It’s already here! Threat or opportunity for CEE Lawyers? (001)
I am talking, of course, about technological and organisational transformation. Still, is it something real in Central and Eastern Europe (“CEE”) and, more importantly, should legal professionals be mindful of it? To put it shortly: YES.
Changing paradigms poses significant challenges especially in industries with more traditional mindsets such as the CEE legal one. The resistance towards innovation manifested by legal professionals here can be traced back to the nature of both law and legal industry. First, law is branded as a human science, for and about social interaction; I will further detail on the accuracy of this assertion. Second, for centuries now, lawyers have had absolute monopoly over providing and delivering legal services, which in turn eliminated any significant form of stimulation or constraint for the professionals to be agents of change. Change is upon this industry, whether the practitioners like it or not. At this stage, the only control they can exert is over the solutions to adopt in order to survive and thrive under these new circumstances. There is a myriad of options out there but what currently seems best fit for CEE would be professional upskilling and a change in the working methods.