The most profitable startup ever was a totally new idea called FOMO, Inc. The idea capitalized on the one thing lawyers have major FOMO for. Do you know what it is? It’s the one thing lawyers need nearly every day (and I’m not talking about coffee, though that’s a great guess). If FOMO, Inc. went public, their IPO would possibly be the highest ever recorded.
Still not sure? For those of you who don’t know, FOMO usually stands for “Fear of Missing Out,” but, in the case of FOMO, Inc., it stood for “Fulfilling Obligatory Midnight Oil.” They sold midnight oil by the gallon, by the barrel. Nearly every person in their target market — lawyers — bought until they could buy no more.
I am joking, of course. Midnight oil is, unfortunately, not something you could buy, or else I would have by now, but the idea behind FOMO, Inc. still rings true: working all night is encouraged and is one of a plethora of bad practices in the legal industry. Why is this the norm?
The way I see it, the biggest contributor to these bad practices is a failure to update. If you think of law as an app, we are running the oldest version, even though the software and hardware around it are improving, like we’re running 1997’s MS Word 97 on the latest present-day laptops. It’s just outdated and inefficient. We must modernize the lens through which we assess the value of legal work.
To do that, I propose a change in attitude and environment.
Attitude
There is an expectation for lawyers to give more and more. Not to produce more, but to give more.
What’s the difference?
The former asks for increased effort, whereas the latter asks for increased output, a matter of quality vs. quantity.
I like to use an acronym to help remind me of this dichotomy. It’s rather appropriately called MORE, which stands for “Midnight Oil is Rarely Expedient.” Thinking of this snaps my mind out of trying to convince myself I should be working harder.
Lawyers do not need to be chained to their desks for as long as possible each day. A classic example can be found in Goodhart’s Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. A certain (high) number of working hours should not be a target. People have gamed what once was an indicator, and, in doing so, sacrificed productivity.
The second attitude is closed-mindedness. The legal institution is so stuck in the rut of tradition that it is has set up camp there, getting comfortable — all the while the technology tow truck strains to pull it out. Technology can embed company policies and automate workflows in such a way that lawyers do not have to spend countless hours on low-value activities.
To expand on that and to bridge us to discuss the work environment, I’ll introduce you to Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, which states that, in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
First, those who are devoted to the goals of the organization, e.g., dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy.
Second, those who are dedicated to the organization itself, e.g. administrators in the education system.
The law states that the second group will gain and keep control of the organization, writing the rules and controlling promotions.
I think that law is rife with the second kind of people, people who do not stand for the law itself but the institution that evolved out of it. This dissonance causes a mental block to creativity and innovation.
Environment
That mental block is the same thing that keeps us stuck under the harsh fluorescent lights of the main office, while we idolize the grandiose corner office. If people stood for the goals of the legal bureaucracy, then they would have revised the working environment a thousand times to capitalize on technological and psychological benefits.
Better working environment = better frame of mind = better outcomes.
It’s time to modernize our mindset and question the norm. Change may be inevitable, but directionless change leads to the complication of simple processes without better results.
Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.