I was happy to contribute an article to the latest issue of leading European legal industry magazine Legal Innovation and Technology Today. You should read the entire issue, which includes great pieces about DEI in the legal sector by Christy Burke, agile law firms by Chris Bull, and key corporate legal trends by Ari Kaplan.

My article, “How technology can help revolutionize legal education and lawyer development,” dives into some serious detail about the catalytic role tech can play in reforming the lawyer formation process. I’d encourage you to read the original piece in its entirety, but I’ve reproduced an excerpt below — and I encourage you to read to the end, where I share some breaking news about legal regulation reforms happening in real time.

The legal profession, to its credit, has made significant progress throughout this century improving law firm business practices, lawyer-client relationships, and the use of technology. But there’s one area of professional life that needs innovation even more: the lawyer formation system. How we go about educating, licensing, training, and monitoring the competence of lawyers desperately requires an overhaul. Technology can play a critical role in getting us there.

The Problem. Law degrees and bar admission courses drain several years and significant sums of money at the start of a legal career while providing little preparation to succeed in that career. Licensing bodies certify lawyers before they’ve developed sufficient skills to serve clients, run firms, or manage their own businesses and personal well-being. Law licenses are effectively permanent and unconditional, creating no obligation for lawyers to demonstrate their continuing fitness to practise.

In the result, many new lawyers experience whiplash when they enter practice, often deeply in debt, to find working environments disconnected to their expectations and pressures unlike any they’ve been prepared for. Unready to practise law and lacking support for ongoing skill development, many sink into despondency and depression, often leaving the profession altogether.

The Solutions. We can do better than this. The archaic and fragmented early-years development of lawyers can be unified under a single modern development process that guides professionals along a “formation continuum,” from their first day of law school through their first day of competent, confident, independent practice.

But attempts to reform the lawyer development system will be opposed both by deeply entrenched interests in academia, licensure, and regulation, as well as by equally entrenched habits and assumptions in the legal profession that “this is how we’ve always done it” (or in particular, “this is how I had to do it”) and “there’s no other way it can be done.” The time to change all that is right now.

The Role of Technology. The pandemic forced lawyers to rely heavily on tech in everyday practice, and most were pleasantly surprised by the ease of the transition and the effectiveness of their tools. Many chief judges have publicly stated that there’s “no going back” to the offline-only world of justice, while most law firms have found the majority of their lawyers unwilling to return to the office full-time.

Whether we wanted it or not — whether we were ready for it or not — we’re already a changed profession, tech-reliant and increasingly tech-comfortable. Technology should now be applied to help solve the myriad problems with the lawyer development system.

Legal Education. The online legal education experience of the pandemic should be integrated with the in-person version and become more sophisticated and student-centred. Professors could record their lectures and post them online for students to view before class, allowing in-person class time to be converted to discussion, collaboration, breakouts, and workshops. Guest speakers could be Zoomed in from anywhere to answer student questions or assess advocacy skills.

Law schools could also offer degrees or certificates in an online format for working parents, retirees, or community leaders who don’t want or can’t afford the time and financial commitment of a full degree. “Asynchronous law diplomas” could be both a steady revenue stream for schools and a powerful way to raise public legal knowledge and problem-solving capability.

Lawyer Licensing. Technology could help new lawyers get more hands-on practice experience before they’re admitted to the profession. An aspiring lawyer in an urban centre could be “apprenticed” to a small-town practitioner, spending one week on location and three weeks at home doing legal work, speaking with clients, drafting documents, and learning the ropes of the law business. Regular video meetings with the veteran lawyer could help ensure the trainee is learning the core competencies required for licensing.

The experience of working in a law firm need not even require a real firm. The licensing process in some Canadian provinces includes several months spent working in a “simulated law firm,” where bar applicants field emails from lawyers, videoconference with actors playing clients, and become accustomed to the rhythms and requirements of practice. Simulated firm experiences could also be used to prepare trainees for real-firm exposure, accelerating their development.

Lawyer Competence. Rather than obliging lawyers to complete a minimum number of hours of CLE programming on any topic they choose, we should create a robust competence framework for the legal profession to help lawyers self-assess their proficiency throughout their careers. Technology can help us progress towards solutions.

Regulators could design online quizzes along the lines of, “How proficient are you?”, in which lawyers are required to rate their own levels of confidence on the core competences of lawyering, and perhaps answer a few basic questions. Their final score could be shown to them, along with suggestions that certain areas could benefit from upgrading.

Regulators could also create online video and resource packages that guide lawyers through the most common sources of client complaints and malpractice charges, including retainer letters, time management, and client communication protocols. Lawyers could be invited (or obliged) to complete these “self-guided mini-courses” to maintain their competence in core areas of public interest.

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That’s the excerpt from my article — now for some breaking news.

We’ve officially passed the point of speculating about how nice it would be if things were a little different in how we license lawyers and regulate legal services. Wishcasting was yesterday — today is about making change happen, for real. A swift glance around North America shows us that massive shifts in the foundation of legal regulation and lawyer formation are happening right now. Dominoes are falling fast, knocking down others and generating waves of change across the legal world.

You already know about the legal innovation sandboxes in Utah, British Columbia, and Ontario, and the revolution in legal regulation unleashed in Arizona. But just in the past few days — right up to this morning — we’ve seen some extraordinary developments in lawyer licensing and legal regulation and the United States:

• In New York, a task force appointed by the New York State Bar Association called for a massive overhaul of the state’s bellwether bar exam, in a lengthy report that also included a devastating critique of the traditional bar admission testing system in the US and the institutions that operate it.
• In Oregon, the Alternatives to Exam Task Force appointed by the Oregon Board of Bar Examiners recommended the development of an experiential learning pathway and a supervised practice pathway to lawyer licensing. (Court approval of the recommendations is still pending.)
• In Florida, the final report of the Special Committee to Improve the Delivery of Legal Services of the Florida Bar recommended the creation of a Law Practice Innovation Lab Program similar to Utah’s innovation sandbox, including a focus on Florida’s version of Model Rule 5.4 regarding active ownership by “non-lawyers” of law firms.

The fact is, this is no longer about “the future of legal services.” This is happening right now. The process of reforming legal regulation and lawyer licensing has begun in earnest. Technology will play a major role in this process, as my article suggests. But far more important than the tools of reform are the reformers themselves — the people who are ready and willing to lead this process forward.

This is your chance to step up and become one of those leaders. If you still need an invitation to take part, here you go.