Ethics Is Only 1/5 of What Lawyers Need to Know For A Digital & Dynamic Practice
Like law, the energy and utility industry where I spend my days has traditionally been heavily regulated. What that means is that rules for participants or relief for consumers come by way of regulatory commissions rather than statute or contract. But that model changed when utilities dipped their toes into social media where as this slide (from one of my presentations) whimsically illustrates, regulation accounts for only one fifth of the authority that companies must abide.
Likewise, as legal technology advancements enable more digital and dynamic law practices, lawyers cannot depend on legal ethics alone to govern our conduct. Instead, now that we lawyers are playing in the real world of digital commerce, we’re subject to real laws on deceptive advertising, data breach disclosures, customer privacy (for firms that harvest big data), independent contractor laws (for lawyers who rely on freelance help) and terms of service (for anyone engaging social media or other third party platforms).
Nearly every jurisdiction with mandatory CLE requires a course on legal ethics. Heck, that’s something lawyers actually learned in law school. What lawyers need more and what the bars don’t offer (because after all, it would acknowledge their loss of relevance) is training on the other 4/5ths of what today’s lawyers need to know to survive.
Bar associations will only be relevant to newly minted lawyers IF they provide CLE that involves the other 4/5ths of your ice cream cone (which BTW looks really tasty). The Millennials I know are already deeply cynical about CLE, because none of the offerings cater to the world they’ve encountered. This is how digital-savvy attorneys run afoul of bar counsel and other regulatory bodies: they just don’t know that regs exist and will have an impact on them. (For example, a practitioner uses a LPO for research and some drafting. How is that handled, taxwise? What if a practitioner uses another solo for the same work? Does she file a 1099?)
In my attempts to create CLE programs with the regulatory schemes in mind I’ve found that the only place bars have to place them is in the Ethics pile. This is now hard core nuts-and-bolts for legal practitioners. Given that the Bar’s target audience is changing rapidly, I’m trying to be surprised that CLE offerings are still so firmly entrenched in the 20th century.
it’s not doing anybody any good.