the resources and be able to compete at the pace our clients demand in this climate of hyper-connectivity.
We are releasing new courses to the profession, first to MBA lawyers, on breaking the billable hour habit, productizing your practice, multi-casting your practice using web-casts and pod-casts, using new techniques such as online dispute resolution, and incorporating resolutionary thinking into your practice.
Afterward, I spoke with the lawyers who were present, and they raised questions about finding the time to make all these changes. Lawyers are so busy it seems, that learning new technologies is a real challenge. After all, don’t the new technologies change just as fast as the ipod being replaced by the iphone? Then what happens?
What do others think? Is it an impossible task to get the legal profession to transform itself? Do lawyers think that we are all ready using technology effectively and there is no reason to change any more?
Are you noticing signs that business is more difficult to come by? Are people finding legal information and documents online before they come to your office?
Are clients asking for disputes to be handled differently than having their day in court?
What do you think?