Facing the Fear

I want to write this post not for the legal professionals that might be reading it, or even Professor Sykes who has been our guide on this trip into the 21st century. Instead, I want to write a post mainly for myself and my fellow law students.

Sitting in Lawyering in the 21st Century for the last month and a half has been extremely exciting and illuminating, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that it has contained an undeniable element of fear. Personally, the fear that I have felt in this class can be broken down into three categories. A fear of change, a fear of what is coming, and a fear of spending a ridiculous amount of money to get an education for a profession that might not be as profitable as it has been in the past.

We have learned that a large percentage of the Canadian population are simply unable and/or unwilling to hire a lawyer for their legal problems because of the cost. Here I am not talking about people living in poverty, but instead middle class Canadians with decent paying jobs who are simply not willing to fork over the thousands of dollars lawyers are charging. These citizens are the bread and butter for almost any other profession but lawyers are seeing their access to this class of society dwindling. This has led to the rise of self-represented litigants which has then led to an adaptation of legal systems to accommodate these self-represented litigants. Take for example the Civil Resolution Tribunal in BC which was created specifically for the use of self-represented litigants and actively discourages representation by a lawyer. Therefore, the amount people are using lawyers is declining and this is pretty scary for a law student.

When I first asked myself why I was afraid of this change, I started to wonder if I was being dumb. How can I be afraid of something changing that I haven’t actually been a part of yet. As a law student we are learning how to be lawyers and while we are on the verge of entering the legal profession we haven’t quite got there yet. So why do I feel so scared thinking that the legal profession is changing? I think it is because, for the most part, we have been preparing for the profession as if it isn’t changing. The ideal job is still the big corporate firm in downtown Vancouver, Toronto or Calgary, and we continue to jump through the same hoops as our predecessors. While Thompson Rivers University Law in particular is making great strides in attempting to prepare us for the change that is coming, those in the profession seem to be operating as if it is business as usual. This is where the fear comes from for me, we are hearing about these changes but we can’t see them.

This seeming continuation of the status quo lead me to be scared of what is coming. How can we be expected to adapt to a changing legal market if we are being trained and prepared as if everything was staying the same. It makes me feel that I am going to be wholly unprepared for when the day comes that the legal profession shifts. Further, last week we listened to a presentation from Professor Ben Alarie who discussed how the emergence of new technology may serve to reduce the role of lawyers in the future. Through the use of Cognitive Computing a computer software program could read a great deal of legal information, including case law, and essentially predict legal outcomes regarding a particular factual scenario. This is somewhat intimidating and made me question whether I will end up working for a few years and then be replaced by a computer.

However, I sat down to write this post because I have come to a realization, a realization that people are always scared before times of change, and it is how people respond to that fear that truly determines the future. I believe that we as current law students are in a unique and enviable position. We have the opportunity to embrace this change and lead the legal profession into a new day, we have the ability to be innovators. Take for example Adam LaFrance who came to talk to our class a few weeks ago.  He was a law student who followed the traditional trajectory of a young lawyer. He graduated, then worked at a big law firm, then tried out a solo practice. However, throughout this process he saw a gap in the legal profession which lead him to invent Knomos. Knomos is an innovative new way to conduct legal research that presents information in a visually efficient way that allows the user to easily connect the dots and navigate their way to the answer they are seeking. While Knomos is still in the production phase after seeing a demonstration of its capabilities I have no doubt it is going to take the legal world by storm. Further, I realized we shouldn’t be afraid of the Cognitive Computing technology Professor Ben Alarie is creating, but instead we should be looking for ways to harness those capabilities and utilize them to our advantage.

Granted, at this moment I have no clue what or how I would do anything truly innovative, but I know that my education, and particularly this class, Lawyering in the 21st century, are going to prepare me for the challenge. This week we read an article by Gillian K. Hadfield entitled “The Cost of Law: Promoting Access to Justice through the (Un)Corporate Practice of Law.”  This article discusses the possibility of using legal corporations to solve access to justice issues in the United States. Another article by Richard Devlin and Ora Marson entitled “Access to Justice and the Ethics and Politics of Alternative Business Structures” described the possibility of this as well, along with other Alternative Business Structures. One example is a “Multidisciplinary Practice” that would perhaps include a lawyer, accountant, or a realtor all working under one banner to provide services to the client. Regardless of what the idea is, it is simply exciting that these possibilities are being discussed and debated.

When we enter the profession it is possible that these debates will be more settled and the laws currently in place restricting these practices may be a bit more relaxed. This will allow our generation of lawyers to pounce on these opportunities and begin creating a new style of practice. So even though I do not know how, when, or where I can become an innovator in the legal profession I am going to attempt to swallow my fear and try one day to join the ranks of legal trendsetters like Ben Alarie and Adam LaFrance.

Therefore, as young lawyers I think we are going to have to not only embrace the coming changes, but actively seek them out. If we do so we can ensure that we are on the right side of change and are creating opportunities for ourselves. If we embrace this mentality then my third fear will also be assuaged. Can you imagine how amazing it would be to be involved in an innovative new idea that helped bring the legal profession into the 21st century? If that were the case you would not have to worry about your crippling debt as the money would of course follow that innovative idea. Further, because we are entering the profession at this time we have the opportunity to be those pioneers, so I am going to stop worrying about paying back my debts and start thinking about the future. Also, I am going to make it my goal to no longer freak out while attending Lawyering in the 21st Century and instead focus on the benefits that the coming change can provide me, and how lucky we are to be learning about this at this time.