A Strategic Conversation About the Future of the New Hampshire Bar

1. A Strategic Conversation About the Future of the New Hampshire Bar Presentation by Charles F. Robinson Clearwater, Florida www.CharlesRobinsonFuturist.com

2. Chief Justice Broderick • “I believe that when we look back at the legal landscape 15 years from now, we will barely recognize today. • It would be silly to think that with technology moving at the speed of light, that the practice of law and the court system will remain largely as they are. • We need to do all that we can to design the future.”

8. Tom Peters Predicts • Ninety per cent white-collar jobs will disappear in the next ten years. • What color collars do lawyers wear? • Is there an exception for lawyers?

9. Stare Decisis- Walking Through Life Backwards

10. Change Implications • Speeches, articles, and even retreats to teach how to deal with change won’t change behavior without • Follow-up positive reinforcement • Multidisciplinary support • Framing change in a way to bridge the present with the future • If your passion for change is subsumed in the tyranny of the urgent Monday morning you will hate change even more

11. Leading the Profession to a Preferred Future • If we don’t drive the vehicle to our future we will end up wherever we are taken • Institutionalize search for foresight

12. Scenario Thinking Focus on the capability of the organization to • Perceive what is going on in the practice environment • Think through what this means for the bench and bar • Act upon the new knowledge

13. Objectives Get beyond traditional thinking that • Acts like a filter, restricting the ability to perceive new information • Imprisons us with personal biases and routines within a world of recipes and business-as-usual assumptions • Frames our response automatically

14. A Strategic Conversation • A chance to rehearse the future but not predict the future. • Change is too complex to allow prediction. • Looking for the “dots on the horizon”-signs of change and how we should adapt. • Must move toward adaptive organizational learning • Perception • Thinking • Action

15. Wired Magazine (January, 1998) Guardians of the old order are trying their best to hold back change and preserve their power.

17. Bill Gates Warning “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”

18. Tom Peters “If you don’t like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less”

19. "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.“ Thomas Watson Chairman of IBM,1943

20. “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” Western Union internal memo, 1876.

21. “I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.” Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in “Gone With the Wind”

22. “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Charles H. Duell,Commissioner,US Office of Patents, 1899

23. Toxic Assumptions of the Legal Profession

24. Lawyers have a monopoly on the interpretation of the law.

25. The practice of law is a profession and not a business.

26. The practice of law is a business and not a profession.

27. “What Are the Forces Already at Work in Our Profession That Have the Potential to Profoundly Transform Our Profession’s Structure?” • Each Force a “Discontinuity” • Examine Implications for Each Discontinuous Force

28. Nonlawyer competition Diminished perceived value in attorney services Technology displacement Lawyer supply exceeds demand Disintermediation- Out with the middle person Current Forces Impacting the Profession

29. The Lawyer’s World is Flat • Program to run in 3 Texas Law Schools this year • Focus on how practice is changing and what law students and young lawyers can do to thrive in the 21st century • Business as usual not an option

30. The World is FlatA Brief History Of The 21st Century The 10 Forces That Flattened the World Thomas L. Friedman

31. Flattener 1- 11/9/1989 Fall of Berlin Wall • Ultimately liberated all Soviet Union captive people • Tipped balance of power to those advocating democratic, consensual, free-market-oriented governance • Capitalism the only surviving choice

32. Flattener 2 - 8/9/95Netscape goes Public • From PC-based computing platform to Internet-based platform • Killer applications • E-mail • Internet browsing • Netscape first mainstream browser culture for general public • Internet stopped being province of early adopters and geeks

33. Flattener 3 - Work Flow Software Let’s Do Lunch: Have Your ApplicationTalk to MyApplication Work flow moved from manual work flow to • Seamless interoperable work flow • Seamless interoperable work flow with other companies • With standard language (XML) makes e-filing possible • Global platform for multiple forms of collaboration

34. Flattener 4- Open-SourcingSelf-Organizing Collaborative Communities • Bottom up, shared, constantly improved by users, available free to anyone • Motive is the “psychic buzz” that comes from creating a collective product that can beat something produced by giants like Microsoft and IBM • Example - Apache an open source software system, powers 2/3 of the world’s web sites • Wikipedia the open source encyclopedia • Linux- Top candidate to replace Windows OS

35. Flattener 5 - OutsourcingY2K India • No natural resources • Mines brains of its own by educating a relatively large slice of its elites in • Sciences • Engineering • Medicine • Creates giant knowledge meritocracy • A talent factory for engineering, computer science, and software for the globe- Law? • Software engineers took lead in fixing Y2K bug

36. Flattener 6- OffshoringRunning with Gazelles, Eating with Lions Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter if you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better start running.

37. Outsourcing v. Offshoring • Outsourcing- Take specific, but limited function that you were doing in-house, eg • Research • Document drafting • Have outsource company take those functions for you and you reintegrate their work back into your operation

38. Offshoring • Takes a part of the firm in Canton, Ohio and moves it to Canton, China. • The firm produces the work in the same way with lower taxes, cheaper labor, subsidized energy, and lower health-care costs • Really started 12-11-2001 when China formally joined the WTO. • Made China’s own competitive playing field as level as the rest of the world • China agreed to follow international law and standard business practices Not certain who is lion, who is gazelle

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40. Chinese looking to future as designers • May be 10 years out • In 30 years will have gone from • Sold in China • Made in China • Designed in China • Dreamed up in China

41. “If Americans and Europeans want to benefit from the flattening of the world and the interconnecting of all the markets and knowledge centers, they will all have to run as fast as the fastest lion- and I suspect that lion will be China, and I suspect that it will be pretty darn fast.” Thomas Friedman

42. Flattener 7 - Supply-Chaining When a customer lifts a product off the shelf the cashier scans it in. At that moment: • A signal is generated from the Wal-Mart network to the supplier • The signal shows up on the supplier’s screen • To make another of that item and ship it via the Wal-Mart supply chain, and the whole cycle will start anew Wal-Mart database is entire Internet X 2

43. Flattener 8- Insourcing UPS slogan- Your World Synchronized What the guys in the Funny Brown Shorts Are Really Doing

44. Flattener 8- Insourcing • Not just package delivery; synchronizing global supply chains • Toshiba laptops under warranty • Instructions to ship UPS to Toshiba • Actually goes to UPS Louisville hub for repair by UPS instead of UPS to Toshiba to UPS to customer

45. Flattener 8- Insourcing • UPS dispatches Papa John pizza delivery • Nike Shoes UPS has spent $1billion since 1996 to serve any supply chain in the world

46. Flattener 9- In-FormingGoogle, Yahoo!, MSN Web Search • Informing is the ability to build and deploy your own personal supply chain- a supply chain of information, knowledge, and entertainment. • Allows self-collaboration- becoming your own self-directed and self-empowered researcher, editor without a trip to the library. • Searching for knowledge.

47. Flattener 9- In-FormingGoogle, Yahoo!, MSN Web Search • Seeking like-minded people and communities • Google doing over one billion searches per day • iPod, Ceiva, TiVo, Amazon

48. Flattener 10- The SteroidsDigital, Mobile, Personal, and Virtual • Taking all forms of collaboration- outsourcing, offshoring, open-sourcing, supply-chaining, insourcing, and in-forming, and doing so in a way that is • Digital • Mobile • Virtual • Personal • Enhancing each one and making the world flatter by the day

49. What Do We Tell Our Kids/Grandkids? Only one message- You must constantly upgrade your skills “Children, when I was growing up, my parents used to say to me, ‘Tom finish your dinner- people in China and India are starving.’ My advice to you is: Kids, finish your homework- people in China and India are starving for your jobs.”

50. Become an “Untouchable” • People whose jobs cannot be outsourced • Four broad categories