The Inefficiency In Law Nobody Talks About

There was a time when tapping collective wisdom simply meant consulting your immediate circle of trusted confidantes. Oh, how the times have changed. Over the last decade crowdsourcing has revolutionized almost every field of knowledge sharing. Naysayers scoffed at replacing expensive encyclopedias written by experts with free online articles by the public, but now Wikipedia is the top source of information in the world. We consult Yelp before choosing a restaurant, check traffic conditions on Waze, and scour Amazon reviews before buying a product. In each case, crowdsourcing improved the quality of information because it was based on firsthand knowledge and a diversity of perspectives, quality-controlled by the wisdom of the community. And in each case, crowdsourcing made valuable information free to the public. In spite of its proven success in other fields, crowdsourcing has been virtually nonexistent in law. Attorneys treat legal research like a solitary endeavor, nevermind the fact that the research experience would be fuller and the understanding of legal issues deeper if they had access to analysis from other lawyers with relevant experience. This void cuts to the core of legal practice: litigation associates spend roughly one-third of their time doing legal research. That means hundreds of thousands of lawyers across the country spend countless hours developing insight and expertise about issues relevant to their clients, without a mechanism to leverage that knowledge for broader use. It’s one of the biggest market inefficiencies in law that nobody talks about. Crowdsourcing has the potential to be a disruptive innovation in law. It can help attorneys do their jobs better and more efficiently by building on the expertise of the legal community. And in the process the public, for whom law is often frustratingly opaque, gains access not only to free legal documents, but to analysis that helps put the law into broader context.