Mark A. Cohen: A Career Iconoclast
In many ways, Mark A. Cohen is a legal innovation veteran. He founded and led Qualitas Knowledge Management, which pioneered legal process outsourcing in the early 2000s. His follow-up act: Clearspire, a groundbreaking 'two-company' model law firm and service provider, which established a model now emulated around the world.
Prior to these companies, Mark enjoyed an illustrious career as an Assistant U.S. Attorney before progressing to become the youngest partner at a national firm and founder/managing partner of a multi-city national “bet the company” litigation boutique. He is now a sought-after consultant and authority on legal innovation globally.
He cautions against overusing the term ”legal innovation.”
“I don’t think there is quite as much innovation as some people would like to think,” observed Mark.
“I would define legal innovation as any product, service, structure or idea that is applied to the marketplace that materially addresses law’s wicked problems,” he said.
Two of the many “wicked problems” present in law are the access to justice crisis, which is not unique to any country or marketplace, and the fact that legal services may now be delivered by non-lawyers – both human and machine.
A lawyer and innovator
“My career has had two distinct but related parts. For the first 25+ years, I was a civil trial lawyer and a company lawyer. I was an Assistant U.S. Attorney. I was an outside General Counsel. I was both a provider of legal services, a manager of legal services and a consumer of legal services. I saw, back then, that though there was a certain small segment of the legal population who conducted high value legal services, a lot of work that passed for legal work could be provided far more efficiently, with predictive capabilities that could not be done by brute force labour,” said Mark.
This realisation inspired action.
“In 1991, I went to one of my then largest clients, AT&T, and asked, ‘How can I connect the 3 geographically disparate offices of my firm so we can work more efficiently? How can I connect with my clients so they can know in real-time what we’re doing? How can we be more efficient in legal delivery?’”
Mark invested $1m of his own savings to enable video conferencing and a virtual law library which could be accessed by lawyers across his three offices via their desktop computers. He embraced an Agile workplace, flex time and fixed priced billing for large work.
“I saw not just what the technology could do. I had a different notion of how law could be practised. I had been a big law firm partner before starting my own national boutique. I felt there could be more efficient, more compassionate ways to deliver my services.”
Qualitas Knowledge Management and Clearspire marked his transition to legal innovator and founder.
“Once I sold Qualitas Knowledge Management, I realised that there was potential to do more.
“I teamed up with a friend of mine, a business person who had a knowledge of the legal industry. He had started a major staffing company. Together we created Clearspire. In Clearspire, we set out to re-engineer the delivery of corporate legal services. We created a two-company model – a law firm as well as a bundled legal service company. We built a terrific technology platform that gave us great flexibility in terms of how and where our employees worked from. Both the law firm and the service company connected very closely with clients who could tap into the intellectual capital we created for them. Clients could monitor what we were doing in real-time and could truly collaborate with us to the extent to which they thought it was going to move the needle.”
While the Clearspire model was successfully validated, it proved quite costly, which made it difficult to scale the company.
“Clearspire was ultimately sold. From that experience, I learned that there is a very fine line between what is regarded as success and failure. That, to me, is something that anyone who truly seeks to innovate and be an entrepreneur – to get their uniform dirty – would have experienced.”
Technology is only as effective as the problems it solves
“Clearspire came about from thoughtful contemplation of the marketplace. What was it that consumers wanted that they were not able to obtain from existing resources and structures? The technology was a means to that end,” said Mark.
It is an approach Mark encourages in legal innovators.
“Technology is a little bit like evidence. Not all evidence is material. Not all evidence is admissible. The technology is only as effective and as relevant as the problems it is seeking to address. Technology is not a substitute for human visions and emotional intelligence.”
According to Mark, technology is elevating, not diminishing, the importance of people skills.
Legal innovation is creating a global legal community
“Law used to be provincial by design. Technology allows us to collaborate with people all over the world. I find it wildly exciting that on any given day I’m talking to people from Australia, Singapore, Europe and South America about how technology might be thoughtfully applied to the delivery of legal services. I think that is a giant leap forward for law. It’s causing us to recognize that not even differences in political systems will necessarily preclude us from coming up with common solutions to common problems,” said Mark.
As well as globalising the law, legal innovation is pulling in non-law professionals.
“Technology is a team sport. It’s best applied when technologists collaborate with lawyers and social scientists,” he said.
Mark thinks legal innovation will begin to challenge the barriers to entry for providing legal services.
“I find it cruelly ironic that the American Bar Association talks about protecting the public from the unauthorised practice of law. I think this is also used as a protective barrier for lawyers that they raise when they do not want threats or competition to their monopoly,” said Mark. “I think there is an enormous opportunity to create apps and bots designed to address law’s wicked challenges and deliver legal services better.”
Know what’s coming and learn what lasts
For lawyers looking to stay relevant amidst technological disruption, Mark encourages them to keep on top of legal tech trends and master fundamental legal and commercial skills – the human skills that machines are unlikely to replace.
“Learn your craft. Understand the rules that govern your practice. Try to get the experience of learning to deal with a client. Know about project management, how to read a balance sheet and understand the jargon and speed of business. Young lawyers should recognise that they are helping to solve business or personal challenges – not legal problems. Legal problems are really just a subset of other types of challenges.”
“Beyond learning the craft, it’s important for young lawyers to understand what’s going on in the marketplace. They don’t necessarily have to be experts, but they should be aware of how technology might influence them and their career decisions.”
This is particularly important in light of how the life and work of lawyers has changed.
“For generations, just having knowledge of the law was sufficient to ensure a predictable, comfortable, socially acceptable career,” said Mark. “When I started out, the average lawyer might have 1 or 2 jobs in a career. Now the data says they can expect to have 12.”
Mark also urged young lawyers to disregard the pop-culture image of a hard-nosed, obnoxious lawyer.
“I think a lot of young lawyers are under the mistaken impression that there is a certain guise they have to put on – to be combative, to be obnoxious. Law is all about collaboration. When you think about a settlement, it’s really an adversarial form of collaboration. Don’t check your humanity at the door. Be who you are.”
Mark praised the Centre for Legal Innovation (CLI) for bringing a global and thoughtful perspective to legal innovation.
“The CLI is taking a thoughtful dive into the challenges of the profession. This is important work. About 80% of the challenges experienced around the globe are pretty similar, with maybe 20% being specific to a particular jurisdiction. By seeking out opinions from people who are not necessarily in their own backyard to thoughtfully grapple with similar issues, the CLI is helping advance legal innovation.
“The CLI really has an open mind, with an intent to improve the profession. I think that’s great and much needed, particularly in these times.”
The Centre for Legal Innovation will be holding an Artificial Intelligence in Legal Practice Summit on 31 August 2018 in Sydney. If you're interested in AI, legaltech, and innovation in legal practice, secure your spot at the Summit today.