(with apologies to Charles Dickens)
Sarah Harris, Henry Goodwin and Ashley Winton update the perennial themes of Scrooge to a 21st century setting where Scrooge is struggling to stay relevant…..
Published shortly before Christmas in 1843, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was an instant hit in 19th century Britain, telling the salutary tale of Ebenezer Scrooge’s personal journey from miserly, cold-hearted man to generous, compassionate philanthrope.
We first meet Scrooge living in wilful ignorance of the needs of those around him, refusing to believe in helping others. This all changes however when he is visited by three ghosts who help him change his ways (demonstrating some highly effective Victorian-era prompt engineering).
Scrooge reforms, making significant differences in the lives of those around him through his newfound generosity.
Now we would like to invite you, Dear Reader, to join us in reimagining if you can (and this won’t be easy), Ebenezer Scrooge as a modern day law firm partner and the Christmas Carol story as a metaphor for digital transformation of the legal industry, driven by visionary law firm partnerships, at first fearing but eventually embracing the potential of new-fangled AI solutions.
And so back to Dickens…
Struggling to come to terms with the fast changing world around him, Ebenezer despises the festive season. Indifferent to the suffering of others and spurning family invitations to Christmas dinner, he instead prefers to stay in his counting-house (an antiquated term for home office) hoarding his wealth.
[Maybe this isn’t so hard to imagine after all…]
But then our hero receives a visit from his deceased former business partner, Jacob Marley, who issues a stark (profit) warning of the consequences of Scrooge’s selfishness. The retired partner, and closest thing Scrooge ever had to a friend, foretells the impending arrival of three more spirits. But could this all just be a “hallucination”?!
Ghost of Christmas Past
The first spirit to appear takes Scrooge on a journey through his own past, showing him scenes from his childhood and his joyful apprenticeship with the brilliantly named Fezziwig (a great trainee supervisor and lover of 1990’s technology).
In our parallel legal fantasy world, we see Scrooge misty-eyed with nostalgia as the firm leadership present dictaphones to lawyers as Christmas gifts. He remembers the luxury of a fax machine that scans and stores the pages of every document in its memory (making failed sends a thing of the past), the teletype terminal which has access to an entire library of legal authorities, the first Windows 3.1 PCs complete with WordPerfect, and the soothing melodic ringtone of the firm’s standard Nokia 3310, and of course, his joy at achieving a new high score on “Snake”.
This was a time when all-nighters were a badge of honour, desks groaned with the weight of redlined drafts and bookshelves were stacked with lever arch files concealing closely guarded, top secret precedents. Meanwhile, the centre of the universe and ‘single source of truth’ for all institutional knowledge resided as much in the all-powerful secretarial pool as in the equity partners’ spacious offices.
However, nasty rumours soon begin circulating that clients are considering using alternatives to their traditional law firm advisors, that brash, tech savvy, hardworking American lawyers were beating a path to our shores, clutching Blackberries and Palm Pilots and that long lunches were no longer the best way to win work. What’s more, capable junior lawyers, valuable clients and even more precious, legal precedents were now expected to be shared around the firm.
Ghost of Christmas Present
The second spirit to visit our protagonist reveals alternative contemporary Christmas celebrations, taking Scrooge on a rare trip away from home to visit the warm-hearted Cratchit family, who remain upbeat in spite of highly challenging domestic circumstances, notably the frail health of one of their children, Tiny Tim.
In our parallel universe, Scrooge is prised out of his office to visit the IT department, where he meets the joyful (and suspiciously talented) ‘business services’ family, including CTO ‘Tiny’ Tim Cratch (IT), who demonstrates remarkable resilience in his mission to convert his firm to more efficient, data driven ways of working.
Scrooge has never been to the IT Department before, at least not since it was repurposed from the old wine cellar. The laptops and computers he recognises as the firm standard issue. The software he does not.
Scrooge soon realises however that today’s legal office is a confused and conflicted place, as he witnesses hordes of talented technologists and enthusiastic heads of innovation cheerfully signalling the advancement of technology, while beleaguered employees continue to wrestle with formatting documents in Word or even manually preparing their bundles exactly as they want them.
Associate disillusionment is growing despite wage increases, as clients continue to put pressure on the billable hour fee model, which somehow still survives against all the odds.
The business nonetheless persists in its unshakeable belief that the simple passage of time will allow its lawyers to learn things of value to clients through ‘osmosis’, and charge those clients them accordingly.
New generations of talent rightfully demanding a better work life balance watch presentations on the importance of ‘utilisation’ and ‘recovery’, thinking how strange it all is. They are relying on the goodwill and kindness of soon to be departing equity partners to invest in emerging technology that will ensure a pipeline of bountiful future Christmases.
The most lauded of these new technologies is the mysterious and magical AI, which is self-evidently and rapidly going to take everyone’s job, sapping morale and sowing the seeds of panic across all lawyer grades, even as they dial into the “All I Want for Christmas” office party over Zoom.
Or maybe AI could instead be the answer to all of their problems? If only they had some time out from re-doing bundles, working through client and matter inception processes and filling out appraisal forms to work out exactly how.
Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
The final Dickensian spirit presents a grim, dystopian future where Scrooge dies alone and unloved. He sees his own gravestone (not the transactional kind), prompting a desperate plea for redemption.
Despite the evidence before him, our Scrooge suffers for doggedly refusing to change his outdated ways, a victim of chronic dictation resulting in a shrunken PEP.
The golden opportunity to leave outdated ways of working behind and to embrace a better, brighter digital roadmap has been squandered, and all lawyers are the poorer for it. Meanwhile, Scrooge sees himself spending his final non-billable hours at home watching Love Actually on repeat on his VHS, wondering about what could have been.
Scrooge’s demise is accompanied by the drip, drip of leaking profits and the spectral waft of erstwhile rainmaker partners departing the once hallowed, marbled lobbies of law firms across the country.
The market has spoken, and the future belongs to alternative tech driven service providers who can better meet client needs with risk adjusted, tech driven approaches that redefine client relationships.
But maybe, just maybe, there could be another way.
The (Digital) Transformation
Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning filled with joy and determination to change. He embraces the spirit of Christmas by generously helping others, including sending a large turkey to Tiny Tim and his family.
Similarly, our alternative Scrooge is infused with a missionary zeal to invest distributable profits for the long term in identifying and implementing digitally enabled ways of working, in turn uniting clients and lawyers alike in a shared vision of financial and spiritual prosperity.
Data now resides in a perfectly beautiful, pristine lake and is accessed effortlessly by all members of the firm to provide in-depth, accurate and risk balanced insights to its clients.
Billable hours are but a distant memory as associates use AI to unleash the power of the data that they hold, backed up with value based pricing models, in turn allowing them to skip out of the office by 4pm in order to perfect their 5km run time or bake the perfect Victoria sponge.
The Outcome
Both Dickens’ Scrooge and our legal doppelgänger become beloved figures in their community, embracing Tim Cratch (IT)’s legal tech roadmap as his own, basking in the glow of well executed digital transformation and embodying the values of kindness and generosity throughout the years.
And we may well ask ourselves, Dear Reader, why the Dickens shouldn’t this also be the case for our ‘IRL’ law firms of the future?
Let’s all be more like Scrooge 2.0 in 2025. A brighter future awaits!
Sarah Harris is a partner at law firm Kingsley Napley LLP, leading on their AI and Innovation strategies. A former criminal barrister, turned regulatory partner, turned Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Sarah brings a wealth of diverse expertise to provide internal and external clients with a more holistic approach to solving legal and business problems.
Henry Goodwin is a TMT lawyer turned VC investor with global early stage firm Leo Capital, where he recently launched a B2B seed fund focused on the Nordic & UK markets. He has a particular interest in LegalTech, RegTech and the intersection of law, technology and business.
Ashley Winton is a former computer designer. Having enjoyed over 25 years as a Data, AI and FinTech partner at firms such as White & Case, Paul Hastings, Pillsbury and McDermott Will & Emery, Ashley is now pursuing his dream job of developing the next generation AI powered law firm.
