This week a couple of things cropped up to remind me of my predictions for the top 5 technologies for Legal in 2010. In particular that I had search at #4 and my thoughts on why I think next year this will be moving up the charts.
First off is my first recent experience on Autonomy iManage WorkSite 8.5 working with IDOL and using search to retrieve email out of a 30m+ document library. As I tweeted at the time it made me want to take my email out of Outlook and put it in WorkSite! The search experience was so much better than Outlook 2003 Advanced Search (although recently I’ve used Outlook 2010 and the search in that is itself so much better than 2003!).
Then on Friday night, the second thing that got me thinking about search was when my son (aged eight) found a Flipnote on his Nintendo DSi and wanted to know what the music was. I had no idea, but what happened next was an eye opener on the new generation.
I consider myself pretty tech-savvy but in this instance I was well beaten by the eight year old. First off he’d asked if he could use Shazaam, but he couldn’t wait for me to get my mobile and so he had gone to his PC, fired up Google, found the track by searching for keywords and lyrics and then found last.fm and a copy of the track. No guidance, no help from his parents, in fact I was so impressed I went and bought him the track off Amazon (which in hindsight wasn’t that clever, as it is now on a continuous playlist of one!).
The thought hit me though, that if my son was to go into law (not on his list of potential employment at all at the moment, currently being a Chef is #1) then he just won’t accept the reams of paper file or the clunky e-filing systems that require either browsing or complex search forms. No search is something he takes for granted. It’s not technology to him it’s just something, like reading and writing, that he just does.
We in Legal IT have about 10 years before these kids start arriving in law firms, think we’ll have enterprise search working by then? And for the lawyers get yourselves comfortable with search technology, as these kids won’t accept the “I don’t understand computers” argument. They’ll just look at you like you’ve just announced “I can’t read”!
The tail end of your article I heard in 2007/2008 A technology evangelist who spoke at an interwoven event said what you said virtually word for word. It is not just legal that has to watch this its pretty much every industry.
I’ve written this before elsewhere, kids these days (and I’m talking about anyone below 16 really) don’t communicate in the same way we do (us oldies) they expect certain infrastructure to just be there, this would include social network technologies, and various other IM services etc, email is no longer the first way these people communicate.
A lot of places take the view that “we will make them reform”, an attitude that is long outdated and will do them harm in the long term, the problem will come when trying to recruit or retain trainees, any company seeing as beeing behind the curve on collaberation technologies will just not be able to attract the calibre of person they seek, because those people will look at the old antiquated systems and simply laugh.
The day of buinsesses holding onto long since dead systems (ie 6 is a prime example) purley on cost issues should be long gone, ROI is clearly demonstrable when tech savvy people are introduced to good enablnig software/hardware combinations.
Those who are unwilling or unable to adapt will be left behind, that day is almost immenent, and in my humble opinion there are a lot of organistations and individuals in denial who are going to get a shock.