Lexpert magazine features articles and columns on developments in legal practice management, deals and lawsuits of interest in Canada, the law and business issues of interest to legal professionals and businesses that purchase legal services.
Issue link: https://digital.carswellmedia.com/i/808422
LEXPERT MAGAZINE | APRIL/MAY 2017 51 change within a law firm." Kowalski likes to describe the practice of law on an evolutionary technological continuum: Law 1.0, 2.0 and, someday, 3.0. e law- yers in the 1.0 era (pre-2008 as Kowalski pegs it) are labour-intensive and terribly inefficient. ey need to be because time spent on files is their bread and butter. So they cling fiercely to the bill- able-hour model like a sailor hanging on to an overturned life ra. As Kowalski wrote back in 2013 in the Canadian Bar Association's National mag- azine, a lawyer practising in a more efficient 2.0 firm "will be offered a wider range of ca- reer options beyond the old and rather dull, associate-to-partner career path." Instead, he believes, "You will choose among being a pricing director, project manager, busi- ness development manager, client manager, technical lawyer, or innovation manager, to name just a few." As provinces allow outside investments in law firms — something Kowalski ex- pects before 2020 and that is already al- lowed in the UK and Australia — he ar- gues that will prompt more evolutionary changes for legal service providers. Last October Kowalski was named the inaugural Gowling WLG Visiting Profes- sor in Legal Innovation at the University of Calgary Law School. Each year for the next five years, the professorship, established with a $125,000 gi from Gowling, will bring a leading innovation thinker to the school to discuss discruption in the space. at, hopes Kowalski, will help the school graduate some of country's first 3.0 lawyers — lawyers who are fully capable of surviving the changes ahead and working with the cognitive computing and AI tech- nologies around the bend. Perception v. Reality Yet the anchor of old thinking, which re- mains a drag on technological uptake, still appears considerable. In January Kowalski, commenting in a National Post column on a recent McGill University study on legal innovation, wrote that while Canadian law firms "talk a good 'innovation' game, little nior management agreed innovation was a strategic priority at their firms, only 42 per cent of associates felt the same. Fiy-eight per cent of associates believed there was no innovation leadership at their firm (or they weren't aware of any), while 84 per cent of partners believed there was. As for whether there were incentives to innovate at their firm, 77 per cent of partners said yes, while 59 per cent of associates disagreed. innovation is actually taking place." e study, titled e Illusion of Innova- tion at Canadian Law Firms, by MBA and law student Aly Háji, noted telling differ- ences between the ways in which associates — as compared with partners and senior management — perceive both the impor- tance and the amount of innovation hap- pening at their firms. While 84 per cent of partners and se- Turn red tape into Green. At DW 2 , we pride ourselves on helping your clients with complex technology contracting. Rated one of the Top IP Boutique Firms for 2016/2017 by Canadian Lawyer. DWW.ca Intellectual Property & Technology Lawyers Patent & Trademark Agents | CONTRACT AUTOMATION |