Nearly everyone I know has, at some point in their life, encountered a legal task: sign a contract, go to court, complete an administrative obligation, request a permit etc. And everyone I know, expected to complete that task quickly, only to realize it would take much longer than anticipated.
Much much longer…
The Need for Speed
Law is the backbone of doing business and in today’s world, conducting business requires speed. Therefore, the law and the various processes it engenders should reflect this need for efficiency. They should enable it. After all the, the law provides a foundation for our societies, allowing them to function. A society is only as good, successful and dynamic as the law that governs it.
We need speed, because our world is fast-paced. We transformed many facets of our lives with speed and efficiency — enabled by an unprecedented technical progress over the years. Thanks to this progress people across the globe can communicate instantly, send money almost instantly, send goods in 24 hours or perform a service fully remotely in 1 day.
And we need more speed to solve other pressing issues our world is facing: climate change, diseases, poverty and more.
So, it is no surprise that we look at all things legal and expect them to act at the speed our societies need.
Bureaucracy is decline
And yet, this is far from being the case. The legal, regulatory and procedural parts of doing — well, anything really — are more of an impediment and a constant frustration than an enabler.
Bureaucracy is at its peak. Over-regulation is at its peak. Transnational transactions are more complex than ever with UK-EU post-Brexit red tape, or a potential US-EU trade spat on the horizon. All of those make business transactions slower, costlier and sometimes outright prevent them. For instance, UK’s exports to the EU dropped down by 27% between 2021–2023 due to Brexit. More than a mere statistic: that’s 1/5th of someone’s revenue gone or 1/5th companies that stopped exporting altogether.
One could argue that slow is good. In the same way a fine-dining restaurant is better than a fast food. Perhaps, the slow-motion of legal processes could mean their quality? Quality in the form of a better, more equal system, offering equal rights to all participants.
This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Today, roughly 5 Billion people globally lack access to justice. Approximately 1.5 billion of those, are people unable to access justice for civil, administrative, or criminal matters. This includes people in countries with well established institutions and justice systems that still encountered significant barriers in resolving their everyday legal issues. To take California as an example: in 2018 55% of its citizens faced a legal matter and 70% of them received no legal assistance.So all in all, our legal systems are slow and unequitable. Unable to offer adequate support to the majority of citizens.