Catriona Macleod is recruiting for a future of law powered by legal tech. As Director of Cullen Macleod, Catriona is charged with ensuring her firm navigates the disruptive forces affecting the profession, adapting its skills and services to align with changing client expectations and technology.
“When AI can scan thousands of documents in seconds, it can remove the work of junior lawyers. Meanwhile, senior lawyers can sit on a beach in Thailand and work on contracts for clients in London,” Catriona said. “This means the profession as a whole has to stand up and work out how we remain relevant. What do we actually do and what value do we provide? From there, we need to work out how tech, disruption and innovation can assist.”
“I used to cringe at the words ‘innovation’ and ‘disruption’ because they have become buzzwords, and they mean so many different things to so many people,” Catriona said. However, the changes of technology, processes and mindset have impacted her business at a strategic level, causing the firm to embrace technology in practical ways.
“Changes on a strategic level - where we are going, what we are doing and how we do it now flow through to changes on a practical level, such as document automation, process implementation, online portals and new methods of developing our business.”
“The real impact is that these changes have become a filter through which I process everything – from the kind of skills and characteristics our lawyers need and will need going forward, to the kinds of people we now employ from graduate through to lateral hires, to how we approach client service delivery. Our most recent hire is a Business Development & Legal Technology Officer – although we are only 25 people, creating this new position as a joint BD / tech role reflects my view that legal tech is an integral part of developing our business, both internally and externally.”
Alongside the abundance promised by disruption, Catriona also notes that it is imperative lawyers are adequately skilled in technology, and a strategy for training junior lawyers is developed.
“IT and tech solutions are removing the need for humans throughout a number of areas in law, mostly at the junior level,” Catriona said. Consequently, this may result in reduced investment in training junior lawyers, and a shortage of lawyers equipped with the necessary skills to thrive in a post-disruption profession – such as a strong understanding of IT, and a readiness and ability to form client relationships and develop new business.
“A large number of ‘New Law’ firms are set up on the simple model of only using senior lawyers – innovation and IT has allowed them to work anywhere, usually at a reduced cost to the client – so it’s great for the lawyer and great for the client. The downside for the profession is that senior lawyers are working remotely, not in the office mentoring and training junior lawyers.”
Catriona urges the profession to address the skills gap swiftly.
“Unless law schools, PLT providers and firms realise, understand and respond to these issues, we risk turning out law graduates who are not equipped for the changed world, and running businesses in ways outdated by decades. Business will fail, and people will be out of work.
“To avoid this, we need to reassess what skills we require, who we recruit, and how and what we train.”
For Cullen Macleod, the opportunities of innovation have been tangible and significant.
“In my direct experience, it means that I can attract and retain great specialist lawyers, and use their expertise as and when needed,” Catriona said. “We have people who work, at various times, from Norway, Melbourne and Canada. Innovation in IT, and having an innovative mindset, has made this possible.”
Tech-assisted solutions have also addressed much of the ‘drone work’ – such as typing, dictation, inputting data into precedents, document review, which were previously the necessary bane of legal work.
“Intelligent people want to be stimulated, and do stimulating work – innovation promotes that,” Catriona said.
“Rather than the ‘robots are taking over the world / will remove lawyers’ jobs in 10 years’ Armageddon message that media outlets find so easy to trot out, innovation is providing a whole raft of opportunities – to make humans’ jobs far more stimulating and produce better outcomes, far more efficiently, for clients. After all, who ever signed up to sit and view discovery for forty hours a week?”
Catriona specialises in dispute resolution, an innately human-centred area of law.
“I think it is an area that won’t feel the impact of disruption as acutely or quickly as transactional lawyers. It can be quite emotional,” said Catriona. Clients may be driven by fear of endless litigation or anger over a business partner setting up a competing business. “We need humans to meet clients, hear their story, establish a rapport, and assess their risk profile and ability to deal with various aspects such as stress. We need humans available to provide instructions or information, and create a plan of action suited to that particular client. This requires us to ‘read’ the client in depth,” noted Catriona. In addition, her work requires her to attend a number of face to face events, such as mediation, or appearing in court, or at tribunals.
“AI cannot currently do this – or at least not at a cost that is worthwhile or on a scale that any normal business can access. For the next five to ten years, dispute litigation is one area that I believe has a longer shelf life and more active human involvement.”
Instead, Catriona identified research as the way AI is likely to impact dispute resolution.
“The ability to give us a swift ‘legal’ answer – for example, the Siri version of ‘tell me the current law on getting an injunction to prevent sale of land in WA.’ AI and tech will give us the ‘legal’ answers, but we will still need humans to take that information, create a plan based on a client risk/stress profile and cost ability, then sell that plan to the client, persuade the other side and the decision maker as to why our client’s position is to be preferred, or a compromise reached.”
“I see tech and disruption as a heightened partnership between humans and technology – think of it as ‘Google on steroids’. AI and tech will speed up the process of getting information, make it more accurate, and reduce that aspect of a lawyer’s role.”
For the next generation of lawyers entering the profession, Catriona’s advice is simple: skill-up.
“Multi-skill, up-skill and re-skill!” said Catriona. “It is no longer enough to simply have a law degree and some semi-decent marks and natural intelligence. You need a mindset open to change to think about new and better ways to provide the services we deliver. You need a demonstrated ability to understand and use IT, a capacity to be ‘business savvy’, generate work and create a client base, and emotional intelligence to persuade people and create and maintain client relationships.”
Initiatives like the Centre for Legal Innovation (CLI) are essential to ensuring the profession effectively navigates the disruption.
“There is a certain amount of fear, ignorance and misunderstanding in the industry, and this needs to change, unless we believe in a mercenary ‘survival of the fittest’ philosophy. Personally, I think that would be tragic: law students spending years of their lives studying to find they don’t have the skills that are now needed, and highly experienced lawyers losing clients and work because clients are no longer accepting outdated work practices, and instead demanding more efficient service delivery and prioritising ‘real value’ work.
“The industry as a whole needs assistance. I give full kudos to the College of Law for realising this, and investing in developing the CLI as a one stop shop of resources, education and bringing people together to understand, appreciate and take advantage of the disruption.”
Catriona is the Co-chair of the CLI’s Advisory Board and is committed to developing the CLI as Asia-Pacific’s only resource of its kind.
“I see the CLI as a hub of information and activity that can connect, inform and assist the legal profession in navigating our way through the disruption that will so quickly become the new normal,” said Catriona.
If you are interested in discussing innovation, disruption, and how they might affect your practice, please join us at the Digital Legal Practice and Innovation Masterclass. This inaugural Masterclass event is designed for leaders and managers at law firms, legal departments and community legal centres, to gain practical tips and tools for strategising and business planning in a disruptive legal market.