Jim Calloway, The Daily Record Newswire
The perception of legal service delivery is in constant flux. In my previous column (Detroit Legal News, Nov. 20, 2015), I pointed to legal service apps and nonprofit law firms as two quickly emerging factors that are reshaping the landscape for practicing attorneys.
Now I will examine some of the rapidly developing areas of the law, which, depending on your expertise, could present you with burgeoning opportunities.
Drones, more formally known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, have been in the news a lot lately. They have crashed sporting events (literally) and interfered with firefighting airplanes. They also have helped find lost hikers and provided some amazing videos.
One drone was shot down by a homeowner who claimed it was spying on his daughter in the backyard swimming pool. Others have been attacked by considerably more experienced flyers like eagles and hawks.
The FAA still bans most commercial use of UAVs. It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that there's going to be a litany of legal issues to emerge from drone-related incidents - and soon.
A quick search of the Internet discloses many lawyers who are already promoting drone law as a part of their practices. Filing a Section 333 petition for exemption to allow certain commercial drone use is already a fairly popular service.
By now we all are familiar with the concept of e-discovery; it's already a huge, complex area for litigators. I have seen more than a few lawyers from other states include "e-discovery-ready litigator" in their online profiles. But as big as it is, it's going to get much bigger.
Soon it may not be true that only the larger cases warrant use of ediscovery. To that end, I note an ethics opinion from the State Bar of California Standing Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct (Formal Opinion Interim No. 11-0004) that's worth a read for the examples it gives of ediscovery nightmares across a wide variety of matters.
Wearable technology is another hot tech topic. One of the attendees at a recent digital pharma conference was quoted on Twitter as saying, "We're in the Palm Pilot days of wearables."
Considering the discussions at that conference included dissolvable pill "wearables" for medical treatment, information-gathering for elderly patients, and clothing that might "hug" a wearer who is feeling low, there is likely merit to that Tweet. Wearable technology will collect and retain all sorts of information that might be useful as evidence.
Self-driving cars are definitely coming to a highway near you (though not in the immediate future). Some studies indicate that self-driving cars could reduce automobile fatalities by 90 percent in the U.S. What a boon it will be for the elderly or disabled. And who among us wouldn't prefer a robot-chauffeured drive, during which we could read or nap, over airline travel today?
If you combine the concept of Uber and Lyft with self-driving cars, would many more people elect not to own an automobile? And where there are cars, there's insurance. How will the adoption of self-driving cars impact the entire concept of automobile driver's liability and insurance?
Did you view the "Pizza Rat" video that went viral at the end of September? I was on Twitter when I noticed the #PizzaRat hashtag as a trending topic: a 14-second video of a rat dragging a huge piece of pizza down subway stairs in Manhattan. Wired.com had a very interesting story about the video.
It turns out that a Los Angeles-based viral video company named Junkin Media (Yes, there are viral video businesses. Who knew?) picked up on the video right after it was posted, when it had only 2,660 views, according to Wired. The company worked out a licensing deal with the creator and started a combination of promotion and unauthorized-use take-down notices for those who were posting the video online instead of linking to it.
Now it has surpassed 5 million views on YouTube and, if you think a short video of a rat dragging a piece of pizza down stairs would be perfect to display during your next motivational speech presentation, you can contact Junkin Media to discuss the licensing fee. So the next time that pesky client of yours sticks his phone in your face to show you a really cute video of his baby, maybe you should watch.
The path to prepare for a changing environment (or just to be more efficient) is easy to write, but much harder to implement. The key is to use today's tools effectively, because tomorrow's tools will build upon them and be even more powerful.
Think of the firm that, until recently, had successfully banned email in a noble effort to maintain more personal communication - and only recently gave in to the reality that it was only distancing itself from its clients.
The result of such a late realization is a huge learning curve. In this case, even if workers were familiar with email in their personal lives, how many might make "reply" versus "reply all" mistakes, for example?
There are many other critical business processes that law firms are adopting today that will be just as significant as email tomorrow. These include documentation of processes in writing, learning to use practice-management software and services to empower your adoption of paperless workflows, beginning the process of automating production of your routine documents, setting fixed fees for some services or portions of services, and making certain your firm has one or more websites that work well with mobile devices.
Change, especially related to your daily activities, is hard. And lawyers may be worse off after some of these changes take full effect. But many of the changes in the delivery of legal services will make your life as an attorney function better - if you keep up. Start by picking one improvement and implementing it within the month.
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Jim Calloway is director of the Oklahoma Bar Association Management Assistance Program. He publishes the weblog Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips at http://jimcalloway.typepad.com.
Published: Wed, Dec 09, 2015
