By working together, technology developers & legal professionals can gain a genuine competitive edge, says Tim Pullan
- Legal practitioners are naturally over-cautious in any scenario involving open disclosure and collaboration.
- Productivity and insight gains can underpin valuable legal risk management solutions.
The highly skilled worlds of technology developers and legal professionals are very different. However, in recent years that gulf of separation appears to have narrowed. According to the Law Society’s Future of Legal Services report published in 2016: ‘Technology… brings increasing potential for efficiency gain, especially for large firms that make their margins through volume work. The Top 200 B2C firms group is likely to contain a large number of ABS [alternative business structures] which utilise external investment to compete.’
When programmers in the tech industry are confronted with a coding problem, no matter how simple or complex, they will routinely discuss and produce the solution in free collaboration with a large and active online community. No matter how specific or niche the problem, someone else will have already answered the question or published the code to resolve
