Law 2.0 and it’s bratty little sister, 3.0 is a form of apostasy, the beginning and maturation of a fundamental shift in the way legal services are conceived, produced and consumed.
Law is a type of religion,–much like science. There is a technique to legal analysis that one learns in a “law seminary.” Catechismic competency is perfected state by state, with national definitional certification possible through tests such as the multi-state and professional ethics exams. The bar number is proof that one is ordained to wax on, wax off in arenas from the court room to Court TV.
There’s yet to be a law school that develops its curriculum with the idea of training lawyers to think differently about the law. Indeed, the only people who are allowed to think differently are professors, who are granted tenure based on the combination of connection and disconnection from orthodoxy. And, of course, their ability to pull alumni dollars. Such is the nature of accreditation.
However, the argument can be made that once one has spent 20 years outside of academia, its high time to start thinking about the way law could be improved. That’s why I’m obsessed with Law 2.0 / 3.0 technologies. There aren’t many of them, but we’re starting to see some really great stuff, alot of which is chronicled on Wired GC. I’ll try to open up a dialogue with the Vallex Fund, as well, since it states that it has an objective of investing in legal technological innovation:
The Vallex Fund will encourage entrepreneurs to consider the legal industry as a major, new opportunity. “Big Law” alone is a $100 billion industry whose clients are increasingly dissatisfied with the ever increasing costs of legal services. This is not a new trend. Over the last forty years many studies and surveys have been conducted chronicling the problems, inefficiencies and even abuses within the nation’s civil law system. Yet many, both inside and outside the legal profession, believe improvements have been far too slow in coming. A new approach is needed. As experienced entrepreneurs, the Vallex Fund’s management and investors believe an entrepreneurial approach can help expedite change and fresh thinking as it has so successfully done in other industries.
If law is a car, Law 2.0 deals with connection between dealers and manufacturers(efficiencies), dealers and consumers(reputation) and used car economy (mashups). It’s time for a bailout.
And, to get that bailout, Law 3.0 is here to find out what goes on under the hood,–and what should go on when you turn the key. It’s a revisit of the engine(Wankel, Diesel, Electric Hybrid). It’s a way of reclaiming the auto shop for the high-school fix-it guy. It’s not stopping to ask permision to rebuild a car from the spare parts and junk yards, rather than being forced to source parts from the manufacturer.
At the base of Law 3.0 is a soulful revisioning with respect to the concept of “car” from a semantic point of view, taking the car as an algorithym and figuring out which problems it solves and whether there are better ways to solve it.
In this revolutionary approach to manipulation of the rules and processes upon which law is premised, there is TREMENDOUS opportunity.
To get a handle on this, one way that the Obama Administration is poised to help us is with its Project Management approach to problem-solving. Few lawyers would argue that litigation management is as much about managing the process as about managing the content. So, it’s time for us to heal ourselves and let the geeks help us by creating analgies between the problems we face and solutions that already exist, so we can innovte rather than regurgitate.
We need to take another look at process, and figure out new ways to solve the problems faced by, e.g. The Rules of Civil/Criminal Procedure and Code of Military Justice. We need to ask whether they really work for us,–a collaborative discussion that will make itself clear as the Obama Administration works it’s way through the closing of Gitmo.
Rather than an economic approach (which I fear is the legacy of the Chicago School) to law, I urge The Deciders to consider, instead, a Project Managment approach. This means replacing the fundamental premise of scarcity and supply/demand curves with the analysis of problems and steps needed to reach a solution. This requires tools like PERT:
PERT was developed primarily to simplify the planning and scheduling of large and complex projects. It was able to incorporate uncertainty by making it possible to schedule a project while not knowing precisely the details and durations of all the activities. It is more of an event-oriented technique rather than start- and completion-oriented, and is used more in R&D-type projects where time, rather than cost, is the major factor. [ Wikipedia ]
PERT is brilliant stuff. And, it’s something that the techno-geeks around us understand fantastically well, because most are familiar with tools like agile development and scrum.
They.get.stuff.done.and.stuff.works.
We were to take some of those processes and appoaches, the refrain “Yes, We Can! after January 20th will be (with apologies to Montell Jordan ) “This Is How We Do It!”
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