THE LAW AND THE BUSINESS OF LAWYERING
Law is not my first profession nor do I think it will be my last. I’ve always been intrigued by the law and the role it plays in society. I love the fact that law is not a static subject or profession, it is always engaging with, changing, adapting to and treating with the dynamic world within which we live. I also love that I can draw upon my knowledge, skills and expertise from my previous profession and my work outside of the law to enhance my lawyering practice and business and by extension my ability to serve not only my clients but my community and the world around me.
Simone Francois-Whittier
You’re probably wondering why I keep referring to my legal practice as a ‘lawyering business’. I’m deliberately doing that to indicate a change in my perception and mindset. Now, this change that I’ve undertaken is by no means mandatory on the readers’ part, I do not presume to tell any other lawyers how to think or how to address their livelihoods, I’m simply sharing my perspectives and thoughts about how I’ve decided to proceed without judgement. I’ve had to move past just ‘having a practice’ to having a business and to do that I had to adopt a radically different mindset. I had to focus on running a business and focus on the things that business owners have to focus on like cash flows, profitability, customer satisfaction, regulatory compliance, employing the right business solutions and tools, just to name a few.
The law is alive, it is a living breathing eco-system and in order to keep it healthy, we the practitioners, the creatures that inhabit this ecosystem, have to adapt to the world outside of it and convey to and inject into the legal ecosystem new ways of thinking, doing and being which are not indigenous to it. One such, much needed repeated injection of non-indigneous know-how is technology ( and its related tools). Those of us with lawyering businesses are required to keep tabs on the ever changing technology landscape and we are specifically charged with the responsibility of leading the introduction of such tech tools into our trade and business.
TECH Tools
Tech tools, as I like to call them, are the technologically based tools that we use to make our lives, work and even recreation better. According to Forbes magazine, “The right tech tool can make all the difference when it comes to productivity….” These tools help us to manage our daily tasks, communicate with our colleagues and families and easily navigate our professional lives and improve our productivity and enhance our work efficiency.
I for one love a good app. I use a number of them in my own lawyering business on a consistent basis. Technology has a number of advantages for any business and a legal business is no different. Lawyers, legal workers and their clients all stand to benefit from technological advances and their application to legal work. What I readily admit is that I don’t use the same apps or tools all the time. I reserve the right to adapt, change, upgrade or update the tech menu my lawyering business relies upon from time to time.
I utilise a number of tech tools to fulfil the following functions, I’ve listed them here:
- Note taking apps – Apple Notes, Evernote
- For Accounting – Microsoft Excel, and to a lesser extent, Apple Numbers
- Word processing apps – Microsoft word
- Diarising – Google Calendar
- Email management – Google
- Website hosting- WordPress
- Reminders – Apple Reminders, Google Reminders
- Vlogs/video content – Youtube
- Graphics/Ebooks – Canva, Adobe Express
- Intra office collaboration – Google spaces, Google chat, Slack
- Online client consultations – Zoom, Google chat, Apple FaceTime
- Presentations – Microsoft Powerpoint, Canva, Apple Keynote
- Taskmanagement – Trello, Notion
- Legal databases – LexisNexis, TT Judiciary Law Library (ttlawcourts.org), CCJ online listing of matters
Some of these tools are free or have BOTH a free and a paid version/subscription, so based on your own budget and needs you could determine your level of investment and use.
I have found that Google spaces and actually the entire Google suite of products to be the most cost effective .i.e. FREE and user-friendly in my lawyering business. My assistant and I have been exploring all the features and they are admittedly very impressive. We use a shared Google calendar to diarize appointments and Google Reminders to schedule client consultations and a paid Zoom account to do all of our online client meetings.
My email accounts are all gmail and the respective calendars are linked. Google spaces allows our office staff to have remote real-time conversations and even video-conferencing, we even use the chat feature to share files.
The task management apps like Trello are new to my practice but so far I’ve used them to plan out very specific activities. Notion is also quite useful, I’ve used it for some non-legal project tracking and so far and I’ve figured out a few ways how to make it applicable to my lawyering business.
I tend to use the Microsoft Suite to do my word-processing, accounting as well as presentations. Note-taking is easy on Apple notes if you have iOS devices, they are automatically shared between devices which makes for easy retrieval and sharing.
I have also found CANVA to be tremendously useful when I have to do infographics and e-manuals or ebooks.
I’m still relatively new to YouTube and I’ve only just begun to populate my YouTube page with material. I’ve learnt so far that it’s a useful tool for micro-learning e-courses and as short instructional videos.
WordPress is the most user-friendly web hosting site I’ve come across in a long while, their templates are distinctive enough and their prices competitive. I’m actually writing this blog post using WordPress right now.
Note that the advent of virtual hearings and the need to access online databases require that all legal practitioners have very good, stable, reliable internet service providers.
Using AI
Now to the elephant in the room, AI and in particular ChatGPT. I’ve been introduced to ChatGPT over the past months and I have even done my own research and completed some online user tutorials to become more familiar with it. I also opened an account and I’ve started to explore.
ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology that allows the user to ask questions and it assists users with tasks, such as composing emails, writing essays, and coding. It was made by OpenAI, an AI research company, the company launched ChatGPT on November 30, 2022 and had over 100 million users by January 2023.
There are many uses for ChatGPT in legal work for instance it could assist with scheduling, research, document preparation and content writing it may also shorten the turn around time for the preparation of certain documents.
I’ve also learnt that a key factor in using ChatGPT is learning how to appropriately prompt the AI in order to get the best results. This takes a lot of practice and know how. As I mentioned I opened an account and I’ve been playing around with the programme. I will admit that I was quite impressed, despite the issues I outline below. I have not yet attempted to apply its use to my day to day legal work, but I have used it to draft a business plan for another venture I’m involved in and I’ve used it to look up various facts about things of general interest and I’ve used it to draft a policy document. So far the results are not bad at all.
But while there are many benefits of ChatGPT there are a number of set backs outlined in the already robust body of literature on the AI, these include, the production of what is referred to as hallucinations which reflect non-existent facts, the inclusion of toxic or biased content which may be offensive or spread misinformation, overall lack of helpfulness in that the AI does not always follow the user specified instructions, as well as potential copyright infringement by its use of copyrighted material available on the internet. The argument has also been made that it cannot interpret or analyse legal issues as it lacks the personal judgement, experience and expertise a human lawyer would be required to use when giving legal advice or assessing a legal matter. An additional limitation is that its knowledge base only goes up to 2021.
In a recent conversation with a colleague, I explained that, for me, this AI is useful in that it reduces the time it would take to do research on a topic, once very recent information and facts (post 2021) are not required. Think of it like Cliff notes (for those of you old enough to remember that series) on steroids and in an electronic format. Beyond that use I am still skeptical, with good reason, I understand that there has already been a case of an attorney using ChatGPT with dire consequences (see this CNN report).
Final Considerations
There are a number of things to consider when addressing the use of AI in everyday life, one major issue at the top of my mind is the need for regulation. How are we to regulate the AI? Do we have the capacity to do so? Where do we start and who will do it? Are small island developing states capable of policing such a powerful tool, will there be sufficient time to develop the relevant IT tools powerful and adaptable enough to control this AI? These are just some of the questions that an AI novice like me has come up with. I suppose only time will tell what the future will bring, until then however we must remain vigilant.
And, we must also remain committed to keeping abreast of the changes in our environment and the changing requirements of our chosen field of endeavour. This is the only way that our lawyering businesses will remain relevant, profitable and bring value to our clients and the society as a whole.
Sources:
https://towardsdatascience.com/how-chatgpt-works-the-models-behind-the-bot-1ce5fca96286
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/27/business/chat-gpt-avianca-mata-lawyers/index.html
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