Enabling Change in Legal Tech: A Monty Python Metaphor

Enabling Change in Legal Tech: A Monty Python Metaphor

The four-day 112 hour marathon called ILTACON is in full swing at the Gaylord Hotel in National Harbor, MD. Some three thousand legal tech professionals are presenting, gabbing, exhibiting, celebrating, and, like me, taking notes. 

How to enable change in the legal profession seems to be a theme running through many of the agenda items. It is a common experience (and not our collective imagination) that attorneys are slow to adopt new technologies. Intapp’s Julia Montgomery teased out the actual statistics in her SRO presentation “Why You Need a New Change Management Strategy to Get Lawyers to Adopt Technology”. Except for rainmakers, attorneys are among the laggiest laggards, well behind most of their clients in terms of their skepticism to change. She and members of other panels shared ideas on what it takes to introduce new tech in the legal enterprise.

Change enablement in legal tech evoked for me the Monty Python script in which Michael Palin’s character elicits a confession using “surprise”, “fear”, “ruthless efficiency” and “the comfy chair”. 

 The comfy chair, by far, would be everyone’s preference. Imagine new technology that is easy to adopt and comfortable to use. Think Everlaw . No one expects the comfy chair, but it’s there. And like in the skit, it proves to be irresistible. I think most of us would prefer being offered some efficiency that is slightly less frightening than ruthless. But efficiency is at the top of the list of values in anyone's change management program.

Surprise and fear may, in fact, be the biggest short-term motivators for change. I recall in my law firm days in rolling out new technology, the head of litigation told me that my door would burst open with partners and associates who found themselves behind in a discovery schedule and would immediately need new tech to dig themselves out. 

Gratefully, Everlaw ’s Value Engineering team (led by my boss Joe Skalski ) team is quite a bit more nuanced than the Monty Python skit. We dig in with you for long-term change enablement and econometrics among all your stakeholders.   

For instruction so far this week, thanks to Patrick Schwerdtfeger keynote address “Think Bigger. Thanks to panelists on “From Resistor to Champion, Strategies for Dealing with Difficult Stakeholders” Dean Leung , Jeffrey Roach , Kyle Dumont , and Matthew Basile . Special shoutout to “The Great Pivot” panel of Becky Morrison , Michael Kearney , my friend Vivian Liu-Somers , Deeanna Fleener , and the always-dynamic Scott Milner . 

(And please try not to take me to task for anything else in the Monty Python script – this is a very loose metaphor.)