What’s going on in your contract attorney world?
Is document review really what you’re after? I know for the most part contract attorneys that I’m talking to are thinking more about the next project than about where this all leads down the road, but there are a heck of a lot of changes going on out there that are going to make a difference.
First, there’s the economy, stupid! (sorry about that, just had to)
The changes in the economy are already wreaking havoc on law firms and therefore the legal industry (click here), but it goes further. The economy that is just now affecting the firms has been affecting the big companies that form the basis for most contract attorney work of the document review kind for a long time. Companies have been taking over the work of electronic discovery (example Subaru(click here)) since they first discovered how much law firms wanted to charge for it.
The economy, though, is just part of what’s regulating the pace that the changes in technology are forcing on the litigation landscape. Many pundits analyze the shift in how discovery is handled (click here) and even predict the potential death knell of the lawyer (click here), but can’t yet help answer the question of what’s going to happen to the contract attorney.
The document review contract attorney who does nothing more than put in their hours and go home after managing to review just enough documents to not get fired is going to go away. This kind of attorney is going to be the first casualty of the changes coming to the practice of law whether because of economic choices or the more fundamental disruptive technologies that Richard Susskind (click here) describes.
To survive working in the area of document review, you will have to understand what’s going on with technology and how it relates to the communications systems that companies are and will be using. While the concepts mentioned by Matus and Davis (click here) may seem a little technical, these thoughts have actually been around for a few years and Charles Skamser is right to talk about the confusion that exists (click here) as vendors fight their way through helping attorneys find more efficient ways through the mess of communications.
Don’t forget that almost every company at LegalTech, plus the LPO industry taking more and more content review offshore has one purpose which is to reduce the amount of attorney (including contract attorney) work needed in your world.