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Why I keep saying things that make people angry

The billable hour is cracking, by Marcel Lang

"Everyone knows the billing model that charges by the hour is under pressure"

Most of legal tech agrees on the big shifts in private and stays silent about them in public. The old document system is on its way out. The billable hour is cracking. Client data sits in places nobody would choose on purpose. Everyone knows it. Almost nobody says it with their name attached.
 
Marcel Lang does. As co-founder of Epona, and the man who brought iManage to Europe twenty five years ago, he has earned the right to be blunt about the industry he helped build. He also gets the angry phone calls that follow.
In this blog, Marcel explains why he keeps saying the uncomfortable thing out loud, and why the people who call to complain on Friday tend to call back on Monday.

The phone rings within five seconds

A while ago I said something in an interview about where the DMS is heading. I said the thing itself would disappear, that we are moving toward AI that does the filing and the searching while the lawyer does the thinking. Within five seconds of that piece going live, my phone started ringing. What are you doing, Marcel. How can you say that. Have you lost your mind.

Good. That is the point.

Our industry is too polite

Legal is a careful world, and for good reason. Lawyers are trained to weigh every word, to hedge, to never say more than they can defend. That instinct is useful in a contract. It is less useful when a whole industry uses it to avoid saying anything real. We have turned caution into a habit, and the habit has a cost. Everyone waits for someone else to name the uncomfortable truth, so nobody does, and the conversation the market actually needs never happens.

I decided a while ago that I would rather be the one who says it.

What everyone already knows

Here is what I find strange. The things that make people angry when I say them are things they already believe. Everyone in this market knows the DMS in its current shape is on its way out. Everyone knows the billing model that charges by the hour is under pressure now that a tool can do in minutes what used to take a day. Everyone knows that parking your most sensitive client data in someone else’s cloud, in another jurisdiction, raises a question that will not stay quiet forever. None of this is a secret. The only unusual thing is saying it in public, with your name attached.

Here is why the complaints are worth it

I am not doing this to be provocative for sport. I have been in legal technology for twenty five years. I helped bring iManage to Europe, so I know the world I am now willing to criticise from the inside. When I take a position, it comes from having watched the same patterns play out for a very long time, not from wanting a reaction.

Our clients, law firms and in house legal teams, are better served by someone having the hard conversation than by all of us holding hands and agreeing that the current system is fine. If I am wrong, people tell me, and I learn something. If I am right, and on these questions I usually am, then I have said out loud what someone needed to hear before they made a ten year decision on old assumptions.

I decided a while ago that I would rather be the one who says it.

By Monday they call back

Here is the part that keeps me going. The angry calls come on the day of publication. By Monday, the same people call back. Not all of them, but enough. You have a point. We were talking about it in the partner meeting. Can you come and explain what you meant.

That’s why I do it. Not for the Friday phone calls, but for the conversation on Monday. The market moves when someone is willing to be wrong in public, so that everyone else can be right in private a little sooner. I am happy to keep being that person. It costs me a few uncomfortable afternoons, and that is a fair price.

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