In recent years questions about what skills lawyers need to be prepared for the future have mostly come back to robots, coding and big data. Here are a few thoughts that some lawyers had:
On the topic of technological change:
“The more lawyers can engage with technology, the better for them and the better for their clients. Whether you can code or not, there are definitely advantages to being able to engage with technology and to speak on a somewhat technical plane – it opens up enormous opportunities for collaboration with technologists in a world where every discipline, including law, is becoming increasingly integrated into the digital space.” – Julia Salsky, Lawyer and Founder of Crowd Justice
Equipping yourself with technical skills:
“I think everyone should learn to code! It’s a fantastically valuable skill that’s also a lot of fun. It’s something that can be both really intellectually interesting and creative at the same time. I think lawyers make naturally good coders. Fundamentally, code is just a set of objective instructions to a machine. A contract is not that different in that you’re trying to craft a set of instructions to be as objective as possible. Lawyers have to think in a very structured, granular and detailed oriented way; and need to be comfortable breaking a problem down to its core. Such abilities are central to coding.” – Srin Madipalli, Co-Founder Accomable
“I doubt that lawyers of the future will be required to code themselves, in the sense of having to learn and write computer code. Instead, I suspect that firms and start-ups will create programmes that allow lawyers to assemble smart contracts without needing to know any code. So, I don’t think that learning computer programming will be necessary, but obviously it might be helpful to know it.” – Oliver Yaros, Partner at Mayer Brown.
Will you be applying focus in 2019 to developing new skills within the tech space? Let us know!
“The best way to predict the future is to create it”
– A Lincoln
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