For many years I was trapped inside a weird cult.
It was a cult of Law-Tech Zealots.
Specifically, lawyers who’d embraced technology before it was cool.
Of course, eventually technology was revealed to be indisputably useful.
That’s when our cult became smug and arrogant.
We felt justified being smug of course.
For years, we’d been perceived as useless nerds. And now it turned out we were right.
Maybe so, but we were also delusional.
We believed that technology was a magic bullet.
And all you had to do was aim it at your law practice and fire away.
The result would be a magical transformation.
That’s what we believed. And it’s what we told the lawyers who weren’t in our cult.
Of course, this “magic bullet” theory of technology was ludicrous.
But we believed it.
We not only embraced technology…
We were wild-eyed about every kind of new gizmo, tech tool, and app.
We were infected “shiny object syndrome” and we wanted to infect everyone else too.
We put on programs called “60 Tech Tips in 60 Minutes.”
Yeah one tip per minute is obviously plenty of time for any lawyer to figure out how to make use of our advice, right?
Wrong.
But we kept on believing we were doing good work. Saving the legal profession etc.
Yawn. It took me awhile to come out of this stupor. It took awhile for the brainwashing to wear off… The reason it was so hard is that I was surrounded by other cult-members.
We all shared the same delusion: take any law practice, sprinkle technology into it, and voila, it’s instantly better
Of course YOU know that’s simply not true. If you’re like most lawyers, you often find technology more frustrating than helpful. So what’s the problem? Why isn’t technology more helpful?
Well, as I told the group of lawyers I spoke to yesterday… There are 3 keys to successfully leveraging technology to transform your law practice.
1. You need to approach it with the right mindsets (yes, there is more than one mindset required)
2. You need to use technology strategically.
3. You may need to get help to leverage technology
And realize: you also need help with other aspects of running your law practice. Because, if you’re like most lawyers… You have trouble balancing two important (but competing) demands.
You have to deal with (1) the unforgiving demands of day-to-day law practice… AND (2) the pesky demands of managing your practice as a business. So you need help with managing your law business.
But remember technology is just one part of that business. Law-Tech Zealots can’t help you manage your business. And they aren’t that good at helping you with technology (unless you need help feeling bewildered and humiliated)
Remember the LTZ’s don’t see technology as just one component of your business.
They see technology as the only useful component. Or at least many of them do.
So, if you need help with technology (or managing your practice), be careful about getting it from an LTZ cult member.
Most importantly: you should realize that if you’ve struggled to harness technology up to now it’s not your fault. Maybe you just haven’t found the right people to help guide you.
P.S. If you're a practicing lawyer, check out this Law Practice Assessment . After answering a few questions, you'll get detailed recommendations for improving five key areas of your practice.
