Lawyers and legal tech procurers often feel that vendors don’t ‘get it.’ They don’t understand what lawyers need and they build solutions for problems that lawyers don’t have. A tsunami of venture capital in the space has only amplified this dynamic. If you’ve spent time in r/legaltech in recent months, you’re surely aware of the shared frustration by both lawyers and legal tech procurers that this new crop of legal AI companies have over-promised and under-delivered.
Why is it easier for tech people to build machines that emulate human intelligence than it is for them to build software for lawyers that delivers value? As a software engineer who has spent the past five years working in legal tech, I have observed several patterns in products that miss the mark and in my own thinking that I believe explain the disconnect between lawyers and legal tech vendors.
My conclusion is that coders misunderstand legal workflows and that their misunderstanding is upstream of many mistakes in legal tech.
Of all the mistakes this misunderstanding produces, one stands above the rest—the desire to replace Microsoft Word.
Microsoft Word can never be replaced. OpenAI could build superintelligence surpassing human cognition in every conceivable dimension, rendering all human labor obsolete, and Microsoft Word will survive. Future contracts defining the land rights to distant galaxies will undoubtedly be drafted in Microsoft Word.
Microsoft Word is immortal.
Why?
Legal systems around the world run on it. Microsoft Word is the only word processor on the market that meets lawyer’s technical requirements. Furthermore, its file format, docx, is the network protocol that underpins all legal agreements in society. Replacing Microsoft Word is untenable and attempts to do so deeply misunderstand the role that it plays in lawyers’ workflows.
The origin of this misunderstanding can be traced to a common myth shared by coders — “The Fall of Legal Tech.”
Legal tech’s original sin
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