If we just surrender to our past choices and accept our current conditions, the legal sector will never get better. It's time to imagine the legal world we want and resolve to bring it into reality.
Great to have vision, Jordan! What would you say to those visionaries who can forecast or imagine but feel they lack the gumption or capacity to do something about effecting what they imagine?
Stella, my primary advice for someone who finds themselves in that situation is: Seek out allies. There are fellow travellers in your organization or community, or at least sympathetic onlookers and partially aligned potential partners, to whom you can turn for moral support, strength in numbers, and strategic planning for how best to go about achieving your goals. These people might have made themselves invisible, or at least operated under the radar, but they are there, and if you can find the courage at least to speak up and write about your vision, you won't need to go find them: They will come to you.
I agree wholeheartedly with this approach, Jordan. Imagination is crucial. I always think the best science fiction has intelligible and somewhat intuitive connections with reality. Azimov's three laws of robotics is an example of this. We refer to them today as robots are becoming part of our normal existence.
With something like law and the legal professions we also deal with culture, history and power. The extent to which they can be imagined away is debatable. Your idea that regulation can be removed from its current stakeholders (a word I detest by the way but I can't think of another) concerns these elements. Even in England where disruption has occurred the grip by lawyers is still strong. Maybe I am too short term--think Chou En Lai on the impact of the French Revolution: too soon to say--but we live in a more short-term world now as exemplified by the onset of LLMs and generative AI. Some institutions such as international bodies are extremely slow to change and to adapt to new worlds.
Having said that it is fun to reimagine the future and predict, but none of us could have necessarily forecast the Covid pandemic or the Russian invasion of Ukraine or even the rise of Donald Trump. As Harold Macmillan said, "events, dear boy, events," will often blow plans off course. Nor can we turn a blind eye to utter stupidity as evidenced by the Brexit fiasco.
With regard to law my feeling is that more of its operation will be automated in some way. The fastest growing area is compliance, something which benefits hugely from automation and not even sophisticated automation at that. I imagine fields like this will separate from legal practice (with some oversight) thus reducing the footprint of law. Add to this the increasing difficulty of getting advice or help with problems, not all legal, law appears to be a wealth advisory service or a corporate under labourer.
Perhaps then if we were to insist that law explains and justifies itself in relation to fragmented societies, the answers could be reveaing.
Great to have vision, Jordan! What would you say to those visionaries who can forecast or imagine but feel they lack the gumption or capacity to do something about effecting what they imagine?
Stella, my primary advice for someone who finds themselves in that situation is: Seek out allies. There are fellow travellers in your organization or community, or at least sympathetic onlookers and partially aligned potential partners, to whom you can turn for moral support, strength in numbers, and strategic planning for how best to go about achieving your goals. These people might have made themselves invisible, or at least operated under the radar, but they are there, and if you can find the courage at least to speak up and write about your vision, you won't need to go find them: They will come to you.
I agree wholeheartedly with this approach, Jordan. Imagination is crucial. I always think the best science fiction has intelligible and somewhat intuitive connections with reality. Azimov's three laws of robotics is an example of this. We refer to them today as robots are becoming part of our normal existence.
With something like law and the legal professions we also deal with culture, history and power. The extent to which they can be imagined away is debatable. Your idea that regulation can be removed from its current stakeholders (a word I detest by the way but I can't think of another) concerns these elements. Even in England where disruption has occurred the grip by lawyers is still strong. Maybe I am too short term--think Chou En Lai on the impact of the French Revolution: too soon to say--but we live in a more short-term world now as exemplified by the onset of LLMs and generative AI. Some institutions such as international bodies are extremely slow to change and to adapt to new worlds.
Having said that it is fun to reimagine the future and predict, but none of us could have necessarily forecast the Covid pandemic or the Russian invasion of Ukraine or even the rise of Donald Trump. As Harold Macmillan said, "events, dear boy, events," will often blow plans off course. Nor can we turn a blind eye to utter stupidity as evidenced by the Brexit fiasco.
With regard to law my feeling is that more of its operation will be automated in some way. The fastest growing area is compliance, something which benefits hugely from automation and not even sophisticated automation at that. I imagine fields like this will separate from legal practice (with some oversight) thus reducing the footprint of law. Add to this the increasing difficulty of getting advice or help with problems, not all legal, law appears to be a wealth advisory service or a corporate under labourer.
Perhaps then if we were to insist that law explains and justifies itself in relation to fragmented societies, the answers could be reveaing.