If the weeks ahead will show us anything, it’s that America’s lawyers are busier than ever. From ballot challenges and antitrust lawsuits to healthcare mergers and acquisitions, much of the U.S. legal landscape will be determined by 2024 politics.
Today’s lawyers have no shortage of desperate clients or demanding caseloads. In recent years, attorneys have been billing more and more, bringing in substantially more revenue than in 2016.
And there is no shortage of lawyers. There are 1.3 million lawyers in the United States, or four lawyers for every 1,000 residents, showing how much the legal industry has grown over the decades.
Yet, for all of America’s lawyers, clients needing legal help, and countless pages worth of casework, attorneys spend far too many hours not practicing law.
According to Thomson Reuters, lawyers spend about 60 percent of their time practicing law, with the rest devoted to non-legal tasks like administrative work or dealing with expenses. In other words, attorneys typically spend anywhere from one-quarter to one-half of each day handling work that cannot be billed — work that doesn’t help clients in need.
According to another estimate, 75 percent of attorneys report spending 20 hours or more weekly on non-client-facing billable work, such as legal research, court filings and administrative or managerial activities. This translates to a lot of wasted time.
Given the day’s demands, lawyers need to get these hours back on behalf of their clients, who need better bang for their buck. As the artificial intelligence revolution disrupts corporate America and technological breakthroughs lead to more cost-effective work, there is no reason for law to lag behind. Long known for cumbersome processes and tiresome bottlenecks, the legal industry could use some disruption of its own.
Whether it is how they position themselves in a competitive marketplace or in actual legal proceedings, wasted time is, unfortunately, all too common for lawyers. Litigation teams, in particular, face a wide range of challenges, not just in the new world of remote work but in the seemingly endless trove of data that attorneys have to manage. Time spent organizing (and finding) assets, compounded by a lack of tools available to streamline the organization process, amounts to time not spent practicing law.
In law, much of the “old way” of doing things is now outdated, taking lawyers away from the most interesting and vital aspect of the job: Case strategy. I not-so-fondly recall receiving one case narrative developed in a table within a Word document that referenced key exhibits in a jumbled mess of legalese, and that happens more often than you want to believe.
Whether remote or in-person, litigators have various pain points regarding how they collaborate with others and organize their documents, and failures to harness technology along the way. Surprisingly, there are few digital tools out there that enable better storytelling — tools designed with a primary focus on making it easier for lawyers to engage in case strategy.
That led to the creation of Moxx, an all-in-one litigation app. Moxx is a platform for preparing for legal proceedings that makes it easier for litigators and their teams to collaborate, organize information and present crucial documents and details on behalf of clients. Reducing bottlenecks allows lawyers to manage case narratives, case timelines and trial notebooks through cutting-edge technology.
This is one example of technological disruption in the legal industry, but it is a critical step in the right direction.
The more the legal industry can leverage disruption and modernize its practices, the better it is positioned to serve clients. In the busy weeks ahead, America needs more efficient and effective law — without wasted time. New technology is the only way forward.
The original article was published in InsideSources.