What makes lawyers click? | Ruairidh Wynne-McHardy | TEDxGlasgow

[@SanjanaLaddha]

I am very much impressed by the practicality. Law is not as easy as they show on sit coms like suits. Lawyers are magnetic and dynamic. Hats off @Ruairidh Wynne-McHardy

[@quinntilating]

thanks for speaking sense.

[@thesoundsmith]

Remember, lawyers charge BY THE HOUR, saving time is not a priority...

[@willlilley2363]

Great talk. Currently on the LPC and can already see great potential for disclosure / verification automation guided by AI, github-style fork editing of precedents, and perhaps a whole new language that bridges legal English and code so that clauses and outside contracts function as imported modules and so on. Seems clear that these changes will need to be driven by the frustration of the latest generation.

[@canhazcheezeburger]

Hey Will Glad that you enjoyed it! Really agree with your points here and love the idea of modular agreements. Perhaps we need an IDE for lawyers? Feel free to get in touch if you want a chat about all this, my twitter is @ruairidhwm.

[@14s0cc3r14]

Lawyers bill by the hour. What benefit would technology that saves time really give them?

[@canhazcheezeburger]

Hey That1Guy For background, I'm the speaker. Really good question, there isn't much incentive for lawyers to save time when billing by the hour or by the unit (6 mins). Where technology comes into play is: a) for a tech-enabled law firm which could do fixed-price work for a lot of the standard stuff in law firms. Think simple filings, company forms, etc. b) for internal process automation. There is a lot of time spent in firms on internal processes that is never billed to the client. The more time spent on these is the loss of potential profit. By automating, then you can pass more interesting work to junior lawyers, and save on cost overall. There's also a lot of scope in more exciting developments like AI etc which will transform the way legal research is happening. I'm a big fan of Itai Gurari at Judicata, and other projects such as ROSS. These again represent an enormous opportunity to a law firm that is a bit more agile than the larger players. Hopefully that gives a bit of a taste of what's possible when lawyers move beyond the hourly billing model. It's a poor one and I think that it will eventually die out.

[@zhangpe1]

Staying competitive? But of course that's up for debate as well right?

[@canhazcheezeburger]

Yup - I think the biggest threat to lawyers is a startup that abstracts away most of the bread and butter work through a smart application of tech.

[@iotaultsch]

Digitising live cases is legal suicide. Privacy is paramount.

[@LuatsuThuDoan]

Great

[@sfirkel2613]

Eric Firkel, look at this LOL

[@zenwalker9010]

Bruh... Lawyers still speak latin... Lol.

[@canhazcheezeburger]

Haha so true but there is a big effort in the legal community to stop that as it's not clear. Generally just the legal concepts retain their latin name, but clients pay you for clear advice. Latin is not clear advice ;)

[@andersonbrown5507]

Iron your shirt!!!!!!!

[@chukchee]

Why do lawyers lie so much?

[@gulnaraalzhan1827]

I heard that professional lawyers don't lie, they just conceal information)

[@r.h.1400]

Most boring presentation ever!!