The Legal Tech Non-Event — from Above the Law with thanks to Gabe Teninbaum for the resource from his Lawtomatic Newsletter

Excerpt:

Welcome to Above the Law’s Non-Event – a legal technology resource for perplexed lawyers who hate trade shows. With the Non-Event, we’re bringing the technology conversation to lawyers directly: in plain English and geared to meet a fully booked schedule. With any luck, it will even be “fun.”

The Legal Tech Non-Event -- from Above the Law

 

Utah Supreme Court to extend regulatory sandbox to seven years  — from utahinnovationoffice.org

U.S. Supreme Court Wary About Extending School Authority Over Student Internet Speech— from edweek.org

Excerpt:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday spent nearly two hours wrestling with its first case about schools’ regulation of student speech in the Internet era. The justices seemed to be searching for a way to rule as narrowly as possible while protecting young people’s right of self-expression, yet giving schools leeway to respond to threats and bullying that originate off campus.

“That sharp line … between on campus and off campus, how does that fit with modern technology?” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked during arguments in Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. (Case No. 20-255).

Also see:

“The legal industry is experiencing a period of rapid transformation, and legal teams are starting to recognize the robust potential that cloud-based technology has for collaborative litigation to discover the needle-in-a-haystack pieces of information needed to argue and win cases,” said Everlaw CEO AJ Shankar.

 

 

Law Society votes to approve regulatory sandbox for innovative legal tech development — from lawtimesnews.com by Aidan Macnab

Excerpt:

At Convocation Thursday morning, the Law Society of Ontario passed a motion to launch a five-year regulatory sandbox pilot for innovative legal tech services.

The initiative recommended by the Law Society’s technology task force would open up a regulatory safe zone for innovative technological legal services. Participants will report to and be monitored by the Law Society, which will study the sandbox to inform policy and regulatory decision-making.

Rocket Lawyer Raises $223 Million To Meet Growing Demand For Its Services — from lawsitesblog.com by Bob Ambrogi

Excerpt:

The online legal services provider Rocket Lawyer has raised $223 million in growth capital financing to help it meet what it says has been a strong and accelerating demand for its digital legal documents and advice.

Legal technology start-up JUSTLAW notches an impressive milestone — from einnews.com
Small business legal protection offering experiences rapid growth.

Excerpt:

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, April 13, 2021 /EINPresswire.com/ — Launched in 2020 in the face of the worst pandemic in a century, legal tech startup JUSTLAW set out with the lofty vision to give ordinary Americans access to top attorneys on a 24/7 basis. It’s working. The number of small businesses enrolled in its small business legal protection plan just surpassed 1,000.

 

3 Best Practices for Tackling Tech Trends in the Legal Field — from by Heather Thomas
Law firms cannot be idle and ignore technology; they must find ways to use tech that matters and be aware of tech that could be relevant.

Excerpt:

Despite some of the early advantages seen from recent legal technology adoption, most law firms prefer to tread cautiously. The key, then, is finding simple ways to keep up with trends and use technology, without creating unnecessary dependencies or unforeseen issues. Three best practices for law firms wanting to strategically incorporate tech trends into their practices include verifying compliance, augmenting processes and filling gaps, and outsourcing processes to legal vendors.

Also see:

Legal technology start-up JUSTLAW notches an impressive milestone — from einnews.com

Excerpts:

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, April 13, 2021 /EINPresswire.com/ — Launched in 2020 in the face of the worst pandemic in a century, legal tech startup JUSTLAW set out with the lofty vision to give ordinary Americans access to top attorneys on a 24/7 basis. It’s working. The number of small businesses enrolled in its small business legal protection plan just surpassed 1,000.

JUSTLAW’s proprietary “Peace of Mind 365” inverts the traditional practice of law. Instead of waiting to react to legal issues – just as we did with medical issues in the stone ages – JUSTLAW takes a tech-enabled, proactive approach to identifying, managing and mitigating potential risks. JUSTLAW lets companies connect with lawyers over the web, via SMS, video or phone. Their small business legal protection plans — which start at less than $10 a week – allow companies to match with a lawyer who is in their jurisdiction, has expertise in the problem they’re dealing with and has availability when the owner needs to talk. 

 

 

Digital upskilling in legal: More than just new technology — from legalexecutiveinstitute.com by Bob Dolinsky; with thanks to Gabe Teninbaum for this resource

Excerpt:

How many law firms have digital upskilling programs for their lawyers and staff members? Based on what I hear and read, very few, if any.

Amazon, for example, recently announced a commitment of more than $700 million to its “Upskilling 2025” program, an internal training initiative designed to promote customer satisfaction and worker advancement. Another example is PwC, which has a digital upskilling program to develop its in-house talent pool called “New world. New skills.” In 2019, PwC announced that it would invest $3 billion into job training for its 275,000 employees around the world, enhancing its workforce and client service delivery to better address emerging digital needs.

The goals of these and similar initiatives is to help ensure that employees have the skills in the digital arena to be successful, to position these organizations as preferred employers, and to provide customer and client service excellence.

Also from Gabe:

“Virtual justice” (the preferred, if unsettling, term) is an emergency response to a dire situation. But it is also a vision some judicial innovators had long tried to realize. One leading booster, Michigan Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack, told me that going online can make courts not only safer but “more transparent, more accessible, and more convenient.” Witnesses, jurors, and litigants no longer need to miss hours of work and fight traffic. Attorneys with cases in multiple courts can jump from one to another by swiping on their phones.

 

Pro:

AI-powered chatbots automate IT help at Dartmouth — from edscoop.com by Ryan Johnston

Excerpt:

To prevent a backlog of IT requests and consultations during the coronavirus pandemic, Dartmouth College has started relying on AI-powered chatbots to act as an online service desk for students and faculty alike, the school said Wednesday.

Since last fall, the Hanover, New Hampshire, university’s roughly 6,600 students and 900 faculty have been able to consult with “Dart” — the virtual assistant’s name — to ask IT or service-related questions related to the school’s technology. More than 70% of the time, their question is resolved by the chatbot, said Muddu Sudhakar, the co-founder and CEO of Aisera, the company behind the software.

Con:

The Foundations of AI Are Riddled With Errors — from wired.com by Will Knight
The labels attached to images used to train machine-vision systems are often wrong. That could mean bad decisions by self-driving cars and medical algorithms.

Excerpt:

“What this work is telling the world is that you need to clean the errors out,”says Curtis Northcutt, a PhD student at MIT who led the new work.“Otherwise the models that you think are the best for your real-world business problem could actually be wrong.”

 

 

Resistance to legal tech ‘fast evaporating’ — from lawyersweekly.com.au by Jerome Doraisamy

Excerpt:

Thomson Reuters’ 2021 Report on the State of the Legal Market was recently released, which found that 85 per cent of law firms of all stripes are planning to increase their investments in technology this year, in the wake of the upheaval caused by 2020.

The past year, the multinational corporation said, really emphasised just how much attitudes have evolved about day-to-day legal practice, particularly with regards to digital workflow tools and solutions using the cloud.

The report also surmised that the legal profession, on the whole, absorbed five to 10 years’ worth of technology adoption into 12 months, by virtue of the age of coronavirus.

In light of this, “longstanding resistance” by lawyers to adopt cutting-edge technology is “fast evaporating”, said Thomson Reuters Legal Professionals interim president Paul Fischer.

Also see:

According to Butler, lawyers hoping to transform the profession should ask themselves: if they were designing the system from scratch, what would it look like? “The client has a legal need — what’s the best way of meeting it?” he said. This ‘blank sheet’ approach, popularised by legal futurist Richard Susskind, offers “huge potential” for those entering law, he concluded.

 

Telemedicine likely to change how we receive health care post-pandemic — from mlive.com by Justin Hicks

A patient sits in the living room of her apartment in New York City during a telemedicine video conference with a doctor. (Mark Lennihan/AP)AP

A patient sits in the living room of her apartment in New York City during a telemedicine video conference with a doctor. (Mark Lennihan/AP)AP

Excerpt:

As we look to the post-pandemic future, medical experts believe telemedicine will be here to stay as another option to increase access to care, reduce costs, and free up doctors to spend more time with patients who need in-person care.

“When I think about the pandemic, one thing that didn’t change about our lifestyles is people are busy,” Lopez said. “I think we’ll still see growth in overall visits because of the fact that people want access to care and when you lower the cost, it should go up.”

From DSC:
A friend of mine said that he is doing most of his practice now via the telehealth route (and has been for many months now). Then, recently, when I was at the lab, the knowledgeable woman who assisted me said that she thought virtual health was definitely going to stick. Many doctors and nurses will be using virtual means vs. physical visits she said.

Expectations get involved here — for education, for the legal field, and for other arenas.

 

Technology and Access to Justice: How Does It Work? — from lawdroid.com by Robin Bull

Picture of a keyboard with the word Justice on one of the keys - clicking on this image will take you to an article called Technology and Access to Justice: How Does It Work?

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

At its most basic level, the term “access to justice” means the ability that a person has in accessing the legal system. This includes, and is not limited to, the ability to afford an attorney and file a lawsuit. There is only a legal right to an attorney if a person faces a criminal charge. There is no right to an attorney if someone is involved in a civil matter.

In the civil system, there is no constitutional right to an attorney. If a person can afford an attorney, great. Sure, there are legal aid organizations set up to provide access to justice. However, many do not have the funds, enough employees, or enough volunteers to help every person who seeks them out. Many Americans cannot afford to pay an hourly rate to have an attorney handle a civil matter. Even if they manage to come up with a retainer, they may not be able to see the matter through to completion or finish paying their attorney.

Here are a few ways that technology and access to justice work together.  

 

Also see:

If regular people lack the abilty to petition a branch of our government without spending their life savings, then we don't have a democracy. Sonja Ebron of Courtroom 5

 

Legal tech CEOs urge lawyers to keep innovating beyond the COVID-19 pandemic — from abajournal.com by Lyle Moran

Excerpt:

Lawyers should continue to embrace and further develop the technological and business innovations they have adopted in recent months even after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides, two prominent legal technology leaders said Tuesday at the ABA Techshow 2021.

“We have the opportunity today to build towards that third horizon or slouch back towards that first horizon,” said Ed Walters, CEO and co-founder of legal research company Fastcase. He enthusiastically encouraged attendees to “build the legal services and law firms of 2022, not rebuild what was broken in 2019.”

 

Two items from Gabe Teninbaum’s Lawtomatic Newsletter | Issue #121, March 10, 2021 

  1. [LegalPioneer.orgLegalpioneer Chrome extension: the Law Sites Blog has a really interesting write-up. on a a new extension for the Chrome browser that allows you to do research on thousands of legal tech products in a new way: “Say you are reading an article online about contract lifecycle management and want to know what companies offer products for that. A new extension for the Chrome browser puts the answer a click away. With the new Legalpioneer Chrome extension installed, highlight a word or phrase on any web page to search and explore a database of more than 5,500 worldwide technology businesses serving legal professionals and the law.”  Remarkable – I’ve tested it and it works as reported  Plus, it’s free. You can learn more at legalpioneer.org. or download the extension via Chrome using this link.
    .
  2. 4 Changes To Make To Your LinkedIn Profile That Will Enhance Your Legal Skills And Visibility — from abovethelaw.com by Wendi Weiner
    With more than 700 million users on the platform, LinkedIn offers you the ability to be seen, noticed, and scouted when you are (and aren’t) job searching.
 

Legal tech to the rescue — from nationalmagazine.ca by Julie Sobowale
The legal industry has shown it can adapt to disruption. But it has further to go in partnering with alternative service providers.

A woman walking into an abstract high tech scene

Excerpt:

“Most lawyers and legal leaders have to confront what they have done in the past,” says Chris Bentley, Director of The Legal Innovation Zone (LIZ) at Ryerson University. “They rejected technology, embraced the past, fought against having services in the cloud, fought against using online research tools, and rejected being able to video conference calls with clients.”

 

LexisNexis Extends Its Context Language Analytics to Cover Attorneys’ Briefs and Motions — from legaltechmonitor.com Bob Ambrogi

Excerpt:

Last year, LexisNexis introduced Context, a refinement of an analytics tool originally developed by Ravel Law that analyzes the language of a judge’s opinions to determine the cases and arguments the judge finds most persuasive in deciding specific types of issues. As I reported then, that original launch also included Context for expert witnesses, and, since then, LexisNexis has expanded Context to also cover courts and companies.

Today, LexisNexis is further expanding Context with the introduction of Attorney Analytics, the fifth module in the platform, for researching opposing attorneys in litigation matters.

Also see:

 

The Triple Threat Facing Generalist Law Firms, Part 2: Legal Tech — from jdsupra.com by Katherine Hollar Barnard

Excerpts:

In Legaltech, a Walmart associate general counsel estimated the product provided a 60 to 80 percent time savings. That’s great news for Walmart – less so for lawyers who bill by the hour.

Sterling Miller, the former general counsel of Marketo, Inc., Sabre Corporation and Travelocity.com, made a compelling case for why law firm clients are turning to technology: In-house lawyers are incentivized to find the most efficient, lowest-cost way to do things. Many law firm lawyers are incentivized to do just the opposite.

To be sure, software is unlikely to replace lawyers altogether; legal minds are essential for strategy, and robots have yet to be admitted to the bar. However, technology’s impact on an industry dominated by the billable hour will be profound.

Also see:

Judge John Tran spearheaded adoption of tech to facilitate remote hearings and helped train lawyers — from abajournal.com by Stephanie Francis Ward; with thanks to Gabe Teninbaum for this resource

Excerpt:

If you need a judge who can be counted on to research all courtroom technology offerings that can help proceedings continue during the COVID-19 pandemic, look no further than John Tran of the Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia.

After the Virginia Supreme Court issued an order June 22 stating that remote proceedings should be used to conduct as much business as possible, Tran offered webinars to help lawyers with the Fairfax Bar Association get up to speed with Webex, the platform the court uses for remote proceedings.

“When Webex has a news release, he’s all over that. He’s already had a private demo. He is one of a small number of exceptionally tech-savvy judges,” says Sharon Nelson, a Fairfax attorney and co-founder and president of the digital forensics firm Sensei Enterprises.

 
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