Joe Patrice, of Above The Law and one of our speakers in our “Are Lawyers Luddites?” webinar earlier this year, is famous for his searing insights into the often gritty intersection between law and technology. Well, Joe has struck once again, this time with his latest screed “Have IT Departments Become Unlikely Barriers To Legal Technology?”
Why would Joe rant against involving the IT Department in obtaining, well, IT? It’s not because, like Steve Martin’s character in the movie Roxanne, he thinks that they’re a bunch of incompetents:
I have a dream. It's not a big dream, it's just a little dream. My dream - and I hope you don't find this too crazy - is that I would like the people of this community to feel that if, God forbid, there were a fire, calling the fire department would actually be a wise thing to do. You can't have people, if their houses are burning down, saying, ‘Whatever you do, don't call the fire department!’ That would be bad.
In fact, it’s something of the opposite, as Joe still sees lawyers as (debatably) Luddites and IT as the heroes: “It’s the computer folks moving heaven and earth to get a new package in front of users. And it’s the computer folks trying to sell lawyers on adopting that shiny new tech.”
However, as Joe was attending this year’s International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) event, he had something of a revelation:
But with cloud-based solutions, the software is constantly and seamlessly updating. A roll-out no longer requires years of planning. With tech companies finally recognizing that an intuitive user experience will always draw more adherants [sic] than reeducation camps, the best thing for everyone is to get the software in front of users as quickly as possible.
Joe’s on to something here. In fact, he’s on to something that other folks are very much on to as well: a concept called “Product Driven Growth.” Joe talks about Dropbox as the example of a product that users can just, well, sign up for and start using – no reason to call IT. Even if IT is dead set against the idea, which might make sense since Dropbox doesn’t always necessarily meet strict law firm/legal department document security rules. But that doesn’t matter to users nearly so much as the fact that Dropbox is ludicrously easy to use.
In fact, a few weeks back, Charlie Uniman of Legal Tech StartUp Focus forwarded a link to an absolutely mind-blowing article from the Venture Capital firm OpenView Partners: “What is Product Led Growth? How to Build a Software Company in the End User Era.” The article describes how we are now in the “Third Era” of IT – here’s a picture that’s well worth a thousand words of describing those eras:
Welcome to the End User Era!
To put it simply, in the first, “CIO Era,” IT was super expensive, super difficult to install, and super hard to train people to use, and thus required heroic efforts by the IT department. Then, in the second, “Exec Era,” IT became easier, but still expensive and difficult enough to require a company executive (or, if this was in a law firm world, a big partner or department chair) to champion the process. Now we are in that third era, the “End User Era,” where the end user can pay for Slack or Hubspot or Dropbox and just start using it in the Cloud. No need to call IT for installation or training because it’s intuitive and just that easy to use!
The growth for these new companies is not driven through long-term sales cycles with IT (first Era) or by schmoozing the right C-level officer (second Era), but by making products that make their users’ lives so much better that they have to have them – and then they tell their friends – who spread the word further. It’s “going viral” but for software!
Joe thinks that IT “may be in need of some self-reflection when it comes to managing the change process in a cloud world.” We’d like to think that IT actually deserves better: stop bugging them to buy, install, and train you on new software. IT is busy. Seriously busy. As in, we’ve-never-met-an-IT-Department-that-is-not-working-at-at-least-110%-capacity busy. Let IT go do its day job, of keeping your systems running, the hackers safely away, and the organization’s technology indulgences safely on the rails. And then let them go home – like you, they want to go home too.
If you want to make your life better by eliminating headaches, mistakes, and busy-work that comes from having to start every, single document from scratch – and go home earlier yourself – then give Woodpecker a try. We think you’ll find our software so easy to install, learn, and use that you’ll want to help us spread the good word. All without you having to bug your IT team.
Viva La End User Revolución!
Are you ready to join the End User Revolution? Click the button below and try Woodpecker Pro today.