The importance of automation in the legal service, the challenges of “real time” and the replacement of work in the face of technological transformation
On May 20, 2020, we participated in the referred webinar with Richard Susskind and his son Daniel Susskind, in which they highlighted the main challenges that consultants face in the uncertain moments bequeathed by COVID-19, which force us to a full-time teleworking, shared with the other activities that being at home implies.
Automation and Transformation
In the consulting area, the automation process has been preparing and has been around for some time. However, speaking about the transformation and optimization of services involves a more sophisticated process that requires technological elements from all the actors that are part of a business process, and infers that technology does things that it did not do before.
In this sense, the Susskinds’ emphasize that working from home does not represent a digital transformation of services, but a continuity of said services, which resulted in the only alternative available to achieve a balance in the face of the normality that the world lives today for the purposes of Covid -19.
In short, and for a better understanding, the seminar distinguishes the automation from the transformation, the first being the process of carrying out activities or tasks through digital platforms, resulting in savings of time and energy for the participating users; while the digital transformation has a broader vision that tries to replace certain tasks performed by humans in a purely digital process. In the transformation, a new strategy is designed to offer products and services digitally, globalizing interactions and commercial operation so that the structure provides the user with a completely digital service.
Similarly, it has been stated that Covid-19 has impacted on precipitating automation, pausing, for the moment, attempts at digital transformation until reaching the breakeven point in a digital service. However, it is impossible to ignore the technological revolution that will change the traditional ways of working, with emerging innovative models that will change the rules of the game in a sector.
Technology progress: Job substitution?
Without a doubt, this untimely situation, due to Covid-19, has significantly impacted global and local economies, affecting the ability to purchase products and services at all levels. This situation, in theory temporary, plans to regularize over time and become the new reality in almost all economic sectors.
Due to what is stated in this webinar, digital transformation seeks to replace certain manual and face-to-face interactions with our clients with comprehensive communication through electronic means, which generates uncertainty in the legal practice, since the promotion of automatic programs that provide various functionalities could represent a replacement for tasks previously thought only human could accomplish.
Inequity in the distribution of work, the concentration of economic powers in technology companies and in political authorities, are part of the challenges facing technology, in times when the pie is not so big to be shared with everybody.
Covid-19: Precipitating Automation
It is undeniable that this catastrophe has raised the red flags in our sector, leading us to analyze even the need for lawyers to be trained in the use and implementation of technology in the university programs. It has rushed us to undertake measures in order to compete with emerging systems, anticipating a virtual ecosystem of legal services that entails not only the provision of the service, but also safe, flexible solutions, with verified contingency protocols to guarantee the same level of fluent service and communication channels between clients, the team itself and the relevant institutions for the service in question.
We are of the opinion that no sector will be immune from the need to transform to an automatic scheme. Unquestionably, countries like ours, which do not have a high rate of internet connectivity, have a greater challenge that must also lead the public sector in this same direction, projecting that within 10 years we will have a more industrialized legal practice.
Home working
This webinar allows us to confirm the impacts of digital transformation on employment, since digital configurations and information flows imply a process of substitution of practices on the occasion of a self-programmable job. However, we are of the opinion that our practice still has a time to be people-centered; In other words, technological advance does not detract from the importance of human resources, but rather allows them to be more productive, more agile and innovative.
Some of the concerns that we have raised, from a strategic point, is the need to have a large office space. Does legal service merit a significant investment in an office? especially at a time when the implementation of technology in legal service means a change for the client to receive legal advice that is accessible, affordable and reliable.
That said, our conclusion is that digital work revolves around people and follows them wherever they go, so we predict investments in tools that contribute to increasingly efficient teleworking and less in physical infrastructure. We warn that these transformations can take time, and that the digitization of work would have important impacts on the way of working, of managing human resources, on business cultures and on the way of organizing work.
Finally, a little optimism about Covid-19 is that the long process of digital transformation configures a moment capable of designing new business models to be more flexible, adaptable and capable of responding to the effects of the new digital economy. Without a doubt, physical separations, distance training and the aforementioned new business models are factors that will lead to a new path, and it only remains to turn this need for automation and transformation into an opportunity with long-term results.