Two holidays fell in the last couple of weeks, Love your Lawyer day and Veteran’s day. My office didn’t get mail on either of them. The second was by mandate of the federal government and the first was by its planned incompetence. Not getting mail wasn’t even the most annoying thing that happened to my firm last though.
If only my email would skip a day occasionally. Hitting the “unsubscribe” button isn’t nearly as satisfying as throwing junk mail in the recycling bin, but it is close. If it worked on in-person conversations, it would be the perfect tech solution.
It is no secret that I am a tech junkie. I have often said that I got my first law firm job because I was able to build computers in the waybacks of 1990. My first employer never confirmed that, but they never exactly denied it, either. Either way, having the latest tech products at my disposal is almost a compulsion for me. Last week, our high-priced practice management software went on a bender.
That you don’t appreciate something until you lose it should be the motto for automation software. We didn’t even know what practice management software did ten years ago and now we can’t live without it. It harnesses artificial intelligence to automate some of our everyday tasks, and lets my team handle more matters with less drudgery. The software works in the cloud and that cloud is lined with the silver of my subscription payments. It feels more like gold.
Due to state Bar requirements, we keep local copies of our documents and not just cloud based versions. When our software didn’t seem to be working correctly and storing local copies, we notified tech support at the company. It took them almost a week to respond which is decades in tech time.
When they finally did return my call- with a video chat no less- they confessed that they had known about the issue for TWO weeks and were deciding what to do about it. As a fellow service provider, I assured them that waiting two weeks to tell clients about a known issue is not smart.
Then, out of the blue, the software started working again literally while I was researching alternatives. Even artificial intelligence understands self-preservation.
I like tech and love gadgets and at the beginning of the pandemic, I whiled away the hours with technology. I’ve been studying Spanish in an app for 609 straight days, and I have read a couple of books, although one was on actual paper.
Having something to fill the hours kept me from pacing the floor like a caged beast when COVID took away the hustle of court appearances and erased my trial calendar. I am nothing if not a survivor, however, and I adapted to sitting still and not pushing my cases forward. Forced laziness becomes me.
Local courts have started to hold jury trials again, and some circuits are back to in-person hearings. Trouble is, my motivation is still in the cage and gave up pacing. Someone left the cage door open and my motivation got up to shut it, complaining about the draft.
I often leave the office feeling like I tended the fires that I needed to put out and did little else. Besides JoeDay™ becoming more regular, I toss a nap into the mix on occasion. Combined with shorter daylight hours in the workdays, it is a great recipe for mediocrity.
I knew that I wanted to be a trial lawyer from my second year of law school. In part because I liked the challenge of trial work, and in part because my grades made a silk stocking, white shoe law firm unattainable.
In the early days of my practice, getting a case to trial meant taking a case no one with seniority in the office, or in their right mind, wanted. The good ones had a few warts. Most were causes so lost that even St. Jude wouldn’t have answered the call.
Luckily for me and (some) of my clients, my ignorance of these facts, combined with enthusiasm and youthful energy won cases. While none of my cases made the front page of any paper, they taught me a lot about being a trial lawyer.
Over time, my ignorance has waned a bit. My energy for trial work has also waned. This is both natural and desirable- by trying a lot of cases, I have learned to be more efficient. It takes less energy when one knows where to avoid the traps.
I recently spoke with a younger lawyer who got a fabulous verdict for his client. He confessed his own misgivings about taking the case at all, and when he told me some of the facts, I nodded in agreement. Informed, middle-aged me would have probably joined St. Jude and passed on that case. I recognized in his tone the excitement that I used to feel – going to court regularly with little chance of winning and coming out having found just enough chance to actually win. I missed that feeling.
The conversation was an unexpected stomp to my motivation button. I have some pep and energy that was shelved back with my old ignorant enthusiasm. I hope that Artificial Ignorance, or Ignorance 2.0 for the techies among us, comes with enough knowledge to recognize its limits. Or maybe not. Artificial intelligence may save some time and effort, but artificial ignorance inspires me to go do the work that needs being done.
©2021 With All Due Respect. Spencer Farris is the founding partner of The S.E. Farris Law Firm in St Louis, Missouri. He is plenty ignorant, and likely shouldn’t be asking for more ignorance, but go with it. Comments or criticisms about this column may be sent directly to me via email at farris@farrislaw.net.