18 March 2020 (Brussels, Belgium) — This is a long response to a thread Martin Nikel started on Linkedin which you can read by clicking here. He addresses how the coronavirus has had an instant effect on the adoption of technology in law and legal services.
And, yes. This crisis will engender worse issues than how to use legal tech when people realize this isn’t ending in a few weeks or even a few months. The deaths have barely started in the U.S. Neither has the economic hardship and desperation.
But I want to add a somber note to Martin’s thread. I was excited by his post. The “new normal” that might develop – perhaps an industry recognizing the true potential of using legal tech in new ways.
And like many of us, I was suckered in years ago by the big tech mantra of “move fast and break things”, failing to see (though many, many people did) that what was really going on was “break all the rules and just do it; who cares; regulation is non-existent; don’t ask permission; you can always just apologise later”. Facebook, Google, Uber, everybody adopted that mantra.
In Martin’s thread I wrote about how tech could enable remote document review, make it part of the “new normal”. I had long chats with members of the legal community about it. What could be the downside of remote review?
Well, reality set in. Because my career in the legal technology field has been in e-discovery document review, and assisting law firms and corporations and others to staff those reviews. I had forgotten how brutal this side of the industry can be – what one Am Law 50 legal technology head once affectionately described for me as the “proctology side of legal tech”.
So what has happened? Law firms are dropping contract attorney rates. They see an economic advantage to remote review. As one example, four e-discovery review projects went remote this week. But the pay rates were dropped by an average $7 an hour. The law firm/corporate mantra pretty much went like this:
– “you do not need/we do not have the expense of your review centre so we are not going to subsidise that which you book into your rate”
– “it’s cheaper to run a remote review [I do not agree with that; for instance, what about the extra senior time QA/QC required to maintain pace and quality when managed remotely?]
– “you don’t like it? we have 20 agencies that will play ball because they need the money”
Anybody surprised? Contract attorneys are going off-the-wall. A slowing amount of work, now pay cuts, and zero health care.
This is the issue, at least in the U.S. I started The Posse List (the entity that assists in the staffing of e-discovery projects) in 2002. I have seen everything that law firms/corporates do to squeeze a $ out of review costs. Those clowns at Sedona, Legaltech, etc. do not get it and do not care. Sedona? Eh. Just an international dining club. It died when Richard Braman died. Legaltech? Why bother.
So now, in the middle of a major health crisis, profiteering. But in the U.S., at least, that has always been the mantra: it’s always about, only about the $$.
But that is all over America. The injustice of spending $50 billion on the U.S. airlines should drive the public to apoplexy. The companies that used their fat profits to buy back stocks as they constricted the distance between seats, that only managed to “innovate” by charging new fees, will be the ones the government chooses to salvage. Its workers? No coverage.
Or just scan Twitter. Typical of 1000s of stories:
-I got laid off by Marriott
-I applied for unemployment; they called to check my employment status
-Marriott HR: I am NOT laid off but was still employed on a ZERO hour schedule
-So I can’t qualify for unemployment nor do I now have health insurance
These coming bailouts are moral failures. Congress has leverage to rebalance the economy, but so far, it isn’t using it. In a crisis, the government can’t save everything. Agreed. But you are considering billions in aid to casino magnates like Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson while independent booksellers and local florists wither and die?
In the e-discovery document review world, the COVID19 crisis is handled like this, this is what reviewers hear:
-“We are concerned about you and your families”
-“We want a safe environment for everyone”
Nothing is changing:
-no extra cleaning is being done as promised
-no hand sanitizers are being made available as promised
-no “social distancing” in review rooms is being instituted
-people who are obviously sick or coughing are not being sent home
-nobody is being given “if you are sick you should to the following” health advice, as promised
Given the U.S. is a highly litigious society, the contract attorney chats boards and many contract attorneys in document review rooms are assembling information and data for the negligence cases sure to come: logging agency/vendor email exchanges, recording conversations when agency/vendor employees discuss the health situation, etc. It will only take 1 person to be found positive in a document review room for liability to blow up.
And let’s be honest, just say what you really mean:
“You can live or die and be replaced either way, and in the midst of a global pandemic we are going to take advantage and gut your pay by another $7.00/hr because we never really respected what you do or that you’re a part of the same profession we are. As a slave commodity, work or don’t work, but just don’t die on our worksite or give our real employees any of your germs (heaven forbid, they might bring it back to the firm!) ”
Dickens was right. The law is an ass. It is a business like any other. Ikea, Starbucks, Home Depot, Sainsbury. All the same. Profession? I am rolling on the floor laughing.
It is, unfortunately, the real shape of things to come.