February 2003
Waving not drowning - The Times by Edward Fennell.
Nothing reeks of the past so much as stale predictions. However, Alvin Toffler's book The Third Wave (written almost 25 years ago) managed to get most things right. Toffler was notably accurate when he forecast: "The savviest businessmen (will) know how to customise at lowest cost and find ingenious ways of applying the latest technology to the individualisation of products and services."
Well, that kind of savvy has now reached the law, big time. Over the past few months Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Ashurst Morris Crisp and other leading firms have all been piling into DealBuilder, a piece of precedent automation software. DealBuilder turns firms' individual precedents into a questionnaire that lawyers complete so as to produce client documents, specific to the transaction they are working on. This can reduce, it is claimed, drafting time by 80 to 90 per cent. Jeremy Thomas, the legal development partner at Ashurst, says DealBuilder "will improve turnaround time and enable our lawyers to concentrate on the unique aspects of a deal". So, at last, The Third Wave is sweeping across the legal profession with an impact comparable to the Industrial Revolution. Next, expect the legal Luddites.
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