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I think a lot of tech companies that spout this nonsense don't understand how law works. Routinely I see products based entirely around reducing lawyer's billa

by TimPC 3y ago

I think a lot of tech companies that spout this nonsense don't understand how law works. Routinely I see products based entirely around reducing lawyer's billable hours. They'll only implement that kicking and screaming if clients force them to bill less. If clients aren't putting pressure on them to be more efficient they will happily bill more hours than are truly needed in discovery rather than using state of the art tools to reduce billable hours. If you don't understand your market is billing hourly and come up with ways to work within that framework you aren't going to be successful.

xenadu02 3y ago
I've worked with software engineers who didn't see the value in DCVSes like git but now that they use it they wouldn't dare go back to non-distributed systems. I would bet most lawyers fall into this camp. They have a process they know works and learning something new is a hassle... but if they used and got used to having history and diffing they wouldn't want to go back. I doubt it involves billable hour calculations for most of them. Remember that software like WordPerfect which was very much not WYSIWYG had a long life with certain audiences like attorneys because they were used to it. If it really is a billable hour problem the auto mechanic industry has already solved it: standard hours. Various services are documented at a given number of hours which is what you get billed by most shops even if it takes the mechanic half the time.
- xenadu02 3y ago
  Correction: WordStar, a DOS word processor that used control sequences and was text mode.
- jameson71 3y ago
  A whole lot easier to take mechanics to court to standardize working hours than to try to take a bunch of lawyers to court
- TimPC 3y ago
  Sure but if your bet is that you're going to drag all of law to a new billing model that's similar to what mechanics have done the fact that you might not be successful is a significant risk point in the profile of your product and substantially affects whether or not someone invests. It's not a trivial solution that's easy to implement as an external vendor. For instance, discovery is a lot more complex than doing a standard operation on a car and the variance in hours worked depends heavily on specific details of the case which lends itself very poorly to charging a standardized price for discovery.

by TimPC 3y ago

xenadu02 3y ago

I've worked with software engineers who didn't see the value in DCVSes like git but now that they use it they wouldn't dare go back to non-distributed systems. I would bet most lawyers fall into this camp. They have a process they know works and learning something new is a hassle... but if they used and got used to having history and diffing they wouldn't want to go back. I doubt it involves billable hour calculations for most of them. Remember that software like WordPerfect which was very much not WYSIWYG had a long life with certain audiences like attorneys because they were used to it. If it really is a billable hour problem the auto mechanic industry has already solved it: standard hours. Various services are documented at a given number of hours which is what you get billed by most shops even if it takes the mechanic half the time.

xenadu02 3y ago
Correction: WordStar, a DOS word processor that used control sequences and was text mode.
jameson71 3y ago
A whole lot easier to take mechanics to court to standardize working hours than to try to take a bunch of lawyers to court
TimPC 3y ago
Sure but if your bet is that you're going to drag all of law to a new billing model that's similar to what mechanics have done the fact that you might not be successful is a significant risk point in the profile of your product and substantially affects whether or not someone invests. It's not a trivial solution that's easy to implement as an external vendor. For instance, discovery is a lot more complex than doing a standard operation on a car and the variance in hours worked depends heavily on specific details of the case which lends itself very poorly to charging a standardized price for discovery.