A Different Drummer

It used to be that being a partner in a big city, big-law law firm meant you were marching to the beat of a different drummer, for there was a time and quite a long time at that when a normal law career meant being the “local” lawyer (neighborhood solo and small firms being all the rage). Now, it is the small town lawyer who hears a syncopated melody. While a solo or small practice career still seems to be the inevitable result for most, those careers dance to a city’s waltz.

It used to be that using a Mac in a law office meant you were not only marching to the beat of a different drummer, it was an improvisational, polyrhythmic student of Elvin Jones and John Coltrane at that. For in three-piece suit world, beige boxes once ruled supreme. Now (at least according to the 2013 Apples in Law Offices survey), those beige boxers are the ones hearing a different tune (or perhaps the children are finally taking over the adult’s party).

It used to be that technology came slowly to rural communities, when those with electricity and phone service were the ones dancing to a different beat, for it took an act of Congress and the 1970’s to before the majority of rural communities heard that basic tune. Now, small towns are seeing cell towers and DSL encroaching on landlines and dial-up as rural America begins to hear the binary rhythm of the digital age. Yet, rural digital is a tune all it’s own – bebop to the big city’s swing, blues to the city’s pop – for business data is more likely to come from GIS than CRM, data mining is more about soil fertility, crop spacing and yields than demographics and product preferences, and mobility is more about data in the (tractor) cab than data in the hand.

It used to be that my technology danced to the odd melody, but now there are many other little law offices are bringing Macs to the prom, backing up data to multiple destinations, and going paperless. It seems that the only off-beat I still hear is that of desktop practice management software as I appear to be somewhat tone deaf to cloud-computing’s siren song. Strange to think that what seems recalcitrant today will be tomorrow’s retro and the future’s different. It’s all a matter of waiting for the curve to circle back and catch up with me.

It used to be that “different” was easy, for there was a time when non-conformity had not been commercialized. Ah, but now it is hard to consistently hear that different tune for the players have become such fleeting ephemeral things – Moore’s law is as much bane as boon. To survive different must eventually mature into the everyday all that matters is the time and place (remember the Newton?).

Beyond the walls of the little law office on the prairie, that different drummer still plays. The tech may be common place, but at least the practice is still idiosyncratic; biding its time waiting until this place is, once again, a norm.