8 Legal Tech Trends Transforming Practice in 2024 — from lawyer-monthly.com

Thanks to rapid advances in technology, the entire scenario within the legal landscape is changing fast. Fast forward to 2024, and legal tech integration would be the lifeblood of any law firm or legal department if it wishes to stay within the competitive fray.

Innovations such as AI-driven tools for research to blockchain-enabled contracts are thus not only guideline highlights of legal work today. Understanding and embracing these trends will be vital to surviving and thriving in law as the revolution gains momentum and the sands of the world of legal practice continue to shift.

Below are the eight expected trends in legal tech defining the future legal practice.


Building your legal practice’s AI future: Understanding the actual technologies — from thomsonreuters.com by
The implementation of a successful AI strategy for a law firm depends not only on having the right people, but also understanding the tech and how to make it work for the firm

While we’re not delving deep here into how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and large language models (LLMs) work, we will talk generally about different categories of tech and emerging GenAI functionalities that are specific for legal.


Ex-Microsoft engineers raise $25M for legal tech startup that uses AI to help lawyers analyze data — from geekwire.com by Taylor Soper

Supio, a Seattle startup founded in 2021 by longtime friends and former Microsoft engineers, raised a $25 million Series A investment to supercharge its software platform designed to help lawyers quickly sort, search, and organize case-related data.

Supio focuses on cases related to personal injury and mass tort plaintiff law (when many plaintiffs file a claim). It specializes in organizing unstructured data and letting lawyers use a chatbot to pull relevant information.

“Most lawyers are data-rich and time-starved, but Supio automates time-sapping manual processes and empowers them to identify critical information to prove and expedite their cases,” Supio CEO and co-founder Jerry Zhou said in a statement.


ILTACON 2024: Large law firms are moving carefully but always forward with their GenAI strategy — from thomsonreuters.com by Zach Warren

NASHVILLE — As the world approaches the two-year mark since the original introduction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, law firms already have made in-roads into establishing generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) as a part of their firms. Whether for document and correspondence drafting, summarization of meetings and contracts, legal research, or for back-office capabilities, firms have been playing around with a number of use cases to see where the technology may fit into the future.


Thomson Reuters acquires pre-revenue legal LLM developer Safe Sign Technologies – Here’s why — from legaltechnology.com by Caroline Hill

Thomson Reuters announced (on August 21) it has made the somewhat unusual acquisition of UK pre-revenue startup Safe Sign Technologies (SST), which is developing legal-specific large language models (LLMs) and as of just eight months ago was operating in stealth mode.

There isn’t an awful lot of public information available about the company but speaking to Legal IT Insider about the acquisition, Hron explained that SST is focused in part on deep learning research as it pertains to training large language models and specifically legal large language models. The company as yet has no customers and has been focusing exclusively on developing the technology and the models.


Supio brings generative AI to personal injury cases — from techcrunch.com by Kyle Wiggers

Legal work is incredibly labor- and time-intensive, requiring piecing together cases from vast amounts of evidence. That’s driving some firms to pilot AI to streamline certain steps; according to a 2023 survey by the American Bar Association, 35% of law firms now use AI tools in their practice.

OpenAI-backed Harvey is among the big winners so far in the burgeoning AI legal tech space, alongside startups such as Leya and Klarity. But there’s room for one more, says Jerry Zhou and Kyle Lam, the co-founders of an AI platform for personal injury law called Supio, which emerged from stealth Tuesday with a $25 million investment led by Sapphire Ventures.

Supio uses generative AI to automate bulk data collection and aggregation for legal teams. In addition to summarizing info, the platform can organize and identify files — and snippets within files — that might be useful in outlining, drafting and presenting a case, Zhou said.


 

From DSC:
This first item is related to the legal field being able to deal with today’s issues:

The Best Online Law School Programs (2024) — from abovethelaw.com by Staci Zaretsky
A tasty little rankings treat before the full Princeton Review best law schools ranking is released.

Several law schools now offer online JD programs that have become as rigorous as their on-campus counterparts. For many JD candidates, an online law degree might even be the smarter choice. Online programs offer flexibility, affordability, access to innovative technologies, students from a diversity of career backgrounds, and global opportunities.

Voila! Feast your eyes upon the Best Online JD Programs at Law School for 2024 (in alphabetical order):

  • Mitchell Hamline School of Law – Hybrid J.D.
  • Monterey College of Law – Hybrid Online J.D.
  • Purdue Global Law School – Online J.D.
  • Southwestern Law School – Online J.D.
  • Syracuse University – J.D. Interactive
  • University of Dayton School of Law – Online Hybrid J.D.
  • University of New Hampshire – Hybrid J.D.

DSC: FINALLY!!! Online learning hits law schools (at least in a limited fashion)!!! Maybe there’s hope yet for the American Bar Association and for America’s legal system to be able to deal with the emerging technologies — and the issues presented therein — in the 21st century!!! Because if we can’t even get caught up to where numerous institutions of higher education were back at the turn of this century, we don’t have as much hope in the legal field being able to address things like AI, XR, cryptocurrency, blockchain, and more.


Meet KL3M: the first Legal Large Language Model. — from 273ventures.com
KL3M is the first model family trained from scratch on clean, legally-permissible data for enterprise use.


Advocate, advise, and accompany — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
These are the three essential roles lawyers will play in the post-AI era. We need to start preparing legal education, lawyer licensing, and law practices to adapt.

Consider this scenario:

Ten years from now, Generative AI has proven capable of a stunning range of legal activities. Not only can it accurately write legal documents and conduct legal research and apply law to facts, it can reliably oversee legal document production, handle contract negotiations, monitor regulatory compliance, render legal opinions, and much more. Lawyers are no longer needed to carry out these previously billable tasks or even to double-check the AI’s performance. Tasks that once occupied 80% of lawyers’ billable time have been automated.

What are the chances this scenario unfolds within the next ten years? You can decide that likelihood for yourself, but I think anything above 1% represents the potential for major disruption to the legal profession.

Also from Jordan, see:


Top 5 Strategies to Excel in the 2024 Legal Sector with Colin Levy — from discrepancyai.com by Lisen Kaci

We have gathered, from Colin Levy’s insights, the top five strategies that legal professionals can implement to excel in this transformational era – bringing them together with technology.


Legal Tech’s Predictions for AI, Workflow Automation, and Data Analytics in 2024 — from jdsupra.com by Mitratech Holdings, Inc.

They need information like:

  • Why did we go over budget?
  • Why did we go to trial?
  • How many invoices sat with each attorney?

Going further than just legal spend, analytics on volume of work and diversity metrics can help legal teams make the business case they need to drive important initiatives and decisions forward. And a key differentiator of top-performing companies is the ability to get all of this data in one place, which is why Mitratech was thrilled to unveil PlatoBI, an embedded analytics platform powered by Snowflake, earlier this year with several exciting AI and Analytic enhancements.


DOJ appoints first-ever chief AI officer – Will law firms follow? — from legaltechnology.com by Emma Griffiths


AI’s promise and problem for law and learning — from reuters.com by John Bandler

Also worrisome is that AI will be used as a crutch that short circuits learning. Some people look for shortcuts. What effect of AI on that learning process and the result, for students and when lawyers use AI to draft documents and research?


 

Exploring blockchain’s potential impact on the education sector — from e27.co by Moch Akbar Azzihad M
By the year 2024, the application of blockchain technology is anticipated to have a substantial influence on the education sector

Areas mentioned include:

  • Credentials that are both secure and able to be verified
  • Records of accomplishments that are not hidden
  • Enrollment process that is both streamlined and automated
  • Storage of information that is both secure and decentralised
  • Financing and decentralised operations
 

We Might Finally Get AI That “Remembers” Us — from theneurondaily.com by Noah Edelman & Pete Huang

Excerpt:

Why it matters: The best AI assistants will be the ones that require the least prompting. They’ll get to know who you are, what you need, and your modus operandi. Profiles are a good starting point, but we believe the game-changer will be larger context windows (that’s nerd-speak for the amount of context ChatGPT can handle).
.

Will ChatGPT remember us in the future via our own profiles? How about taking this a step further Daniel Christian offers -- to access our own web-based learning profiles?

From DSC:
And how about taking this a step further and remembering — or being able to access — our constantly updated Cloud-Based Learning Profiles?

How about taking this a step further Daniel Christian offers -- to access our own web-based learning profiles?

 

 

A New Era for Education — from linkedin.com by Amit Sevak, CEO of ETS and Timothy Knowles, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

It’s not every day you get to announce a revolution in your sector. But today, we’re doing exactly that. Together, we are setting out to overturn 117 years of educational tradition.

The fundamental assumption [of the Carnegie Unit] is that time spent in a classroom equals learning. This formula has the virtue of simplicity. Unfortunately, a century of research tells us that it’s woefully inadequate.


From DSC:
It’s more than interesting to think that the Carnegie Unit has outlived its usefulness and is breaking apart. In fact, the thought is very profound.

It's more than interesting to think that the Carnegie Unit has outlived its usefulness and is breaking apart. In fact, the thought is very profound.

If that turns out to be the case, the ramifications will be enormous and we will have the opportunity to radically reinvent/rethink/redesign what our lifelong learning ecosystems will look like and provide.

So I appreciate what Amit and Timothy are saying here and I appreciate their relaying what the new paradigm might look like. It goes with the idea of using design thinking to rethink how we build/reinvent our learning ecosystems. They assert:

It’s time to change the paradigm. That’s why ETS and the Carnegie Foundation have come together to design a new future of assessment.

    • Whereas the Carnegie Unit measures seat time, the new paradigm will measure skills—with a focus on the ones we know are most important for success in career and in life.
    • Whereas the Carnegie Unit never leaves the classroom, the new paradigm will capture learning wherever it takes place—whether that is in after-school activities, during a work-experience placement, in an internship, on an apprenticeship, and so on.
    • Whereas the Carnegie Unit offers only one data point—pass or fail—the new paradigm will generate insights throughout the learning process, the better to guide students, families, educators, and policymakers.

I could see this type of information being funneled into peoples’ cloud-based learner profiles — which we as individuals will own and determine who else can access them. I diagrammed this back in January of 2017 using blockchain as the underlying technology. That may or may not turn out to be the case. But the concept will still hold I think — regardless of the underlying technology(ies).

Perhaps blockchain will be the underlying technology to provide us with cloud-based learner profiles

For example, we are seeing a lot more articles regarding things like Comprehensive Learner Records (CLR) or Learning and Employment Records (LER; example here), and similar items.

LER — The Learning and Employment Record for a Skills-Based Economy


Speaking of reinventing our learning ecosystems, also see:

 

Credentialed learning for all -- from Getting Smart

 

Why credential section -- from Getting Smart's Credentialed Learning for All

Credentialed Learning For All — from gettingsmart.com

Vision

Learning happens throughout life and is not isolated to the K-12 or higher education sectors. Yet, often, validations of learning only happen in these specific areas. The system of evaluation based on courses, grades, and credit serves as a poor proxy for communicating skills given the variation in course content, grade inflation, and inclusion of participation and extra credit within course grades.

Credentialed learning provides a way to accurately document human capability for all learners throughout their life. A lifetime credentialed learning ecosystem provides better granularity around learning, better documentation of the learning, and more relevance for both the credential recipient and reviewer. This improves the match between higher education and/or employment with the individual, while also providing a more clear and accurate lifetime learning pathway.

With a fully-credentialed system, individuals can own well-documented evidence of a lifetime of learning and choose what and when to share this data. This technology enables every learner to have more opportunities for finding the best career match without today’s existing barriers around cost, access, and proxies.


Addendum on 4/28/23 — speaking of credentials:

First Rung — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
New research shows stacking credentials pays off for low-income learners.

Stacking credentials pays off for many low-income students, new research finds, but only if learners move up the education ladder. Also, Kansas is hoping a new grant program will attract more companies to participate in microinternships.


 

Industry insight: Blockchaining to track current and potential employees’ skills — from chieflearningofficer.com by Tanya Boyd

Excerpts:

A learner who is aware of their unique strengths and development needs, as well as their preferred approach for gaining new skills, is often able to find the learning opportunities that they need more effectively and efficiently.

A global language for skills
While we might be tempted to focus within, looking for ways to address our own company’s talent challenges in isolation, this common concern invites a more global solution. We would all be better off if we could build a global language for skills. It’s at least one step toward achieving global processes for evaluating and developing them.

The top three challenges with skills and skill-based practices, as cited by McKinsey’s 2021 state of hiring survey, are: the ability to validate skills, sourcing job seekers with the right skills and scaling this approach.

Having a validated “chain” of skills for an employee helps not only in the selection process, but also as L&D departments seek to personalize learning. Blockchain creates a more valid approach to personalizing learning based on each employee’s competencies and skills gathered across their career, rather than just the skills they are demonstrating in their current organization and role.

 

Unbundled: Designing Personalized Pathways for Every Learner — from gettingsmart.com by Nate McClennen “with contributions from the Getting Smart team and numerous friends and partners in the field”

Excerpts:

In this publication, we articulate the critical steps needed to unbundle the learning ecosystem, build core competencies, design learning experiences, curate new opportunities, and rebundle these experiences into coherent pathways.
.

Building the Unbundled Ecosystem

Vision

Every learner deserves an unlimited number of unbundled opportunities to explore, engage, and define experiences that advance their progress along a co-designed educational pathway. Each pathway provides equitable and personalized access to stacked learning experiences leading to post-secondary credentials and secure family-sustaining employment. Throughout the journey, supportive coaches focus on helping learners build skills to navigate with agency. In parallel, learners develop foundational skills (literacy, math), technical skills, and durable skills and connect these to challenging co-designed experiences. The breadth and depth of experiences increase over time, and, in partnership, learners and coaches map progress towards reaching community-defined goals. This vision is only enabled by an unbundled learning ecosystem.

Recommendations

Solutions already exist in the ecosystem and need to be combined and scaled. Funding models (like My Tech High), badging/credentialing at the competency level (like VLACS), coaching models (like Big Thought), and open ecosystems (like NH Learn Everywhere) provide an excellent foundation. Thus, building unbundled systems has already begun but needs systemic changes to become widely available and accepted.

      1. Build a robust competency-based system.
      2. Create a two-way marketplace for unbundled learning.
      3. Implement policy to support credit for out-of-system experiences.
      4. Invest in technology infrastructure for Learning and Employment Records.
      5. Design interoperable badging systems that connect to credentials.
 

Top edtech trends in 2023 and the ASU example — from news.asu.edu

Excerpt:

In spite of our tendency to break things down into tidy time frames, like a new year or academic semester, change constantly turns over the status quo. Especially in the world of technology, where disruptive innovation may evolve rapidly from the fringe to the mainstream.

“At ASU’s Enterprise Technology, we work in spaces where technology is not just revolutionizing higher education, but the world at large,” said Lev Gonick, chief information officer at Arizona State University. “We strive to be proactive, not reactive, to new paradigms changing the ways in which we work, learn and thrive.”

As referenced by the above article:

Thus, the top higher education technology trends to watch out for in 2023 include Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Digital Twins, the Metaverse (including digital avatars and NFT art for use in the Metaverse and other Web3-based virtual environments), Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, Cloud, Gamification, and Chatbots. These technologies will support the expansion of the Digital Transformation of higher education going forward.

Also relevant/see:

 

 

From DSC:
Check this confluence of emerging technologies out!

Also see:

How to spot AI-generated text — from technologyreview.com by Melissa Heikkilä
The internet is increasingly awash with text written by AI software. We need new tools to detect it.

Excerpt:

This sentence was written by an AI—or was it? OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT, presents us with a problem: How will we know whether what we read online is written by a human or a machine?

“If you have enough text, a really easy cue is the word ‘the’ occurs too many times,” says Daphne Ippolito, a senior research scientist at Google Brain, the company’s research unit for deep learning.

“A typo in the text is actually a really good indicator that it was human-written,” she adds.

7 Best Tech Developments of 2022 — from /thetechranch.comby

Excerpt:

As we near the end of 2022, it’s a great time to look back at some of the top technologies that have emerged this year. From AI and virtual reality to renewable energy and biotechnology, there have been a number of exciting developments that have the potential to shape the future in a big way. Here are some of the top technologies that have emerged in 2022:

 

Radar Trends to Watch: December 2022 — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides
Developments in Security, Cryptocurrency, Web, and More

Excerpt:

This month’s news has been overshadowed by the implosion of SBF’s TFX and the possible implosion of Elon Musk’s Twitter. All the noise doesn’t mean that important things aren’t happening. Many companies, organizations, and individuals are wrestling with the copyright implications of generative AI. Google is playing a long game: they believe that the goal isn’t to imitate art works, but to build better user interfaces for humans to collaborate with AI so they can create something new. Facebook’s AI for playing Diplomacy is an exciting new development. Diplomacy requires players to negotiate with other players, assess their mental state, and decide whether or not to honor their commitments. None of these are easy tasks for an AI. And IBM now has a 433 Qubit quantum chip–an important step towards making a useful quantum processor.

 

2023 Higher Education Trend Watch — from educause.edu

2023 Higher Education Trend Watch

Also see:

2023 Strategic Trends Glossary — from educause.edu

Excerpts:

  • Closer alignment of higher education with workforce needs and skills-based learning
  • Continuation and normalization of hybrid and online learning
  • Continued adoption and normalization of hybrid and remote work arrangements
  • Continued resignation and migration of leaders and staff from higher education institutions
  • Declining public funding for higher education
  • …and more
 

What does the ‘metaverse’ mean for education? — from hechingerreport.org by Javeria Salman
Experts warn educators to think twice before jumping on new technologies

Excerpt:

Sometime in the past year or two, you’ve likely heard the word “metaverse.” It’s the future, the next big frontier of the internet, if you ask technology CEOs or researchers.

While the term has become the latest buzzword in education circles, what it means for teaching and learning largely remains to be seen. Experts say much of what we see marketed as the metaverse from education technology companies isn’t actually the metaverse.

In a true metaverse experience, your digital identity travels between the physical and virtual worlds, Platt said. With the help of blockchain technology, that identity — your preferences, your achievements, your educational records, other elements of who you are — is maintained across platforms and applications.

 

7 Technologies that are Changing Healthcare — from digitalsalutem.com by João Bocas

In this article we are going to talk about the seven technologies that are changing healthcare:

  1. Artificial Intelligence
  2. Blockchain
  3. Virtual Reality
  4. Robots
  5. Mapping technologies
  6. Big Data
  7. Neurotechnology

This startup 3D prints tiny homes from recyclable plastics — from interestingengineering.com by Nergis Firtina; with thanks to Laura Goodrich for this resource

A 3D printed house by Azure

Satellite Billboards Are a Dystopian Future We Don’t Need — from gizmodo.com by George Dvorsky; with thanks to Laura Goodrich for this resource
Brightly lit ads in orbit are technologically and economically viable, say Russian scientists. But can we not?

Artist’s conception of a cubesat ad showing the Olympic rings. Image: Shamil Biktimirov/Skoltech

South Korea to Provide Blockchain-based Digital Identities to Citizens by 2024 — from blockchain.news by Annie Li; with thanks to Laura Goodrich for this resource

Excerpt:

South Korea plans to provide digital identities encrypted by blockchain with smartphones to citizens in 2024 to facilitate its economic development., Bloomberg reported Monday.

The South Korean government stated that with the expansion of the digital economy, the ID embedded in the smartphone is an indispensable emerging technology to support the development of data.

From DSC:
Interesting to see blockchain show up in the first item above on healthcare and also on this item coming out of South Korea for digital identities.

The Bruce Willis Deepfake Is Everyone’s Problem — from wired.com by Will Bedingfield; with thanks to Stephen Downes for this resource
There’s a fight brewing over how Hollywood stars can protect their identities. But it’s not just actors who should be paying attention.

Excerpts:

Yet the question of “who owns Bruce Willis,” as Levy put it, isn’t only a concern for the Hollywood star and his representatives. It concerns actors unions across the world, fighting against contracts that exploit their members’ naivety about AI. And, for some experts, it’s a question that implicates everyone, portending a wilder, dystopian future—one in which identities are bought, sold, and seized.

“This is relevant not just to AI contracts [for synthetic performances], but any contract involving rights to one’s likeness and voice,” says Danielle S. Van Lier, assistant general counsel, intellectual property and contracts at SAG-AFTRA. “We have been seeing contracts that now include ‘simulation rights’ to performers’ images, voices, and performances. These contract terms are buried deep in the boilerplate of performance agreements in traditional media.”


Addendum on 10/26/22:


 

New Mexico College Publishes Report to Advance a National Learning and Employment Record for Skills-based Credentialing and Hiring — from prnewswire.com by Central New Mexico Community College

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.Oct. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — In the current job market, applicants are usually asked to provide a broad résumé that lists the basics of their qualifications including college degrees and past work experience. It’s an outdated and inefficient system and one that Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) is now helping to improve.

Thanks to a grant from Walmart, CNM produced a comprehensive report that researches several independent efforts underway in order to build a model for creating a national Learner and Employment Records (LER) infrastructure. An LER enables the exchange of skills-based digital records that facilitate more efficient pathways from learning to earning.

An LER is more efficient and secure for both employers and job-seekers because it uses blockchain technology to provide security, trust, and transparency.

From DSC:
I still am learning about how secure blockchain-based applications are — or aren’t. But this idea of a Learner and Employment Record — which I’ve referred to on this blog as a “cloud-based learner profile” — seems to hold a lot of potential as we move into the future. Especially when the focus is increasingly on which skills a position needs and which skills an individual has.

I have used the term cloud-based learner profiles instead of LERs but the idea is the same

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian