TLH Ep.43 The Blind Spots in Legal Tech: Lessons from 30 Years of Transformation
Hello, Legal Helm listeners! Today, we’re thrilled to welcome David Langdon, Founder of Blind Spot Consulting. With over 30 years in legal technology, David has guided firms worldwide through consulting, implementation, and sales. He’s also the author of Beyond the Features and a strong advocate for workplace accessibility.
At The Legal Helm, we’re committed to exploring how innovation and technology are transforming the practice of law—and today’s discussion is a powerful example. Together with David, we’ll dive into how firms can embrace change, rethink their approach to legal tech, and create more inclusive, future-ready workplaces. Thanks for joining us!
Your Host
Bim Dave is Helm360’s CEO. With 20+ years in the legal industry, his keen understanding of how law firms and lawyers use technology has propelled Helm360 to the industry’s forefront. A technical expert with a penchant for developing solutions that improve business systems and user experience, Bim has a knack for bringing high quality IT architects and developers together to create innovative, useable solutions to the legal arena.
Our Guest
David Langdon, Founder of Blind Spot Consulting, helps law firms navigate transformation and technology adoption with clarity and strategy. With more than 30 years in the legal technology industry, he has held roles in consulting, implementation, support, and sales, working with firms across the globe. As the author of Beyond the Features, he challenges conventional approaches to legal tech procurement. A passionate advocate for workplace accessibility, David combines personal insight with practical solutions to promote innovation that is both effective and inclusive.
Transcript
Bim Dave: Hello everyone and welcome to the Legal Helm where we explore the evolving intersection of law and technology. I’m your host Bim Dave, CEO of Helm360. Today’s guest is someone I’ve known for over two decades, decades. David Langdon and I first worked together at Elite in London in the early two thousands, and since then our paths have crossed many times across the legal tech landscape. With 30 years in the industry, David has worked across consulting, implementation, support, and sales, spending much of his career at vendor side, working with firms globally. Today, he leads Blind Spot Consulting, where he helps firms navigate transformation and technology adoption. He’s also the author of Beyond the Features, a book that challenges how firms think about legal tech, procurement, and he’s become a passionate advocate of workspace accessibility, bringing both personal perspective and practical solutions. David, it’s a pleasure to have you on the legal helm today. Welcome to the show.
David Langdon: Thanks so much Bim. Looking forward to our conversation today.
David Langdon: A little bit more hair. Yeah, thanks.
Bim Dave: yes, indeed. Please tell our audience a little bit about the journey that led you into legal tech.
David Langdon: Yeah, an interesting one. Um, I was actually doing CRM in the motor industry at a university. I did a business systems degree at uni in the uk. Uh, got myself into a CRM job. My best friend’s dad was the CEO of what was then. Cows, I think it’s now called Arriba. Uh, they do a lot of bus and vehicle in the uk.
Um, so got stuck in with that. Uh, a girlfriend at the time moved down to London ahead of me and I was gonna follow. That didn’t work out. So, um, we decided that I was just gonna come down to London and Troy, um, Chen. So looked around for a job. One came up at Navarros of all places, law firm in London. My dad is a retired, uh, sole practitioner, so there’s always been an interest in the law in my family.
I never wanted to be a lawyer, but
I figured a, a marketing job in a law firm in London sound like a great place to start. Um, so I made the move on my own back in. 97, I think it was. It was just around the time that Diana died. Um, so it was very much that of that month when I came down to London, the hell of London was covered in flowers and it was a very interesting feeling in the city at that point.
So yeah, so I started out, uh, in a law firm doing marketing. Really, that’s where it all begin.
Bim Dave: Amazing. And looking back now, um, how would you say the legal industry has changed since those early elite days?
David Langdon: Oh, I think, um, back in the day
It was still very much the, the senior partners, uh, lunch club, I think like to call it. I remember boroughs was based in Mayfair at the time. They were offices before they moved to Holburn and there was a few nice restaurants nearby. I think Langham’s was across the street.
Um, it was quite common for the partners and the marketing director to take us out for lunch, to have a chat. Um, I think I had one of my first sort of interview style meetings at one of those restaurants, so it was very much a. Almost like a boys club in some ways. It was very much about networking relationships.
I mean, in some ways it hasn’t changed, but I think, I don’t think clients necessarily want to be, uh, wine and dine quite as much as they, they were back then. That was very much how you did business. You took someone to lunch, you took ’em to an event, out to dinner, you invited them to a seminar. Um, you really had these sort of onsite events because we didn’t really have the technology that we have now for online meetings and that type of thing.
I mean, you and I are now talking across the other side of the world from each other. Um, so it’s a very different way of doing business. So I think that has certainly changed. I think the old school,
Bim Dave: old school.
David Langdon: well still there a little bit. I think it’s moved on.
Bim Dave: Yes, indeed. It’s definitely a diff a different world, um, that we live in. So, and, and obviously you worked in different roles, um, from support to implementation to sales, and now obviously on the consulting side, which role would you say shaped your perspective the most and why?
David Langdon: Interesting question. I think the role that’s shaped me the best is probably the sales role. Um, I can, when I left Nabar, I went to Elite and I spent best for 20 years working at Elite, and I did. Roles in support, consulting, implementation, and sales. Um, and I think whilst in my earlier career with Elite, the consulting and the support were great from a product point of view and understanding and getting one-on-one time with clients.
But the sales really gave me a bit of a, an opener to the rest of the, the legal industry. Um. I guess talking to other legal tech vendors, understanding the full legal tech landscape a little bit further, um, and just getting a little bit more outta my comfort zone. I think if anything.
Bim Dave: Yeah. No, ama amazing. That’s really, really good to hear. So the, so then you’ve now gone on to blind spots and you’ve written a book, um, called
David Langdon: I have.
Bim Dave: Uh, te tell us a little bit about the reasons why you felt compelled to write this book.
David Langdon: I had a bit of time on my hands. Um, technology had evolved, um, I think after close to three decades in the legal tech industry. Um, I’m particularly in my sales side and in the implementation side, I’ve seen my fair share of legal tech projects that kind of start with enthusiasm. Um. Tend to fizzle. Um, a lot of the mistakes that firms make, whether it’s to do with poor planning upfront, really not a clear path of what it is they’re actually trying to achieve.
And certainly in a lot of cases, very little. Um, plan for. I guess adoption and how it’s gonna maintain itself going forward. So when I had some time on my hands, uh, when I left Elite into Lus year, I just decided to put, or it wasn’t really pen to paper, it was more notepads on my Mac to chat GPT to help me out a little bit to structure things.
Um. Again, some of the tools that are available now really enable me to, to create the book, which I couldn’t have done before. Um, this may be something you want to dig into a little bit further, but I’m actually visually impaired. So being able to sit and read and write a book and go back through it and edit it without some of the modern technologies is almost impossible.
So, I just decided I wanted to get something out there that put my three decades of experience. Down onto paper, um, and use it more, I guess as a marketing tool. A bit of a, a leveler for myself, just to have something out there, something I can promote and use it to, I guess as a starting point for conversations and talking to you about it right now.
Didn’t think I was gonna sell hundreds of thousands of copies. Be nice. But, um, it’s certainly been an interesting journey and what I’ve thoroughly enjoyed doing.
Bim Dave: Mm. Yeah. No, indeed. we’ll, definitely, I’d definitely want to, um, a little bit more about the, the visually impaired part of, of your, um. You know, you some of the challenges that you face there, but, we’ll, we’ll get to that in a moment. but in terms of going back to the, the book, um, one of the things that I see again and again, um, particularly with some of the small and mid-sized law firms that are going through like a technology selection is they tend to look for like a, like, for like replacement of, of a
David Langdon: Yeah.
Bim Dave: I’m interested to get your thoughts on that in terms of like, what, you know, do you think that that’s a risky way of, of, of kind, of selection and, and how would you advise firms in that scenario?
David Langdon: Oh, a hundred percent. I think sometimes when I’ve worked with firms, they’ve got a system that’s probably 15, 20 years old, and the only reason they’re really looking to replace it is because. It’s end of life or the, the vendors just stop supporting it. So they’re wanting to move to something new and they know they have to.
Um, I find this particularly in, I guess the mid-tier and I guess mid-tier depends on where you are in the world. ’cause here in Australia mid-tier is probably 50 to 150 fi us. Um, in the US it’s probably three or 400 families. Um, so it, it differs. But here in Australia where I’m doing most of my work, it is.
Of those firms that I guess they don’t dunno what they don’t know, if that makes sense. They have come from something they’ve been using for 10 or 15 years. They know the need to move forward. Um, and they just really want. Some comfort. They want to make sure that they can do the same things they did before.
And part of, um, my journey, I was doing a lot of work in the early days with Elite in the CRM space and found it quite common that firms would want to migrate every single piece of data they had in their CRM system into the new CRM system, whether that be like a little industry code they’d been collecting, or particular, I know dietary requirements for one of the.
Context for for events, but you would find that there might be six or seven records with that field attached to it. And they insisted on creating new spaces in the new system to put all that information. And it was quite difficult to explain to these firms that I. Coding one field takes the same amount of time, whether there’s six pieces of data in it, or 600,000 pieces, so it’s just, it just didn’t make sense to me that people were trying to just shoehorn the same data into a new system.
And end up falling into old habits. So that’s very much something that I’ve always pushed over the last sort of 20 years, um, during my time at Elite was that leave stuff behind. Do you really need to bring everything with you? Of course you gotta bring what you need to have from day one. Um, and I think that has certainly become much easier in today’s technology landscape because you can very easily leave behind data and keep it available.
In a data warehouse, just an external database that you can query very easily. So I think that that whole aspect has changed quite significantly.
Bim Dave: Yeah, no, I, I can totally relate to that. And I think there’s also an aspect of, um, data cleanliness and integrity, right? Um, in terms of that legacy data. And sometimes.
David Langdon: Yeah,
Bim Dave: sense to spend a lot of time, rectifying that so that it makes sense in the new system.
David Langdon: yeah, for sure.
Bim Dave: So, so are there other common mistakes that you are, you are seeing firms make, um, when they’re, when they’re going through that selection process of a new technology solution?
David Langdon: Yeah, I guess probably two major ones, and one of them really is the title of the book. Um, beyond the features, I, I find that a lot of the times, uh, especially in my sales, uh, career being on the receiving end of RFPs, uh, the traditional RFP that comes across your desk and it’s got a spreadsheet attached to it with six or 700 rows asking whether your finance system allows you to.
Create a matter or a client. The sorts of questions you don’t really need to be asking when you’re looking at a vendor that does a finance system. So, there’s a lot of, I guess, emphasis on the features and making sure that. The software that the firm has just been selecting does everything it can and all these extra things that it needs to do.
And I just think people get stuck in that and they don’t really, um, focus on what is really important, which is, is the vendor that I’m looking at able to support me? Are we gonna have a relationship going forward? What is the roadmap that that vendor’s got for the solution? Um, other things like just the, the feature set, um, that you just need to be looking at. There’s a whole other suite of tools, things like integrations, the ability to let get the new system to work cohesively with existing tech stack.
Um, quite often people overlook that. I’ve worked with a couple of firms over the years where they’ve had. Salesforce for their CRM. They’ve gone with for their finances. They pick something else for their case management, they’ve got something else for research. And then at the end of the day, someone says, well, can we get a report across those systems?
And nobody had an idea how to talk to each of the systems. Again, that has become so much easier now with modern technology. Um, but I think that feature trap, uh, a typical, the feature illusion actually is, uh, something that people get caught up in. A story I was talking to, um, as a CEO of a, a legal tech vendor, a bit of a startup.
He’s in the, uh, enterprise relationship management space. So the who knows who type of, um, solution. And we were talking a couple of months ago about RFPs and he just said that he refuses to do them. He finds that it gives him a disadvantage when he is presented with an RFP. Um, when I asked him why, he explained quite bluntly that his solution does tend things really well.
Uh, one of his competitors may do a hundred things. So on paper, when it’s a checkbox exercise, the firm looking for the software thinks that. The solution with 10 features isn’t doing too much. Um, but he’s found that when people who have bought this solution with a hundred features, you go back and talk to ’em in six months time and ask them what they’re using, whether it, it turns out they’re only using 10 features, which happens to be the feature that his solution was doing really well.
So, I think a lot of the time you end up bloating. What you’ve purchased because you’ve got features that you don’t need and you’ve then gotta support them and consider them in feature upgrades and that sort of thing. So I think you can overfocus on the features and that’s certainly one the biggest hurdles I see with firms selecting legal tech.
Bim Dave: Yeah, that’s, that’s a really good point actually. Um, and, and if you, so from a, from your book perspective, if there was one lesson that you would want readers, um, and law firm leaders to take away from it, what, what is it?
b>David Langdon: Don’t send legal tech vendors 600 row spreadsheets of feature recommendations. Would be one thing because when the tech vendors themselves don’t end up actually giving you a good response, they’re spending their time ticking the boxes and filling in the spreadsheet. Um, so really you need to, I always think the consultative selling approach is a much better way of doing things.
Talk to the, the vendors, if you’re a law firm directly. By all means have an external consultant involved, but make sure you as the firm have a direct, um, channel of communication with the legal tech vendor ’cause they’re more than happy to help. They want to understand the problems that you’re having with your current systems, and they will quite often happily go through scenarios, um, to show you how their solution will fix that problem that you’re having.
Um, I find that if you just get stuck in this feature checklist, you don’t, you just end up comparing systems based on what features they’ve got, are not really understanding whether long term, um, the solution is the right fit for your firm.
Bim Dave: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And I, I guess from, um, measure, from a measuring of ROI perspective, um, going from a kind of problem solving kind of mindset to say like, these, these are the challenges that I wanna solve with a product solution, um, helps perhaps with defining metrics to be able to say, okay, now over time, how does that product actually fit the firm?
And what did it actually solve the problem? Right? By tracking some of those metrics.
David Langdon: Yeah, exactly. And I, and I think when you’re looking at s solution selection, that is really just one small part of the entire legal tech transformation journey. I think it starts way before actually thinking about what software vendors you’re gonna talk to. You need to understand. What’s working well in the firm, what’s not working well, and the same things that are working well for one group of people may not be the same things that are working well for another group.
So, you really need to make sure you’re talking to the lawyers, the accountants, the support staff, um, all the different areas of the business that are using the same piece of software and finding out exactly what it is that they’re struggling with. Quite often people don’t raise a problem when, when there’s a problem, they just find a way around it and carry on.
So really digging deep into finding out, um, what is going on in the business is a great way to start before you even think about looking at new software.
Bim Dave: Hmm. Yep. And if, if there was a firm listening to us today, um, and is kind of embarking on a journey to be able to replace one of their systems, maybe finance system for example, what would you say is the right way to start? So how, where, where, where is the starting point and what, what’s the best way to start a selection process?
David Langdon: I think I can, going back to what I was just saying before, I think.
Working out the real reason that you’re wanting to do it. Why is it you’re wanting to look at a new finance system, for example, is it because the one you’ve got, um, doesn’t handle multicurrency, you’ve just merged with a business in a different country and you you’ve got some more complex billing requirements.
Um, it really understanding why you need a new system. Is it a technology platform problem? Is it an old on-prem solution that’s using. Ancient backend technology that really is hard to update and that needs, um, bespoke developers to keep it up and running. So definitely the place to start. Is with a legal tech assessment, and it’s not just an assessment of the piece that you’re trying to replace, it’s really your entire stack.
So how is that finance system fitting in with other tools that you’re using in the business, whether it’s your HR, payroll system, your document management system, your document creation system, um, a lot of new e-billing tools that are in the market now. What is it you need to have working well? What are your clients using and expecting you to use, um, before?
And you need to consider all of those things before you even start to think about the, the options that you have available to you. So again, the definite piece of advice here is to stop before you go too fast into looking at a new product. Quite often I’ll have received a phone call saying, our finance system is 20 years old.
We need a new one. What can you do for me? That’s kind of the the sales lead question that you get, and you’ve really then gotta piece it together and sort of reverse engineer what it is they’re actually saying to you. I definitely find that sometimes what firms say they want isn’t necessarily what they actually need.
There’s a disconnect in what people are asking for versus what they actually need. I think to get into the bottom of that is crucial in making the whole project successful.
Bim Dave: Yeah, no, great, great advice. Um, so David, I wanna, I wanna switch gears a little bit here to talk a little bit more about your personal journey. Any if I may.
David Langdon: Sure.
Bim Dave: Um, and, and you kind of touched on this earlier about being visually impaired, so hopefully we can kind of dig into that a little bit more. Um, but you’ve, you’ve pretty much navigated your entire career with low vision, um, and you’ve done everything from traveling, presenting, um, working on site with clients, and that to me is like quite a demanding path that you, you led and, and bearing in mind there. Obviously some of the technology that you’ve mentioned that you’re using today and some of the advancements in, um, helping, uh, people with with low vision may not have been there when you started your career. What, firstly, what, what motivated you to pursue, um, that path? Um, you know, with, you know, with, with that in mind?
David Langdon: It’s a really good question. I don’t, I dunno what it was exactly,
Um, but I just decided, uh, I mean, I was diagnosed with, uh, a rare form of macular degeneration when I was a teenager. And at the time it didn’t really impact me. I, I knew that I struggled to read the blackboard at school, um, and reading text in a book.
I had to take my time a little bit longer with it. So at the time it wasn’t really a problem, but I knew it was a degenerative condition. So over time it gets worse and worse. I just decided that I really wanted to have, I guess, in air quotes as normal a career as possible. And that I would make good use of technology that was available to me.
And at, at the time. We’re going back to the late nineties here, there wasn’t a lot of it. Um, um, one particular instance, I remember you helping me install some of it in a, a computer when we were at Elite. Um, some interesting conversations I’m sure we had as we tried to put Zoom text onto a, an old Windows laptop so I could magnify the screen.
But I think it’s taught me a few things. About myself and about just to have trust in the technology. There’s so much of it out there now. One of the things I definitely have noticed is that the technology right now is moving. Its much faster pace than my eyesight is deteriorating. So that perhaps wasn’t the case 20 or 30 years ago.
I really didn’t know where technology was gonna go, but looking back, it’s going faster than my eyesight’s getting worse. So I do find now that. There’s no real obstacle apart from the fact that I can’t see faces or read name badges at a conference that has its challenges and I can’t read signs and things like that, but there are tools out there, so I’ve just decided to embrace as normal a career as I can and deal with the challenges as I, as I go.
Bim Dave: Yeah. No, it’s, it’s, it’s, um, inspiring to listen to and it’s, it’s kind of interesting ’cause I, I remember. Um, meeting you for, for one of the first times I think we met in, in a, in our London office at the time, and, and us doing that installation of Zoom text and think, and actually thinking at the time that we were installing on a, on an operating system, Microsoft operating system that actually didn’t handle accessibility very well, hence why you needed to use a third party product to be able to, um, you know, see the screen properly and basic, basic magnification is really what it was. What, what have you seen in terms of like the operating system side evolving, um, over the years and, and is it, is it better for visually impaired people?
David Langdon: a hundred percent. It is dramatically better. I mean, ZoomText as a piece of software was, um, I guess career saving for me at the time. It was an amazing piece of software, um, for what it did. Um, it’s always been a string modification tool that doesn’t distort as you magnify. Um, some inbuilt magnifiers in windows, um, still distort as you increase the size of the text that you’re looking at.
So, it becomes quite difficult to. To look at. Um, one example, I remember there was a version of Zoom text that you could actually get on a USB stick ’cause half the problem was that you had to have it on every PC that you used. And if you are doing support and consulting and you’re visiting law firms, having the ability to use.
The client’s computer was a big challenge. Um, on a number of occasions, I had to try and install my own version of software off a USB and back in the day it didn’t go down too well with IT. Teams and security plugging A USB stick into the, the drive of a, a client’s computer, but on the grounds of accessibility and disability, I think it was sort of accepted and we got around it, but it.
Did mean I had to plan ahead quite considerably when I did client visits. I would have to speak to the IT teams to make sure that they were prepared for me to install. I had to allow extra time before meetings. Um, certainly presenting, um, slideshows and software demos. Was a challenge because if I magnified my screen, what I was projecting it onto would also be magnified, which is great if you’ve had a few too many beers the night before and you need to be able to see from the back of the room.
But it’s not that great if you’re feeling a little bit nauseous and you’re trying Watch me scrolling around my screen at uh, times 10 magnification. To your question about sort of technology now and how, how it sort of fits. Um, modern operating systems really are accessibility focused. Um, I use Mac predominantly big fan of the Mac accessibility and the ecosystem they have, um, the tools for low vision.
So, they’re built into the Mac Os, the iPad os, the phone, the watch. They all work as one, so I’m familiar with one. It works on the other. And there’s little things that help make life easier. Like now. I did a presentation at a conference last week in Australia and even Microsoft PowerPoint. I hadn’t even realized until I was preparing for this conference that when you go into presenter mode with an external display PowerPoint.
Doesn’t, doesn’t magnify the external display. It just lets you magnify the speaker notes and everything that you have in front of you. So it meant that I could present, I could read my screen in front of me from my laptop, and the two monitors that we’re facing out to the audience were just presenting the slideshow.
So, technology now is allowed that. Type of thing to be much easier and just the built in accessibility. Now, I don’t require external software. You can still get Zoom text. Um, it is still better than I think the native Windows stuff. But from a Mac perspective, I’d feel like I don’t need it. Now it’s, I use mainstream tools, um, with in built accessibility all the time.
Bim Dave: Yeah. No, that’s amazing. I mean, it’s, it’s great. It’s kind of, again, inspiring to, to hear how some of the challenges that, that you faced, uh, are basically making you think differently about how you prepare. Sounds like you’ve kind of moved more emphasis onto like the preparation for an event or, um, going to a client site so.
David Langdon: Yeah,
Bim Dave: of prepared for, for being able to deliver, which is, which is really, um, fantastic to hear. So, um, so how, how has your lived experience shaped the way that you now advise and consult with clients? Are there any, um, you know, um, parts of that that, that kind of drip into, into the world of consulting?
David Langdon: Yeah, for sure. I think I’ve always, when I’ve been doing training, certainly in my time at Elite, when I was training on a newly implemented CRM solution or new case management tool, I. Would kind of learn the screens, would learn the solution behind the scenes, and I would know where things were. Back in the days of elite enterprise, it was so much easier because everything was in the same place all the time.
In the world of web and uh, configurable screens, it becomes a little bit of a challenge Now that. People can put things wherever they want. And I have to remember that I did once do a training presentation of, I think it was an elite CRM tool, and I did it in French. I didn’t realize it was in French, and I think I got 20 minutes into my presentation and somebody said, oh, I didn’t realize you could speak French.
And I had no idea that I. Doing it in French. It just so happened that I was remembering what everything was. So from a lived experience, I think I, I’ve, I’ve tweaked the way I train people. I’m much more descriptive when I’m talking to people. About, um, when I’m describing a screen, I will tell ’em that you need to click the confirm button at the top right of the screen rather than just saying click the confirm button.
There’s little things like that just help direct people whether you can see or not. I think it’s a helpful just to have that grounding perspective when you’re talking about where things are on the screen. Um. Also just little bits and pieces just from day to day. And it’s one of the things I’m starting to venture into with my own consulting is to raise awareness of accessibility and accommodation needs that people have, not just for low vision, but for all kinds of, um, disability.
Whether it’s hard of hearing, whether it’s mobility, neurodivergence, and just using my lived experiences just to. I guess raise awareness and show that there are tools out there, um, to help people do what they need to do. Um, over my time with Elite, I’ve had a number of clients where there’s been a blind lawyer or some blind employee at a law firm.
I’ve seemed to been the person that has been referred to, to go and have a chat with them and just advise them how they can use the software and the tools that are available. So. I’ve kind of, yeah, adapted my own lived experience to try and help others, and I think that’s something I really wanna do a lot more of going forward.
Bim Dave: Yeah. so, so with, with the, the kind of theme of accessibility in the workspace, um, I think it’s fair to say that it often gets sidelined, right, as one of the inclusion e efforts,
David Langdon: Yeah.
Bim Dave: particularly when you compare it to some of the other areas around gender or race. Why do you think.
David Langdon: I.
Bim Dave: get as much attention?
David Langdon: I think it’s just public voice and public opinion and trends. I mean, don’t wanna get this into a political sort of, uh, conversation, but again, one of the things I have noticed is a lot of, when you talk about diversity, equality, and inclusion, it does seem to sort of base itself around gender. Um, sexuality and race.
Uh, for some reason, I dunno why it is, but disability, I think it’s just they don’t have the loudest voice. Um, a statistic I was looking at recently, um, when I was preparing for this presentation, I think it’s like 70% of people with a disability don’t actually tell their employer that they have the challenge.
I think because it’s, they’ve had some past bad experience or they just know that it’s gonna be difficult to. Um, get the credibility and the help they need so people just avoid it. Whereas I guess the sexuality, the gender thing at the moment is very topical. It’s very much in the media. It’s, it’s very much out there.
Um, from my perspective, you’ve in install, install a gender neutral toilet in your workplace. I’m not gonna be able to read the sign. So that in itself has a challenge, um, which is different for me. So I think it’s about. The voice, the, the media at the time, and I, I know that businesses, they know that they need to be accessible and the true definition of accessibility is making environments, platforms, and processes available and accessible for every single person.
It’s not just about disability, but it seems to be, if you think of the word accessibility, people think wheelchairs or. Braille buttons on the lifts or screen magnification, but it’s a lot more than that. Um, it’s about making the meet the reception area in your law firm accessible for an elderly person who can’t get down onto the, the, the very trendy, expensive leather low chairs that you’ve got lining your reception area.
So, it’s that type of stuff. It’s not just about wheelchairs and ramps. It’s about a lot more. And I, and as I said, I think it’s just. What’s topical and the voice that that sort of community has. Um, so I think there’s a lot to be done, um, to improve it.
Bim Dave: Yeah, indeed. I agree. And, and I think you, I think I’ve seen you, um. Right, or talk about some the, the kind of key areas of accessibility being physical, digital, procedural, and cultural. And I think you touched on some of the physical, things that can be done. Help, help us understand some of the other aspects that, that you kind of refer to and what that means in practice.
David Langdon: Yeah, sure. I, I really, I call those the, the four pillars of accessibility and sort of what I think about, so the physical, we kind of talked about that. That’s, that’s the obvious stuff that most people think about. It’s the ramps, it’s the, the automated doors to get into a building. It’s the, the rails in.
The bathroom, um, accessible toilets, those sorts of things. Um, but when you talk about the digital accessibility, that’s really about how you are accessing, uh, the web. Um, there is the WCAG two standards, which is like a worldwide, uh, consortium for accessibility guidelines. I think that’s exact, that’s what it stands for.
The bathroom, um, accesI’m not entirely sure now that I said that out loud, but there are guidelines out there that companies are supposed to follow. Um, to make sure that websites are accessible. Um, and by that it’s about having good contrast in the text and the colors that are used, having the right size fonts, um, having alternative text available on all images, those sorts of things. sible toilets, those sorts of things. Um, but when you talk about the digital accessibility, that’s really about how you are accessing, uh, the web. Um, there is the WCAG two standards, which is like a worldwide, uh, consortium for accessibility guidelines. I think that’s exact, that’s what it stands for.
And that there’s a huge percentage, um, of websites that fail on many aspects, um, of accessibility. Uh, when it comes to that digital side of things, and I think that’s something that can certainly be improved. I mean, if you think about it from a law firm perspective, your firm’s website is your shopfront.
So if you’ve got people looking at your website and when you get to the homepage, you’ve got some fancy scrolling movie and you’ve gotta try and work out where the sort of popup menu appears and how to navigate around it, if you are visually challenged, you’re gonna back away from that. And I think actually there was a step from 2019 about UK and retail and it was something crazy like.
19 billion pounds of lost sale opportunity because people who couldn’t access websites backed out of the purchase experience. I mean, we’re talking about retail here, but there’s a lot of lost opportunity, and that’s gotta be the same for professional services. You’d have to think, if you are looking and comparing law firms, if you can’t access the information you need, you’re gonna go to the one down the road that you can access.
So it has a lot of impact on. To get business and offer a, a really inclusive experience for your clients.
Bim Dave: Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. And, and at Blind Spot, you are building some practical tools I understand. To, to help with awareness. Um, so, um, I believe it’s the accessibility awareness toolkit. And, and that you run workshops. Tell, tell us a little bit about what gaps these are designed to fill.
David Langdon: It is basic awareness. I’m not trying to replace an accessibility audit for a business. Um, but what I’m trying to offer is a lived experience, almost a walkthrough type experience. So I put together a toolkit, which really, um. About, I’ve got about nine documents in my toolkit at the moment, and it covers things like, uh, common barriers to accessibility.
It covers the, the four pillars of accessibility, the different types of accommodations that people need, and just to making people aware that it’s not. Just wheelchairs. Blind people. Deaf people, and like guess the new category of Neurodivergence is the, the new category that, uh, everyone’s talking about.
I think, uh, every Gen Z person these days is somewhere on the spectrum, so they tell you. So, I think we’re all on the spectrum somewhere, but being aware of those things and, and by that it’s just.
Like someone who’s neurodivergence may not be able to understand the complex contract. So, it’s having things in plain English or having quiet spaces for people who can’t concentrate.
Um, ’cause they’ve got sort of like, sort of new divergent conditions. So it’s all those sorts of things. I’m just trying to raise awareness and one of the pillars came back to your question before, she didn’t really finish off on the other two pillars, but the cultural sort of accessibility pillar is probably one of the most important ones.
I think from my experiences of visiting firms, it’s the little pieces that whilst there’s small bits of friction along the way, individually, they don’t mean much, but together they add up and create a frustration for the people that need the help. And if you, you team isn’t aware, particularly your client facing team, like your receptionists, the people who are hosting events for the law firm, the lawyers that are meeting with the clients, if they’re not aware.
That some people do need these accommodations, that whole cultural aspect, it just falls short. So, it’s, so what I’m trying to do is create a fun. Sort of half day workshop where I go through some of the basics of accessibility, making people understand that it’s not just about the obvious, it’s really related to everybody.
And, and try and have some sort of interactive, fun, engaging sort of, um, discussions with firms and help them understand it a little bit better. And again, offering separately a, a walkthrough where I will visit their office. I go to have a meeting, um, and as I go through, I will sort of document the experiences that I’ve had, whether that’s finding my way to the floor for their building, in their building for the meeting, getting to the reception handling, getting to the meeting room, connecting to the wifi, connecting to the tech, finding the kitchen facilities, all those sorts of things.
And just talking through with the sort of. Operations team at the firm about the experiences that I’m having from my lived experience and how they could perhaps think about improving that for others.
Bim Dave: Yeah. No, ab absolutely. You, you made a really interesting point earlier, which, which kind of, um, answers the question that I. was going to ask you, which was around. Um, the fact that many organizations, um, still view accessibility as like a compliance exercise, right?
David Langdon: Yeah.
Bim Dave: tick box exercise to be able to, to do what you need to do to, to kind of meet the need. and what I was gonna ask you is how do you reframe that to, to highlight the business benefits? And you kind of gave a, a really good example of the, of the website, right? Um, leading, uh, you know, leading to somebody either coming to
David Langdon: Mm-hmm.
Bim Dave: A service versus not, if it’s not designed in the, in the right way, that they can actually access the information on it. Um, are there other aspects to that, um, beyond the, the kind of pure business monetary value, which, which I think you quite clearly articulated. Um, are there other areas like the kind on the, on the human level that are also benefits to firms in this area?
David Langdon: Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s a lot of, um.
Things get missed when you talk about, um, retention, staff retention and recruitment and client engagement. Um, so again, probably a personal experience, which probably sort of highlights this process. Probably about 15 years ago, I was applying for a job, um, here in Australia.
Um, it was not like a high flying job of any kind, but they wanted me to do psychometric testing and at the time, I hadn’t disclosed on my, um. Application that I was visually impaired. Um, but I didn’t want to, as much as people aren’t supposed to discriminate, there’s always that thing in the back of my mind that they’re going to, um, so I had to sit this psychometric test, and it was an online, um, test, which I could do it from home had, it was a timed test and lots of questions around like, if a train is going at 200 miles an hour between point A and point B, at what point does it get to.
At this point in the middle, and it’s all those types of brain teasing questions, and one of them was a picture of six, um, cows, and they all had different black and white patterns on. I had to find the one that was different. That type of thing is impossible for me, and it has no impact on my ability to do a job.
In that particular instance. Instance, I had my wife sitting alongside me, so I did technically cheat, and she was sort of helping me pick the right answers just so I could get through this test. But I think that just demonstrates that, again, we’re going back 15 years ago here. That was not an accessible recruitment process.
You are leaving people on the table that they just can’t get through that type of. Onboarding process. So you’re missing out on a lot of talent and there’s people that you have in your environment as well. If you are not providing quiet meeting spaces, I mean, pre COVID there was a whole, um, movement to open plan hot desk environments, um, with these warehouse style.
Buildings with exposed air conditioning and cabling, you know, the type, um, but they’re terrible for acoustics and for people who are neurodivergent and need that concentration space. So if you’re creating environments, you need to have. Spaces that aren’t just for your senior partners to have their office in the corner.
You need to have places for everybody. So I think there’s a lot to be the benefits of accessibility go way beyond ticking a box. Um, again, I don’t keep running at these stats, but there’s one thing I published on my LinkedIn today, um, about, I think it was like $5,000 as the average. Saving per employee by having an accessible, inclusive environment because you’re not paying for the churn and for the, the lack of productivity that comes with inaccessible environments.
Bim Dave: Yeah, no, really, really good point. So if, if a firm wanted to take a meaningful step tomorrow, what would be, uh, your recommendation as their starting point .
David Langdon: in terms of accessibility.
Bim Dave: of yes.
David Langdon: Yeah. Um, the starting point would be.
To pick up the phone and talk to me. I, I mean, one of the things I do from my website is I offer just a free 30 minute consultation. Um, I don’t wanna do everything for free, of course, but happy to talk to firms about what their accessibility policies are today.
Um, quite often firms will, as I said, they, they know they have to do them. They know they have to make their environments inclusive. So it’s a case of just having that initial conversation, send me an email. Pick up the phone, we can, we can have a chat and we can see if me walking through their business makes sense for them to do that or even running a workshop.
So, I’m happy to do the workshops remotely, but I think. If I run a workshop with a firm after I’ve done like an onsite walkthrough, I can tailor that workshop to the exact things that I’ve found along the way that can be improved. Many of the things that you can improve on when it comes to accessibility can be done instantly and don’t cost a lot of money.
Obviously, if you have to widen your doorways, it’s gonna be a bit of a expensive exercise. But if you are doing an office refit like a lot of people do these days. If you just budget in some money for accessibility accommodations, it is a small percentage of the refit to make those things done at that time.
It’s not a, a requirement that you do everything tomorrow if you can just do one or two things, um, every day. It might be as simple as making the wifi password in your client meeting room a little bit more readable, or having the ability for your receptionist to be aware that if someone is of low vision to help them with the wifi password doesn’t cost anything to do those things.
So, it is just little things, and that’s kind of what I’m trying to, um, get out there. Um, but the starting point, just reach out, happy to talk to anybody about these types of topics.
Bim Dave: Thank you. That’s a, that’s really good advice. And I, and I love the, actually, like, thinking about it and you’ve educated me today. There’s, there’s so many small things that could just be tweaked very easily, um, to, to make a big difference for, for certain individuals. So yeah, really
David Langdon: and as I said, I, I call those little things, they’re just minor frictions.
And to, to you, if I’m just, if you see me struggling with the wifi password, that’s just one part that you see me doing, and you’ll probably brush past that. But in my experience, that’s just one component of maybe a dozen things that have led up to me getting to the meeting room in the first place, that then have me arriving in that meeting a little bit more agitated than I perhaps need to be.
A little bit stressed about connecting my laptop to do my presentation there. There’s a lot of examples like that we’re just tiny little things on their own mean nothing, but they snowball when they’re all added together. So it’s just addressing some of those little things really easy to do and they,
Bim Dave: Yeah.
David Langdon: don’t cost anything to do it.
Bim Dave: Yep, absolutely. So I just wanna move to some wrap up questions now. Um, so obviously with 30, almost 30 years in the legal tech industry behind you, what do you think is the biggest blind spot, no pun intended, that firms have when it comes to legal technology?
David Langdon: I think the lack of considering adoption is a big, big problem. I think firms, even the firms that do do the planning and they decide that they know where their problems are and they consider the software carefully and they evaluate it and they get a consultant in to help them, and then they implement the solution and then they have a big party go live party once they put in their new finance system, and then that’s it.
Then after the first year every quarter and just reviewing what’s working and what’s working well, what’s not working too well, and I think one of the biggest pieces of advice with implementing any piece of legal tech, don’t overcomplicate it. Take the solution at its base value first, bed it in, get it doing what it was designed to do, and then evaluate after at least six months if what you’ve done actually meets purpose or if there are actually some areas that you need to improve.
And it would be really nice if we had a workflow here that helped with this because we’ve found that it’s not quite as efficient as we wanted it to be. Um, I’ve come across so many firms over the years. That have insisted that they have hundreds of customizations from go live and the legal vendor has or hasn’t pushed back, perhaps not hard enough sometimes and lets the client to call the shots.
I think there needs to be a little bit firmness from a lot of legal tech vendors to, to push back on some of those customizations and convince people that they need to just use the system as it was intended. And then evolve from there. I think that will make for much better adoption, um, for, for most legal tech projects.
And you’ll probably find after six months that the things you thought you wanted from day one, you don’t actually need anymore because the new system does things more efficiently anyway than what you were doing previously.
Bim Dave: Yep. Re really good advice. Really good advice. Um, the next question is, if you could go back to yourself using Dr. Who’s time machine to age, age 18, what advice would you give David?
David Langdon: I would tell him to take a few more risks, not be cautious and a little, and not as timid about approaching my career. I know we’ve talked about me wanting to embrace as normal career as possible, but I think. Knowing where the technology’s got to, and we’ve managed to get through this entire podcast without really talking about ai, which is incredible in this current age
But just the tools that are available now is not to worry about the technology. The technology will be there to help do whatever I needed to do. And I think another piece of advice I would give myself would be just to enjoy the ride and go with it and just be open to. A lot more new ideas than perhaps I was 20, 30 years ago.
Bim Dave: Very good. Good, good advice. Um, and finally, what’s keeping you inspired right now outside of the legal world?
David Langdon: A few things really just
I, I think the accessibility side of things is really keeping me focused at the moment. It was always something. I figured I would do later once my legal tech consultancy, um, business kind of got up and running. But I just see this need outside the legal industry. I, um, course a few stories.
I think I shared one on LinkedIn a few weeks ago about a hotel experience. I mean the hospitality industry and the is ripe for. Being fixed. There’s so many issues and challenges, and I think this whole topic of accessibility is just. It’s become a passion of mine really. So I just love being involved in that type of thing.
Um, other than that, I’m quite keen on, I’ve joined a dad’s dance crew, which you, you’ve probably told you about before. So my daughter is at a dent studio and a few of the dads. About five years ago, in 2020 when COVID started, we decided that this can’t be too hard. We’ll give that a go. So we decided that, uh, we.
Form ourselves, a dent crew. We put on a concert at the end of 2020 for our families, and the owner of the studio decided that, um, this was fantastic and started to put us into competitions the following year. So we’ve, uh, since, uh, won several trophies, but it’s, uh, a little bit of a complete side thing.
Nothing to do with legal tech or anything. It’s just bizarre extracurricular activity if you like.
Bim Dave: So we, we may be seeing you on Australia’s Got Talent at some
David Langdon: Uh, unlikely. Unlikely.
Bim Dave: Well, it’s, it sounds like an amazing thing to do, um, to kind of like take, take your mind off the stuff that that’s, that’s the day to day and it sounds like a lot of fun.
David Langdon: Yeah, it is.
Bim Dave: Yes, yes, indeed. Good. Well, David, it’s been a real pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for taking time out to speak to me.
David Langdon: No problem at all. It’s been a pleasure, Bim. I know I said we’ve known each other for 20 years now, so it’s great to have this conversation. Our paths have crossed again. It’s fantastic. Thank you.
Bim Dave:Thank you.