Now, we’ll be doing a little prototype testing here. We’ll be testing to see if it’s accepted in the Netherlands to establish a mandate via social media. Like a real, legally binding one. Dutch law allows electronic signatures to replace old-fashion paper ones since 2003, in art. 3:15a of the Netherlands civil code.

So a customer and friend wants us to run a procedure with a major multinational telecommunications corporation, and we would like to use this case to see how real Dutch law is in allowing digital, public signing of a mandate. Keep an eye on Flocstr.com in the coming days!

I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of getting things done. To me, it’s the whole essence of being a lawyer. You get things done for your client, whether it has to do with legal procedures or just with calling people and making sure something is organized.

Our company in Amsterdam has been founded on this principle, even the name in Dutch, Regeldit.nl, alludes to getting things done.

An improbable role-model in this is the character played by George Clooney in the 2007 movie Michael Clayton, the character’s namesake. In the movie, Clayton is portrayed as a once-ambitious attorney who succumbed to a gambling problem and is now only used as a gofer for less attractive physical tasks by the prestigious firm he’s employed at. In the end, he saves the world by bringing to light a huge corruption scheme connived by his employer and a major corporate client.

In a less negative and dramatic way, that’s the kind of lawyers we’re trying to be. Beyond excellence in legal procedures and formal processes, to be good in solving real problems and getting things done.

Have you ever heard of Spotify? If you’re in the Nordic countries, or the UK, Spain, France or Netherlands, you should have. It’s a music player that lets you stream (and sync offline) almost any piece of music on any device in high quality for 10 euros a month.

At the moment, Spotify is available only in the countries mentioned, but it’s growing and probably coming to a place near you if it hasn’t yet. When I’m away from Holland, I often show it to people during parties, and everyone wants to have it.

And that’s the funny bit. Because even though the service has more than 10 million free users with limited access and almost 1 million users like me, who pay a little to listen to anything anywhere, only very few people I know use it regularly.

When I ask friends why they don’t play all their music over Spotify, they usually shrug and say something about ownership of the music. Or complain about the recurring monthly costs. Or something else that doesn’t really make sense, like internet connection.

In reality, Spotify is too radical. It changes the concept of music experience completely. We’re not used to be able to listen to anything, on demand, anywhere, and legally at that. It just takes time to get used to the possibilities that tech development offers.

Speaking of legally, the same is true for new approaches to legal services. In our office, it’s a lesser challenge to deliver legal solutions using crowdsourcing and online interaction, than to explain to customers that top lawyers can deliver great results at half rates.

And that’s a huge lesson at innovation that we process every day; keep innovating behind the scenes, but make your output look familiar and reliable. It will be a bigger challenge for us as we head towards new products and more tech-reliant legal services.

Henry Kissinger once said that World War I started because technology got too far ahead of common wisdom too quickly. The Spotify catch is something we should keep an eye on as we change the technologies we use for satisfying our needs, both in music experience and getting our legal stuff done.

This is actually a repost from our company blog in Dutch, but it’s really worth it. Some months ago, one of our clients approached us with a traffic fine that he received from an Amsterdam police officer, patrolling the city’s main square. You can see the description of the violation in Dutch in the scan above, in English a literal translation would be: Acting in breach of conditions resulting from a waiver, not related to assistance or skills.
 
Sic. Or actually sick, because you really wonder how a government that is so proud of its rule of law can ever dare to motivate fines for violations in this way. Really, what did the guy do wrong?

Of course it’s a well-known thing with legal professionals; we tend to use language that is barely understood by outsiders and sometimes not even by ourselves. Unlike engineers however, we can’t professionally afford to use jargon for the sake of clarity. We actually have to be understood. We shouldn’t just strive to use clear language, we really owe it to our clients and stakeholders. But still, in contracts, regulations and even traffic fines, the essence is sometimes hard to understand.

Have you ever experienced an obligation that you couldn’t understand? Post it here, we’d love to hear your experiences!

Oh, and by the way, that fine is actually void. Under art. 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights, when accused of an offence, everyone has the right “to be informed promptly, in a language which he understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of the accusation against him”. Tough luck, Amsterdam traffic cops, do your homework better next time.

Happy New Year and thanks for checking us out! We’re a bunch of twenty-somethings who incorporated a seed-funded law firm in The Netherlands in 2010, called Regeldit.nl.

As we grow our business by helping more clients to affordable legal solutions, we’d like to share our ideas about the future of law, or commitment management as we like to call it.

We believe in open systems and want to use Flocstr as a platform for sharing knowledge not only about legal innovation, but about doing business and living life in general.