Page 115 - Impact: Collected Essays on Expanding Access to Justice

The Downside of Disruption:The risks Associated withTransformational Change in the Delivery of Legal services
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raymond h. Brescia1
Change is coming to the legal profession . New forms of communicating, researching, advertising, finding clients, serving clients, and preparing documents are transforming the way legal services are delivered in the 21st century .2 The advent of new technologies, like the internet, machine learning, and mobile communications have put the legal profession on the cusp of what business theorist Clayton Christensen calls “disruptive innovation”: transformative shifts in a market for a product or service that threaten the business models, and even the very existence, of incumbent actors within that market .3 In the legal profession, these technology-enabled changes are streamlining all aspects of the delivery of legal services . They are changing the ways that lawyers identify, market to, and secure clients; conduct legal research; prepare court documents; compile and review discovery; collaborate with other lawyers, clients and experts; and prepare contracts, patent applications and other legal documents . In short, the evolution of the legal profession in the United States is entering a phase where we will see greater digitization, commoditization, and atomization of legal services that will result in a streamlining of such services in ways that make it more efficient and less costly . This streamlining holds out the promise that all aspects of the lawyer’s role can be made easier and more affordable to more consumers . But it is not without its risks .
For some lawyers and law firms, the disruption of the current model of legal services delivery means that they will be forced to change the way they provide services or risk the loss of customers and income . For others, those who adapt to the new legal landscape, they will likely thrive, only if they are able to utilize technology to change the way they do business, lower the costs of the services they provide, and find new clients to make up for the loss of revenue that will likely accompany new methods of service provision . Richard Susskind has discussed the fate of the legal profession in its current form and declared the still evolving disruption in the legal profession as the “End of Lawyers .”4 Others are not so sure .5 Even Susskind plots out what he anticipates to be the new roles that lawyers will assume in a newly-enhanced, digitally-enabled legal landscape, and still finds a range of functions lawyers can fill in this new landscape, even if they are different from those they fill today .6
1 Associate Professor of Law and Director, Government Law Center, Albany Law School.
2 For an overview of some of these changes, see Raymond h. Brescia et al., Embracing Disruption: HowTechnological Change in the Delivery of Legal Services Can Improve Access to Justice, 78 alb. l. reV. 553 (2015) (hereinafter “Embracing Disruption”).
3 clayTon m. chrisTensen, The innoVaTor’s dilemma: when new Technologies cause greaT firms To fail (1997).
4 richard susskind, The end of lawyers? reThinking The naTure of legal serVices (2008).
5 Susskind is not without his detractors. See, e.g., Paul F. Kirgis, The Knowledge Guild: The Legal Profession in an Age of Technological Change, 11 neV. l. J. 184 (Fall 2010) (arguing that technological change in the delivery of legal services that makes it easier to access and less expensive, coupled with increased complexity and heterogeneity in society, may increase the demand for legal services generally not reduce it).
6 richard susskind, Tomorrow’s lawyers: an inTroducTion To your fuTure (2013).
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