Jan
19
We Don’t Have Time
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Have we learnt anything in the past year? Colleagues in the information industry are eager to tell me about the speed of change quickening , of “ digital transformation “ ( whatever that might now mean ) gathering pace and of boardrooms seriously embracing “ a digital-first future “ . They undoubtedly speak truth . Yet I still wonder about the impact of another revelation – when change lets rip , everything in our society can get changed in a very short time indeed . Last January Covid 19 was a single paragraph report in the “ other news “ section of most newspapers concerning a new type of flu found the previous month in the Wuhan meat market . Today the death count is in millions . No doubt , tracking the history of corona virus infections , we could build a very considerable back story , but at the moment I see a clear parallel in the information marketplaces . Innovation in digital networks is so often like this . Ignored , derided and underestimated for years , then gaining acceptance on a specific use basis , then , like a virus , rapidly spreading through whole populations who were previously unaware that they would ever be adherents or users .
Then lets turn to the other great challenge , for many the much larger and more important challenge – climate change . Is that going to behave in the way that I have suggested above ? Will we go on denying , minimising and covertly ignoring the problem , until at the end it becomes an overwhelming and tragic problem in which we are rushing at short term solutions to save lives and livelihoods . At least , having waited for the fires to rage and the sea levels to begin to rise , there are now signs of more co-ordinated actions , and of a switch in thinking . The language tells the story . At length we are turning from negativity around development into talking the way the UN has long tried to frame for us , and defining and supporting sustainable development goals . At length investors seem convinced that ethical investment makes sense , and not just in social terms but also in business terms . The ESG – Environmental -Social – Governance – movement is taking shape and has become recognised as an investment category of real interest and durability. A community is growing here – but how does it express itself as a community?
Where is the LinkedIn of social and environmental investment and concern ? Well , it is there but is under-invested itself in terms of the size of the opportunity . It is called We Don’t Have Time. ( wedonthavetime.org). It was created by a Swedish not-for-profit foundation almost two years ago . Now with help and investment from Noah Advisors , led by Marco Rodzynek , they are moving rapidly to fill the gap , raise new funds , and commercially relaunch to meet what many see as a huge opportunity . LinkedIn of course has huge numbers of climate concerned individuals , scientists and businesses already . But the B2B site seems at once too generalist and yet not generalist enough – it attracts many of the right people but needs a more B2C approach to grasp the breadth of the issues involved and the public involvement needed . WDNT sees clearly that it needs to act as a forum for updating environmental and market information , and it needs to guide users ,in a place where where information quantity far outstrips any notion of its credibility and reliability, as to what makes sense . With a core of critical scientists and environmentalists on board already , and 50 m Twitter responses last year , it has made a good start .
One thing seems central to all this . Building sustainability will be governed , in the end , by the availability of better and better data . Trying to build a value chain for ESG investments is difficult – project certification is still in its infancy , the ratings of investments currently available to both public and institutional investors are fragile . Why do investors think more highly of Sustainylitics risk ratings than they do of Thomson Reuters ESG scores ? So little pooled judgement is yet available that consensual views are hard to find , and the reasoning behind them even harder to rationalise . Since there is only $2 billion so far invested we clearly have a lot more to learn . As sustainability solutions build on the site we shall undoutedly learn more . Yet , as the site title suggests , we really do not have much time.
Marco Rodzynek boldly pronounced to his investors meeting that “ Sustainability is the new Digital “. For that to be true digital has to bring its values to the ESG sector in short order . WDHT needs to become a data hub for investors around the promising data areas of compliance and project certification , as well as around ratings and investment assessment . These are the sorts of areas that will eventually create commercial success for the venture . As these things develop WDHT will have to trade on being the point of exchange for the validation , assessment and endorsement of news from the climate change frontline . Given the bewildering inconsistency of reporting , using the critical faculties of its members to this end will be an achievement in its own right . The Investment round sponsored by Noah Advisers ends on 31 January . (Noah-advisors.com) ( johannes.luiga@wedonthavetime.org)
Nov
25
I Will See You in Court – Virtually!
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Apologies if you were anticipating another Donald Trump story . This note is a result of attending a long and utterly fascinating seminar entitled “ Online Courts :Perspectives from the Bench and the Bar “, Sponsored by Harvard Law School , featuring British and American judges and practisers , and including Richard Susskind , whose book on online courts in the UK has made such a stir , the event was a very timely review of how jurisdictions have handled the problems arising from no longer being able to conduct legal procedures in court in person . But it also had a much larger resonance . It spoke vividly of what society has to do in an emergency , then perceives as inevitable and soon begins to envisage as the next evolutionary developmental branch . If you want to test the ability of a society to change , and very quickly if necessary , putting the courts under a microscope is not a bad idea . They tend to be conservative , procedurally inflexible , and run by people who are not generally expected to be in the vanguard of progressive change . I came into this session fully armed with all the prejudices save one – previous experience as the CEO of the company that launched the very first UK built online legal retrieval service in the early 1980s had taught me that a proclivity to change is not an age related element amongst lawyers – the great Lord Denning , Master of the Rolls and chairman of my Advisory Council was in his mid 80s when he first went online and delighted in the technology !
As a test of the ability to change , and analyse what works as change takes place – this meeting was superb . Many participants felt that they had no option originally but to go online when the pandemic struck . Avoiding lengthy delays in getting justice , and trying to prevent huge backlogs mounting up , made prompt action vital . Courts in both countries quickly complied . It was soon obvious that while oral argument worked excellently for most practitioners , cross-examination was much more difficult . Other losses were noted – a loss of formality , “ majesty” , a loss of gravitas . On the other hand there were gains in speed , in simplification of procedures and the effectiveness of short arguments before a Judge . Cross examination could be held by witness and lawyers meeting in a recorded , socially distanced context , but this was difficult . Above all , I had a sense from the early exchanges that the emphasis in the expression “ dispute resolution“ had changed in the sense that the utility of the online court was less in laying out the dispute in all its gory detail , and concentrated more on the resolution side of things .
And then the participants began to peel back the inherent problems of the existing system . It was immensely expensive – and very time consuming . The courts were awash with paper. . Procedures had grown hugely complex , witnessed by procedural handbooks with thousands of pages , and clerks who functioned like expert systems trying to drive a way through them . The British had created a 2000 page user manual – the White Book – but arguably all the procedural certainty in the world did not protect court systems on both sides of the Atlantic from blocking up , suffering congestion that diminished the delivery of justice to those seeking it . And losing the point of justice through delays that reduce or eliminate the impact of judgements withheld too long .
By the time the full extent of the problems became clear , a speaker came to the platform offering a ray of bright hope that some senior judges understand both the legal issues and the impact of technology at a level that makes change possible . This was Sir Geoffrey Vos , currently Chancellor of the UK’s High Court . Sir Geoffrey is due to become Master of the Rolls, head of the civil courts, in January , and after this performance should get a warm welcome from all reform minded observers . From the beginning of his talk he clearly recognised that whatever the problems caused by lockdown and physical court closures , opportunities for change and learning were being created and it would be wholly wrong to return to the old systems without change . Indeed he thought it might be impossible to do so . It was time to recognise that we were living in an age of borderless agreements , as represented by technologies like blockchain and “smart contracts” . Digital justice , he re-emphasised , should be about the resolution , not the dispute . The world was now full of dispute resolution services where plaintiffs represented themselves , and trusted an outcome based on finding a mediated answer , not on deciding who is “right” . He speculated that from eBay onwards , AI-based dispute resolution is currently providing answers to some 60m cases a year . More civil courts might be dedicated to arbitration and mediation , and less to presentational theatre .
Richard Susskind, summing up , commented that online courts gave an opportunity to restart the procedural clock , forming very general principles of procedural conduct , and allowing greater flexibility . We also heard commentary that related back to the issues of cross examination online . Despite the importance attached to it . Studies had shown how poor most of us are at guessing who is telling the truth- humans , and judges and juries proved no better than the rest of us , got it right about 50-54% of the time . AI might help improve that ( or we could just toss a coin? ) Richard suggested recording the hearing and then replaying it to a jury as a way of getting a better grip on what is happening and giving jurors more time to think , pause , ask questions .
This was an impressive meeting . The determination of professionals to learn from online court experiences forced upon them by the pandemic and to apply the lessons to making the delivery of justice more effective as a system and more useful for recipients was refreshing , and if justice systems can rethink then so can many other procedurally sclerotic elements of our society .
For more on this topic go to www,remotecourts.org
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