'Legal Tech Lists': 5 Lawyer Tropes Upended By Legal Tech (Remote Litigation Edition)

In the past few weeks we've identified, analyzed, and rectified 10 lawyer tropes (see here and here), perpetuated by cultural staples but abruptly upended by legal technology.

Remote litigation, the act of participating in a legal proceeding from your home office, has proven itself here to stay and sufficiently upended so many lawyer tropes that we thought that it deserved its own list.

So here we relay a trope, provide an example, and talk about how legal tech rectifies that problem today.

Trope 1: Settlement Water

This, to be sure, is a cousin of our very first trope, the big firm piling of documents onto the solo practitioner.

In every lawyer movie ever, there's that scene where the proceeding hosts play four-dimensional chess with opposing and visiting counsel by accentuating the David and Goliath-ness of the case via the conference room temperature, squeaky conference room seat, conference room snack, or visiting Rottweiler in their pet-friendly office.

The Goliaths typically have a real Lichtenstein or Pollack in the conference room. And typically serve coffee made with dehumidified Caspian Sea water from Scandinavian coffee beans with an aerated basil infusion and ground by hand by Associates using the teeth of Patagonian toothfish.

Exemplary Scene: Turning the tables a little bit here, here's a scene from Erin Brockovich where the big firms lawyers are sitting at the table in Ed Masry's conference room (That paneling! Those curtains!) and during a pause in the settlement negotiation, as the big firm lawyer is about to take a sip of water, Erin tells her from whence that water came.

The Modern, Remote Litigation Solution: At home, while you still might be surrounded by or subject to dated window treatments and that paneling you've been meaning to replace, you get to drink whatever you want! Water, coffee with Oat Milk, Cashew Milk, and/or Almond Milk, Lactose-free milk, Condensed Milk, any kind of milk! And the snacks? Anything you can find in your own fridge or pantry.

Trope 2: The Gladiator Deposition

They call it entertainment for a reason. We've surely all observed and likely even participated in one of those depositions. One of those ones where the tenets of human comportment are eviscerated from the attorneys' oeuvre; ones that make you question the fundamental truths your Nona told you about humans being generally good.

Exemplary Scene: In this scene from The Insider, we see Russell Crow, in what could only have been research for his Oscar-winning role in the following year's Gladiator, as he is questioned by a plaintiff's attorney in tobacco litigation. Following a vociferous and aggressive objection by a big tobacco lawyer culminating in a smile, the plaintiff's attorney gives him a tongue lashing. (But note: the astonishingly tranquil comportment of the court reporter.)

The Modern, Remote Litigation Solution: While they were undetectable on film, you just know that such vociferousness resulted in spittle droplets being flung about. And the theater set-up of the deposition inevitably fostered the sort of theatrics that devolve into high-volume tongue lashings. Not so via remote litigation platform. No spittle. Arrange the virtual participants so that it's virtually just you and the witness, and you're nearly immune from glares and overwrought objections.

Trope 3: Impromptu Experts

We addressed the Courtroom Surprise in our first installment of "Lawyer Tropes that Were Upended by Legal Tech." But in entertainment, villains are wont to introduce a surprise expert, a compelling reason to allow such a surprise, and then compelling testimony. Our heroes are left flailing; their case now subject to serendipity.

Exemplary Scene: When Alabama District Attorney Jim Trotter III surprises Vinny with FBI tire mark analyst George Wilbur, it seems like William Gambini and Stanley Rothenstein's respective geese might be cooked. Luckily for the defendants, Vinny's fiancee Mona Lisa Vito just happens to come from a family of automobile mechanics and thwarts the prosecution in this scene from My Cousin Vinny.

The Modern, Remote Litigation Solution: While things worked out for the defendants in the 1992 classic, the chance that you're engaged to an expert to counter any surprise from your adversaries is rare. With remote litigation and Google, you can search for and identify the perfect witness and, no matter where they are, provided the judge is open to surprises, send them a link and then bask in their acumen.

Trope 4: Technical Ineptitude

Lawyers have not been historically eager to delve into and adopt new technology.

It's a profession reliant on tradition and reputation, and the results of upending or even tweaking either can be unpredictable. And lawyers loathe unpredictability even more than newfangled technology.

We all have our stories of teaching the partner how to open Word or download something from Dropbox or whatever.

Exemplary Scene: This.

The Modern, Remote Litigation Solution: The ABA released Formal Opinion 498 in March 2021, the apex of the pandemic when the shift to remote litigation was feeling more permanent, even advantageous. Opinion 498 read in conjunction with Comment [8] to Model Rule of Professional Conduct Rule 1.1 means attorneys can expect to litigate remotely and to do so, must be technologically competent.

Trope 5: The Briefcase

Lawyers love to haul, hoist, heave, unfasten, rummage through, shut, and refasten their briefcases.

They love the clink and the clank of the spring-loaded clasps. They use their briefcases for security -- emotional and physical -- for dramatic effect, for indicating their status and, now and again, to carry papers, often referred to as "briefs."

Lawyers do everything there is to be done to and with a briefcase with purpose and grandiloquence.

The briefcase -- sometimes tattered, sometimes Halliburton-issued steel with titanium lining (which while it has its merits, must be like carrying a toaster oven around the courthouse), sometimes chic -- has always served as an extension of the lawyer, a 14" x 12" x 4" window into their psyche.

Exemplary Scene: There are several histrionic briefcase maneuvers in this scene, from 1993's The Firm, culminating in an invitation from Gene Hackman to Tom Cruise for an early lunch, following a detour to Gene Hackman's office so he can drop off his briefcase. (The scene also highlights attorneys' propensity for the unannounced office pop-in, another trope decimated by remote litigation.)

The Modern, Remote Litigation Solution: With a stationary workspace providing access to legal proceedings, the briefcase has gone the way of the dodo.

With the ability to prepare and preconfigure every file and document, there's no need to transport the documents, and therefore no need to carry a briefcase. Especially if you're not leaving home. (Which implicates another trope upended by remote litigation: the lawyer running through the airport with their wheeled cart or spilling their litigation bag while waiting at the cross walk.)

Don't despair, even sans briefcase you can still tell a great deal about an attorney in a remote setting -- their background, their shirt and jacket combo, their chosen platforms. Oh, and also, how they litigate.

Gary M. Almeter is the Legal Content Writer at Calloquy, PBC, builders of the first remote litigation platform designed for litigators.