The legal profession has been on the receiving end of much hype regarding the impact of technology. Recent commentators purport that the aspiring lawyer must be a triple threat, possessing knowledge of the law, coding expertise, and in-depth knowledge of legal technology. Yet, focusing on legal technology risks overlooking the need for skills that transcend latest fads. Legal technology is a means by which to handle data: to organise it, record it, extract it, analyse it, predict from it and leverage it. Quantitative and statistical literacy – the ability to understand, apply, visualise and infer from data – underpins technological literacy and yet receives very little attention from those who encourage innovation in the legal curriculum.

One news item has dominated the headlines over the last week – cyber-attacks and, in particular, the WannaCry ransomware. It is a well-known and well-documented fact that the legal industry, and conveyancing in particular, can be a vulnerable and high value target. This ranges from property hijacking – where fraudsters pose as legitimate owners of a property and sell it on without the real owner’s knowledge – to ‘Friday afternoon fraud’, with criminals contacting a busy law firm to ‘update’ their bank details to redirect funds.

Social media marketing will die out. The signs are already there. The companies that succeed on social media are those that use it to listen, to assist, to empower, to inform, to respond and to connect to people as individuals. That just can’t be outsourced, automated or pre-packaged. We urge those lawyers who enjoy social media and who use it in interesting and meaningful ways – to connect with peers, to post interesting insights and to engage in debate – to continue to do so. It isn’t social media that will die; it’s social media marketing.

The ‘brand resonance’ of the terms ‘lawyer’ and ‘solicitor’ is fading. The traditional lifelong solicitor-client relationships of the baby-boomer generation simply don’t exist for generations Y and Z and millennials. Generation Y, those born post-1980, are more sophisticated, discerning, and technology-savvy than previous generations. From a marketing perspective, they have grown up with a constant stream of intrusive marketing and have become inured to it. As such, they are more likely to proactively seek out the services they need online than respond to ads.

The well-publicised Mishcon de Reya £1m fraud case, when its client was duped into buying a London property from a seller dishonestly posing as the owner, has sent ripples of alarm throughout the legal community. Although conveyancers are an obvious target for the increasing threat of rogue house-owner and buyer deposit redirection fraud, it’s not just conveyancing practices that need to be on their guard. As a legal practice, you’re tempting prey for cyber criminals, not only because you hold large sums of money, but also vast volumes of valuable client information. The number, variety and sophistication of cybercrime grows daily, ranging from distributed denial of service attacks and phishing scams to hacking and ransomware.