Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear (Perspective)

In April of this year, semi-autonomous trucks from six manufacturers throughout Europe left their home bases and converged on the Port of Rotterdam. It was a demonstration of “truck platooning,” the ability to electronically connect a convoy of semi-autonomous trucks behind a human-driven lead truck. The lead truck sets the speed and direction while technology controls and drives the remainder of the trucks (and, yes, there remained drivers in the convoy for back-up).

The result, it is argued, is an improvement in safety, a reduction in fuel cost and emissions, and increased productivity.

I was reminded of truck platooning when reading a recent article about Uber’s purchase of a company called Otto. Uber’s experimentation with self-driving cars in Pittsburgh has received a fair amount of coverage. Similarly, Otto is a start-up focused on automating the trucking business.

Otto launched in January. In August, Uber bought it for $680 million. Uber’s decision to purchase the company, along with other moves, signals a clear desire to bring the Uber business model into trucking. Given the amount of money in the industry, the development of technology, and the potential for disruption, this seems like a logical move for Uber.

Just because the law needs humans doesn’t mean it won’t also need robots

The article, however, had echoes of the legal industry with its coverage of skeptics from the trucking industry itself:

“While Uber’s brand and financial backing could supercharge Otto’s prospects industry experts remain skeptical that a Silicon Valley start-up with little experience can shake up long haul trucking.”

Some of these experts estimated true self-driving trucks (level 4 vehicles) are still decades away. One expert pointed out that trucking was a “relationship-backed” industry and that there was more to it than “just finding a piece of equipment.”

For those of you following the discussion of the potential impact of technology on the legal industry, this will sound familiar. There is no perfect solution that completely replaces lawyers. There is no substitute for personal relationships. So we have nothing to worry about, right?

The fact that the these two points are true does not mean we shouldn’t recognize reality. Perhaps the reporters should have interviewed former Blockbuster executives for a hindsight view on how technology disrupts business models.

Whether or not we are close to completely autonomous trucks (or robot lawyers) is not the point. Neither is the importance of relationships. What truck platooning demonstrates is the ability of current technology, right now, to augment human production and produce dramatically better results.

The importance of the congruence between technology and human skill was brought home to me repeatedly at the recent O’Reilly Conference on Artificial Intelligence in New York. Those expecting an announcement that personal robots (à la Rosie of Jetsons fame) are upon us probably found the presentations disappointing. For the rest of us, the presentations were illuminating. Putting aside self-driving cars, the work being done in natural language generation, predictive analytics, neural networks, and other fields is amazing.

Yet even more significant is the work being done to connect this rapidly developing digital transformation with human expertise.

By focusing on the ability (or more precisely, the lack of ability) to fully automate the job of a knowledge worker — like lawyers — we ignore the fact that technology increasingly automates many of the tasks that knowledge workers perform. The sophistication of that automation is increasing at a staggering rate. This means we will see a material change in the near future in the way work is performed and, frankly, the number of people (at least at the margin) needed to perform it.

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear

Like Uber and Otto, there has certainly been a lot of media attention this year over whether robot lawyers are coming for all of our jobs. Despite the focus, most of the industry chooses to live in quiet denial — believing, like the transportation experts, that decades remain before fully autonomous machines are a reality or that the importance of personal relationships makes automation a non-issue.

I liken this to staying ahead of a silent avalanche. Those who are vigilant and choose to look around and see what is coming have the opportunity to change course. Those who choose not to look around, however, are likely to get swept away.

Without question, a digital transformation is upon the legal industry and the speed of that transformation will only increase. Smart firms will see the opportunity and create plans for how they will take advantage. They will be the ones able to find their way down the mountain in spite of the avalanche. Wait too long, and you may not be able to find your way back.

For more essays from Stephen Poor (@stephen_poor) and Seyfarth on change in the legal industry, visit Rethink the Practice.