There have been a few articles in the legal press about lawyers training in coding and I’ve been meaning to write a blog about it for a while, I’ve just had a voice in the back of my head saying “Surely this isn’t the solution to the alleged problem with legal and technology”, one professional doesn’t solve a problem by retraining as another surely? I mean Tesco and Sainsbury’s didn’t retrain their checkout staff as coders when they decided they needed to move into online selling did they? OK I know that is a little beyond what is happening in legal, but it crudely highlights the point.

Reason I have taken time to write this is that I don’t want to sound like a Luddite and a dismisser of change, but equally I really dislike the notion that you can simply train to be a coder and develop secure, scalable applications. It belittles those that have spent years learning, developing their skill and gaining a huge amount of experience building applications. A whole profession of developers and other IT professionals.

I think there are huge benefits of gaining a knowledge of technology in any profession and wholeheartedly welcome developing this knowledge in lawyers. I equally think law firms could do a huge amount to develop the knowledge of IT professionals in the practice of law, something that doesn’t get the airtime in the legal press. Innovation will come by looking at the problems and utilising the whole workforce to solve them in new ways, not by simply retraining those that frankly are the core to any law firm, the lawyers.

I think this quote for me shows where the right balance is (full article here):

“If you want to be a lawyer who knows what technology can do then you should learn to code – or at least have an understanding of coding. Which is different to learning to code. As a Spanish-speaker I can read a book in Italian but I couldn’t write a book in Italian.”

It’s understanding the language, but trusting the native speakers when you need to write the book. At the moment for me (at least in the legal press narrative) the current trend seems to dismiss the natives. Get the balance right though and there could be some great solutions to the challenges ahead!