Law 21 by Canadian lawyer and journalist Jordon Furlong is a fairly new blog with some of the most thought-provoking ideas around.  Like most of us, he’s keeping a keen eye on the changes in the legal profession, with particular note on how innovation and trends are affecting the practice of law.

I learned about Law 21 from Niki Black, the Queen of New York Blawgers and wine connoisseur, who keeps her finger on the pulse of the blawgosphere.  She found this post interesting, and that was good enough for me to check it out.

Jordon, as appears to be his typical approach to a post, begins by positing a fascinating challenge to our assumptions initially raised by Seth Godin and Scott Karp.  They use the music and media industries to make a point, both of which are thriving in a generic sense while the traditional outlets, recording companies and newspapers themselves are dying.

First, the market and the internet don’t care if you make money. That’s important to say. You have no right to make money from every development in media, and the humility that comes from approaching the market that way matters. It’s not “how can the market make me money” it’s “how can I do things for this market.” …

But the market should care, you say. What would happen if we didn’t have the newspapers playing their Fourth Estate watchdog role? Here’s the bitter truth — the feared loss of civic value is not the basis for a BUSINESS.

Jordon then extends the analogy to the law.

You can probably guess where I’m going with this: the legal services marketplace doesn’t care if lawyers make money. The irreversible changes that our industry is going through, the steady advancement of globalization and technology, the growing legions of competing products and producers — the earning expectations of lawyers and the atrophied business models of law firms mean nothing to them. What lawyers want is about as relevant to these forces as the farmer’s crop is to the tornado bearing down on him.

On its surface, he’s got a point: you can’t argue with a tornado.  Still, this flies in the face of lawyer truth, since we believe that we are important, worthy, even critical to society.

But the client should care, you say. What would happen if we didn’t have lawyers playing their role to uphold standards and protect the rule of law? Here’s the bitter truth — the feared loss of civic value is not the basis for a BUSINESS.

The problem with the legal industry, as with the music and newspaper industries before it, is the sense of ENTITLEMENT.

But the law is not music or media.  Technology has provide alternative means of entry, with neither great cost nor effort, to provide a substitute for both industries.  To believe that technology has done the same for law would be a grievous mistake. 

While anyone can opine about the law (such as I do here), the value of their information is no greater then the extent of their knowledge and experience.  Technology has spread legal information far and wide, but it’s a fools gold.  While a lawyer can assess the merit of legal information, non-lawyers lack the basis to determine whether some article, blog post, podcast of whatever is right, wrong or somewhere in between.  They can enjoy any song they like off the internet, but they cannot pick and chose law at will.

Almost any court decision written can be found somewhere online.  But that doesn’t mean every reader of the decision can make sense of it, or use it to their advantage.  That requires a level of knowledge that cannot be gained via technology.  The same is true of lawyers, who can promote themselves online at will with little fear of contradiction, yet without the peer vetting that exists in the well of the court.  Bloggers are often subject to peer oversight, since other lawyers can rip silly arguments to shreds, but websites are immune.  Just yesterday, I read the website of a lawyer who made claims of having held certain positions that I personally know to be utter baloney.  Just yesterday, WindyPundit exposed a half-truth in a lawyer’s website that turned the meaning of a claim upside down.

But the casual reader, and particularly the non-lawyer, neither know of nor understand that any of this is happening.

Unlike music or media, the law is not readily accessible because it requires far more than just reading or repeating the words.  Indeed, technology may well prove to be the most dangerous thing to a greater understanding of the law, giving people the false impression of a being better informed when in reality their understanding is lacking.  A little knowledge is dangerous.

Just as reading about open heart surgery isn’t the same as performing it, reading about the law isn’t the same either.  This is not to say that an education couldn’t be delivered to every man, woman and child sufficient to replace lawyers and enable them to capably advocate for themselves.  It could happen, but it hasn’t yet.

It’s not the feared loss of civic value that matters, but the loss of a skillset necessary to competently perform the task.  As long as the skills that distinguish lawyers remain unavailable to others, people will seek our representation.  Technology has yet to find a way to make everybody a lawyer overnight.  That’s not to say it won’t happen, just not yet.

On the other hand, Jordon’s argument that lawyers feel entitled, contrary to the will of the market, has vitality.  We tend to make an unwarranted leap from the fact that we have something people need to the fact that they want to pay us what we desire.  While law is not merely business, that is not to say that it doesn’t have certain business-like components.  Pricing one’s services to meet the demand of the market is an inherent reality for lawyers, just like everyone else.  You can insist that every defense of a felony is inherently worth $1 million, but chances are good that you will have a lot of free time on your hands. 

Whether I agree with everything posted at Law21 is irrelevant.  Jordon’s posts have made me think about a great many things, offering some bold ideas and challenging many preconceptions.  You can’t ask for more from a blog.