Is it possible? Could Apple have designed a product so simple and so intuitive that it is easy enough for a lawyer to use?
While I write a bit in jest, an outsider might wonder about the technological acuity of lawyers given how terribly slow they are to adopt technology. I keep reading about how the iPad is so intuitive that your grandmother, a luddite or even a lawyer can use it. “Perhaps Apple is really on to something here,” I thought to myself. But on reflection, the comparison fails. The reasons your mom surprisingly ends up using an iPad will not also convince your lawyer to do so.
Lawyers are (generally) smart even if sometimes cantankerous folks, so why not giving something new a go? There reasons have been blogged about to death, so I won’t belabor them here. What I think it comes down to is precedent. Lawyers like to follow a path that has been blazed before. Preferably many times before. In a lawyer’s world, staking a new path or even a lightly worn path (or a path only recently recognized by a different circuit) exposes them and their clients to risk.
While taking a new position in a system that has at its heart a huge respect for prior decisions may create risk for a client, the metaphor is more difficult when deciding whether to use a new device or technology. The part lawyers forget is that the status quo has risks and problems associated with it as well.
Side Note: I informally consider the extent to which an opposing lawyer uses technology as a tell as to how they will advise their clients. If I see a luddite on the other side of a deal, I infer that the advice they may provide will be very risk adverse or reflect older paradigms. This can be helpful information when trying to move the other side off a position. I wouldn’t say it is 100% correlative, but it can be helpful.
But, mom doesn’t have this kind of hangup. Other hangups possibly, but probably not the curse of stare decisis. The iPad presents as a device that is easy to use and allows access to the things your mom enjoys: an email from the kids, pictures of the last vacation, a movie of the grandkids, etc. In contrast, a lawyer isn’t avoiding the iPad because it is hard to use or because they are stupid, but because it requires doing something differently which a lawyer perceives as risky.
So even while smartphone adoption by lawyers has been relatively high, an iPad is something different. As a result, I don’t anticipate the rate of adoption by lawyers to be terribly high. The tipping point for lawyer adoption is probably much farther off…probably after development of a killer app or two specific to the legal profession. It won’t be legal research, matter management or time and billing. I’m not sure what it will be, but I look forward to finding out.
