My wife likes to tell the story of the first file that she worked on for me when she articled for my firm. (Those were in the days when she did what I told her to do, because I was the boss. Things have changed.)
I had her work on a financing file. Back in the day, financing statements under the Personal Property Security Act were typed on a government form, and submitted over the counter.
When it came time for Maureen to prepare the financing statement, rather than immediately give her the form to complete, I told her that she first had to look at the regulations and determine which information was required to complete the form. After she knew what had to go into the form, and why, I would give her the form to fill out.
The way that the love of my life tells the story, is that at the time she had a long commute, a young child to take care of, and was the only articling student at our firm of about twenty lawyers, with many competing priorities. She did not find my method of instruction to be in line with the myriad demands on her professional time. It took a while for us to become friends.
But here is the thing. She became a really great lawyer. She has an excellent conceptual grasp of business law and knows how to solve a problem by starting at the beginning. Read the statute. Read the regulations. Study the case law. Read some commentary. Then, and only then, apply your common sense, business sense, and creativity to figure out whether colouring inside of the lines is going to solve your problem, or just how far outside of the lines you can go without getting yourself or your client into trouble.
You will never find Maureen jumping to a conclusion based on what Google or Chat GPT has to say.
Maureen and I may disagree about how I had her handle that first assignment, but we both understand that there is no short-cut to learning how to practice law.
We are now living in an era where there are many tools available to help lawyers practice law. Legal Tech and Artificial Intelligence are just two of them.
The writer, Robert Hughes, said that “a determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop.” If that is true, just imagine how much can be accomplished by a determined soul using great tools.
Unfortunately, I now see too many lawyers who do not understand that a tool is not a substitute for being a determined soul. They think that they can buy Legal Tech, use Chat GPT, and joyfully skip right past the part where they learn the basics and develop a deep conceptual understanding of their craft.
In my opinion, lawyers starting out today have to double down to learn the basics, and to avoid what looks like the easy path to success. Otherwise, one day they will wake up to the realization that they are just the legal equivalent of loafers in a machine shop.
This article was originally published by Law360 Canada, part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.