Josh Reynolds’ Lawyerist piece last week spent a good bit of time rail­ing against the costs asso­ci­ated with tech­nol­ogy and cer­tainly went off the technophile reser­va­tion. Unfor­tu­nately, he came off a bit like Kenny Pow­ers bash­ing on Tech­nol­ogy. A num­ber of the post’s com­ments  took issue either with the per­ceived attack on the evo­lu­tion of tech­nol­ogy past the slate and chisel and the impli­ca­tion that one’s com­pe­tence and busi­ness acu­men is some­how proven lack­ing by the own­er­ship of a tablet or smart phone.

What (I think) Josh was try­ing to say is that you don’t need a bunch of toys to be a good lawyer. Here, he’s cor­rect. I recently wrote about just a few of the ways you can become a good lawyer. Nowhere did I men­tion smart phones or data plans.  Hell, I know attor­neys that have been suc­cess­ful for 50 years who never typed any­thing on a typewriter, let alone a computer, and still view a fax machine with a hefty dose of skep­ti­cism and distrust. Josh was also right when he asserted that you have to keep your abil­ity to sup­port your­self and your depen­dents in mind when you are mak­ing deci­sions to out­lay costs and that you should make your pur­chases with ROI in mind. In some ways, I agree with what Josh is say­ing. We have a ten­dency to focus on our own lit­tle bub­ble within our busi­ness and jus­tify expen­di­tures based on want and con­ve­nience rather than neces­sity and ROI. But, you can’t take it fur­ther than that. You have to spend money to make it. You should spend it wisely, but you have to spend it.

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