You Don’t Need a Law Degree to Transform Legal Operations — from news.bloomberglaw.com by Memme Onwudiwe and Tom Stephenson

Excerpt:

While the future of legal innovation remains unclear, it is apparent that law schools must evolve to meet students’ technological needs. At the very least, lawyers and legal professionals must have more collaborative conversations on the broader educational need for legal technology.

Legal operations professionals have a unique opportunity to emphasize the importance of designing and implementing a business solution ecosystem to guide greater efficiency and decision-making. If data and trends tell us anything, law firms and corporate law departments must adapt to achieve better business outcomes, while law schools have to change the way they teach in our modern digital economy.

Also relevant/see:

 

Virtual or in-person: The next generation of trial lawyers must be prepared for anything — from reuters.com by Stratton Horres and Karen L. Bashor

A view of the jury box (front), where jurors would sit in and look towards the judge's chair (C), the witness stand (R) and stenographer's desk (L) in court room 422 of the New York Supreme Court

Excerpt:

In this article, we will examine several key ways in which COVID-19 has changed trial proceedings, strategy and preparation and how mentoring programs can make a difference.

COVID-19 has shaken up the jury trial experience for both new and experienced attorneys. For those whose only trials have been conducted during COVID-19 restrictions and for everyone easing back into the in-person trials, these are key elements to keep in mind practicing forward. Firm mentoring programs should be considered to prepare the future generation of trial lawyers for both live and virtual trials.

From DSC:
I think law firms will need to expand the number of disciplines coming to their strategic tables. That is, as more disciplines are required to successfully practice law in the 21st century, more folks with technical backgrounds and/or abilities will be needed. Web front and back end developers, User Experience Designers, Instructional Designers, Audio/Visual Specialists, and others come to my mind. Such people can help develop the necessary spaces, skills, training, and mentoring programs mentioned in this article. As within our learning ecosystems, the efficient and powerful use of teams of specialists will deliver the best products and services.

 

From DSC:
I virtually attended the Law 2030 Conference (Nov 3-4, 2022). Jennifer Leonard and staff from the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School put together a super conference! It highlighted the need for change within the legal industry. A major shout out to Jennifer Leonard, Theodore Ruger (Law School Dean), and others!

I really appreciate Jen’s vision here, because she recognizes that the legal industry needs to involve more disciplines, more specialists, and others who don’t have a JD Degree and/or who haven’t passed the Bar. On Day 1 of the conference (in the afternoon), Jen enlisted the help of several others to use Design Thinking to start to get at possible solutions to our entrenched issues.

America, our legal system is being tightly controlled and protected — by lawyers. They are out to protect their turf — no matter the ramifications/consequences of doing so. This is a bad move on many lawyers part. It’s a bad move on many Bar Associations part. Lawyers already have some major PR work to do — but when America finds out what they’ve been doing, their PR problems are going to be that much larger. I’d recommend that they change their ways and really start innovating to address the major access to justice issues that we have in the United States.

One of the highlights for me was listening to the powerful, well-thought-out presentation from Michigan’s Chief Justice Bridget McCormack — it was one of the best I’ve ever heard at a conference! She mentioned the various stakeholders that need to come to the table — which includes law schools/legal education. I also appreciated Jordan Furlong’s efforts to deliver a 15-minute presentation (virtual), which it sounded like he worked on most of the night when he found out he couldn’t be there in person! He nicely outlined the experimentation that’s going on in Canada.

Here’s the recording from Day 1:

 


Jeff Selingo’s comments this week reminded me that those of us who have worked in higher education for much of our careers also have a lot of work to do as well.


 

Addendum on 11/8/22:

 


 

How lawyers can unlock the potential of the metaverse — from abajournal.com by Victor Li

Excerpt:

One such firm is Grungo Colarulo, a personal injury law firm with offices in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Last December, the firm announced that it had set up shop in the virtual world known as Decentraland.

Users can enter the firm’s virtual office, where they can interact with the firm’s avatar. They can talk to the avatar to see whether they might need legal representation and then take down a phone number to call the firm in the physical world. If they’re already clients, they can arrive for meetings or consultations.

Richard Grungo Jr., co-founder and name partner at Grungo Colarulo, told the ABA Journal in December 2021 that he could see the potential of the metaverse to allow his firm to host webinars, CLEs and other virtual educational opportunities, as well as hosting charity events.

Grungo joined the ABA Journal’s Victor Li to talk about how lawyers can use the metaverse to market themselves, as well as legal issues relating to the technology that all users should be aware of.

From DSC:
I post this to put this on the radars of legal folks out there. Law schools should join the legaltech folks in pulse-checking and covering/addressing emerging technologies. What the Metaverse and Web3 become is too early to tell. My guess is that we’ll see a lot more blending of the real world with the digital world — especially via Augmented Reality (AR).

We need to constantly be pulse-checking the landscapes out there and developing scenarios and solutions to such trends

 

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:


 

The Technology That Is Revolutionising How Business Gets Done — from artificiallawyer.com

Excerpt:

We are on the cusp of a revolution. Contract negotiation, with all the associated document redlines and email threads, is about to get a whole lot quicker. Today, artificial intelligence has the potential to save lawyers hours of intense editing – but only if they embrace the sector-wide behaviour change this could ignite.

Technology has reached the point that much of the initial legwork of perusing a contract can be done by a piece of software. Precision AI can scan a document and create a list of issues based on how a lawyer typically contracts. It is then up to the lawyer to accept or disregard those issues, but the point is that the initial editing time is greatly reduced.

 

From DSC:
This is another area where the slow pace of the American legal system is having a negative effect. The American Bar Association and the majority of the law school graduates (i.e., those who passed the Bar and have been practicing law in one form or another) for the last 30 years have a lot to do with this situation. They have stimied innovation and have protected their turf — at the increasing expense of the American people. 

Online learning has been going on since the late 1990’s, yet the ABA STILL doesn’t let law schools have 100% online-based learning without their special consent. 


Artists say AI image generators are copying their style to make thousands of new images — and it’s completely out of their control — from businessinsider.com by Beatrice Nolan

Excerpt:

  • OpenAI, a company founded by Elon Musk, just made its DALL-E image generator open to the public.
  • Artists say they work for years on their portfolios and people can now make copycat images in seconds.
  • But some AI companies argue that the new artworks are unique and can be copyrighted.

People are creating thousands of artworks that look like his using programs called AI-image generators, which use artificial intelligence to create original artwork in minutes or even seconds after a user types in a few words as directions.

Rutkowski’s name has been used to generate around 93,000 AI images on one image generator, Stable Diffusion — making him a far more popular search term than Picasso, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Vincent van Gogh in the program.

 

From DSC:
Many of the items below are from Laurence Colletti’s posting, Clio Cloud Conference – The Big Return


Clio Cloud 2022: Innovation in the Courts with Judge Schlegel — from legaltalknetwork.com by Laurence Colletti and Judge Scott Schlegel

Episode notes:

The pandemic was a driver for change in justice systems around the globe, but one court’s innovative and inexpensive approach is worth a closer look. Judge Scott Schlegel manages what may be one of the most advanced courts in the United States for delivering justice online. Tune in for his tips on how any jurisdiction in the country can modernize its justice system for under a thousand dollars. Go to https://www.onlinejudge.us/ for all of Judge Schlegel’s recommendations.

Clio Cloud 2022: The Benefits of a Legal Blog — from legaltalknetwork.com by Laurence Colletti and Teresa Matich, Kevin O’Keefe, and Iffy Ibekwe
Legal blog posts are great tools for building relationships with potential clients because they build trust, credibility, and allow you to create a personal connection with your clients.

LawNext Podcast: What Is Justice Tech? A Conversation with Maya Markovich — from lawnext.com by

Excerpt:

An increasing number of startups are defining themselves not as legal tech, but as justice tech. So what, exactly, is justice tech, who are some of the companies that represent it, and what is the business opportunity they present for potential investors? Our guest this week is Maya Markovich, executive director of the Justice Technology Association, an organization formed earlier this year to support companies in the justice tech sector.

Clio Cloud 2022: Insights from Clio’s 2022 Legal Trends Report — from legaltalknetwork.com by Laurence Colletti, Joshua Lenon, and Rio Peterson
Amid Inflation, Rising Interest Rates, and Volatile Employment Markets, Clio takes a look at How Global Trends have Impacted Business and Productivity among law firms.

Clio Cloud 2022: What Lies Ahead for Legal with Jack Newton — from legaltalknetwork.com by Laurence Colletti and Jack Newton

Episode notes:

The world of lawyering has surged in spite of the pandemic, but new adversity looms. Fears over inflation, war, hiring markets, and a recession have left many attorneys wondering how to prepare for the coming months. Jack Newton discusses the concept of anti-fragility and its place as a mental model for law firms as they face an uncertain future. Jack outlines how deliberate preparation can help your law firm thrive in the midst of opposition.

Jack Newton is CEO and co-founder of Clio.

Clio Cloud 2022: How Content Creation Can Grow Your Law Firm — from legaltalknetwork.com by Laurence Colletti

 


Also related, see:

Virtual Courts Are Not Going Away — from news.bloomberglaw.com by Jon David Kelley
As the pandemic winds down, courts are shifting to a hybrid approach that incorporates remote with live proceedings. Jon David Kelley of Kirkland says virtual courts can expand access to justice, but care should be taken to maintain credible representation.


 

 

Clio’s 2022 Legal Trends Report
Learn how lawyers are balancing the flexibility of hybrid work, and what clients look for when hiring a lawyer.

Also relevant/see:

Clio’s 2022 Legal Trends Report Finds Lawyers’ Business Growing But Fees Fail to Keep Pace — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi

Top law schools have been slow to add women faculty members, research finds — from highereddive.com

Excerpt:

Law schools have increasingly sorted along gender lines, and the makeup of faculties has become a reflection of schools’ student population, according to preprint research published on the SSRN, an open access platform for early-stage research.

Five digital trends to watch in the legal tech sector — from information-age.com by Leanne Aldrich

Excerpt:

Technology is changing the legal sector. The UK government has recently announced that it is investing £4m to modernise the UK legal industry through its LawTechUK programme. The initiative is a part of a drive to keep the UK at the global forefront of legal services..

ILTA’s Annual Technology Survey: Highlights — from legaltechnology.com

What does it take to be a legal technologist? — legalfutures.co.uk

Excerpt:

When the first seeds of the legal technologist role were planted in the early 2010s, they took some time to germinate. A decade later, after a seemingly slow start, there has been an explosion of investment, awareness and new job opportunities in legal technology.

But as this new strand of the legal profession sets its roots deeper in the industry, what exactly does it take to be a legal technologist?

Shearman & Sterling Launches Legal Ops Service In Sign of the Times — from artificiallawyer.com

Excerpt:

In another sign of the changing times we are in, leading New York law firm Shearman & Sterling is formally launching a Legal Operations capability. The move follows fellow elite rival Cleary Gottlieb launching Cleary X, its innovation-focused legal delivery arm.

A decade ago many would not have expected New York’s top firms to be that bothered with anything other than high-end legal advisory and disputes work, but the legal world is evolving.

‘Legal Operations by Shearman’ will offer a range of services including legal tech help, data analytics, and inhouse department design, but may work with ALSPs and other groups when it comes to CLM onboarding, with these other providers handling actual implementation and with Shearman focused on the bigger legal ops picture.

#legal #trends #legaltech #lawyers #law #lawschools

 

 

The Future of Virtual Legal Proceedings Just Became More Certain with the Launch of Calloquy — from businesswire.com by Calloquy
Hundreds gathered in Atlanta to celebrate and hear from leading legal innovation voices about The Next Era of Litigation

Excerpts:

The event celebrated the launch of Calloquy’s new virtual legal proceeding platform, which offers distinct usability benefits on a foundation of world-class security and industry-specific videoconferencing technology, including:

  • The platform’s intuitive design delivers a virtual experience that is akin to conventional legal proceedings, with clearly marked titles for all participants and traditional seating arrangements. The participants in a remote deposition, for example, are organized with plaintiffs on one side and defendants on the other.
  • Robust collaboration tools, combined with role-based security, ensure that only the right people have access to only the right information—and only at the right time. Documents or comments cannot accidentally be passed to an adversary.
  • The platform’s integrated case management tools streamline the complex litigation process by enabling meetings and proceedings to be scheduled, exhibits to be managed and transcripts to be created and archived all in one place.

“My goal in starting Calloquy is to help drive ‘the next era of litigation’, which means improving the way all people experience the legal system, from the most high-profile commercial litigator to the most underserved defendant and the lawyer who works pro bono on their behalf.”

 

Utah’s reforms offer model for serving low-income and indigent people, report suggests — from abajournal.com by Matt Reynolds

Excerpt:

The Utah model of reform allowing nonlawyers to offer legal services could be “critical” to serving people who can’t afford them, according to a Stanford Law School study published Tuesday.

The 59-page report by the school’s Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession offers an early look at how regulatory changes in Arizona and Utah have impacted the delivery of legal services. It also examined who is being served by innovations in those states.

 

Also relevant, see this upcoming webinar:

Upcoming webinar -- licensing legal paraprofessionals

Two neighboring states — Oregon and California — have recently come to different conclusions on whether to license paralegals to provide some legal services.

In July, the Oregon Supreme Court, with the support of the Oregon State Bar’s Board of Governors, approved a proposal to allow licensed paralegals to provide limited legal services in family law and landlord/tenant cases — two areas of law with large numbers of self-represented litigants. In August, the California legislature, after opposition from some lawyers’ groups, prohibited the State Bar of California from implementing, or even proposing, any loosening of existing restrictions on the unauthorized practice of law before 2025, effectively killing a proposal to permit licensing of paraprofessionals to provide limited legal services.

This webinar will explore how and why Oregon and California reached conflicting results and identify lessons learned from both experiences.

Register >>


Also relevant/see:

IAALS Panel Explores Alternative Paths to Legal Licensure — from iaals.du.edu

Redesigning Legal: Redesigning How We License New Lawyers from IAALS on Vimeo.


Also see the following items from Natalie Anne Knowlton (@natalalleycat) on Twitter

 

 

Also relevant/see the following post I created roughly a month ago:

In the USA, the perspectives of the ABA re: online-based learning — and their take on the pace of change — are downright worrisome.

In that posting I said:

For an industry in the 21st century whose main accreditation/governance body for law schools still won’t let more online learning occur without waivers…how can our nation expect future lawyers and law firms to be effective in an increasingly tech-enabled world?

The pace of the ABA is like that of a tortoise, while the pace of change is exponential

 

Comprehensive Study of Regulatory Reform Finds It Is Driving ‘Substantial Innovation’ In Legal Services Delivery with No Harm to Consumers — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi

Excerpt:

A Stanford Law School study published today of regulatory reforms in Utah and Arizona finds that they are “spurring substantial innovation,” that they are critical to serving lower-income populations, and that they do not pose any substantial risk of consumer harm.

“The evidence gathered in this report shows that rule reforms can spur significant innovation, both in the ownership structure of legal services providers and in the delivery models used to serve clients,” the report concludes.

Also relevant/see the following article form Penn Law’s Future of the Profession Initiative: Law 2030 Initiative/newsletter:

How A Law Prof Is Training Non-Attys As Immigrant Advocates — from law360.com by Marco Poggio

Michelle Pistone, professor at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law, saw a bigger opportunity for online technology after using it to reach law students across the country. She realized online tech could be used to remotely train nonlawyers to become advocates for immigrants and even represent them in court, ultimately helping to combat the severe lack of legal representation in immigration cases. “This is a moment in time when we have an opportunity to think about new models for the delivery of legal services,” Pistone said.

 

Legal technology trends – insights from 751 legal professionals — from wolterskluwer.com
Future Ready Lawyer Survey: new and improved legal technology capabilities are driving greater resilience, improved client relations and higher performance for many organizations in the industry across Europe and the U.S. 63% of technology leading law firms report their profitability increased over the past year – more than any other firms.

Excerpt:

Legal technology report

The 2022 Survey identified industry trends across Europe and the U.S. that show:

  • The increasing importance of technology is escalating across law firms and corporate legal departments;
  • Technology is a critical factor to legal departments in firm selection and retention; and
  • The greater use of technology is among the leading changes expected in both legal departments and law firms.

The need for technology as a key driver of improved performance, efficiency and productivity is undisputed. Yet organizations struggle to optimize their use of technology, signaling improvements are still needed in change management and training on new tools.

Also relevant/see:

Legal trends report – the top 5 trends expected to impact most legal organizations — from wolterskluwer.com

Excerpt:

Challenges include complexity of compliance requirements, higher performance expectations, growing talent tensions and the escalated demand of emerging areas such as Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG).

Also relevant/see:

Why Successful Law Firms Choose Legal Technology — from natlawreview.com

Excerpt:

What it takes to manage a successful law firm has shifted. A firm’s accolades and long-standing tradition are now just a drop in the bucket for prospective clients.

While some law firms still aren’t sold on the use of legal technology, the top-performing firms today embrace legal technology by aligning their business operations with the digital processes that influence their clients’ daily lives. By implementing modern processes these firms experience predictable cash flow, increased visibility, improved productivity, and increased client satisfaction, to name a few.

 

The Artificial Lawyer Guide to Legal Tech – Autumn 2022 — from artificiallawyer.com

Excerpt:

It’s been a wild ride the last couple of years, but what should we be looking out for as we move into the Autumn of 2022? Here are some thoughts from Artificial Lawyer.

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian