legal reform

Could 2021 Be The Year Of Civil Justice Reform? [Bayles]

On 01/27/2021, in Access to Justice (A2J), Cost of legal services - including access, ethics, law schools, legal reform, legislatures / government / legal, morals/values, society, United States, by Daniel Christian

Could 2021 Be The Year Of Civil Justice Reform? — from law360.com by Cara Bayles

Excerpt:

Now, any tenant in Boulder, regardless of means, can get an attorney to represent them in housing court for free. While a handful of other cities like New York and San Francisco offer similar programs, there is no universal right to an attorney in eviction cases.

Justice advocates are hoping that could change. COVID-19, they say, has drawn attention to access to justice issues that have plagued civil proceedings for years. They hope the tragedies of 2020 can fuel reform in 2021.

Six months into the pandemic, millions of Americans had fallen behind on rent. One statistic that civil justice advocates have known for years became apparent — that while 90% of landlords have legal counsel in eviction proceedings, only 10% of tenants do.

Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Hosts First-Ever Virtual Annual Meeting

On 01/20/2021, in communications, culture, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, presentations, religion, society, sociology, United States, universities, vendors, videoconferencing, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

AALS Hosts First-Ever Virtual Annual Meeting — from am.aals.org

Excerpt:

More than 5,100 law school faculty, deans, professional staff, and sponsors gathered virtually, January 5-9 at the 2021 AALS Annual Meeting.

Over five days, the meeting included moderated panels, interactive discussions, and networking events. The programs closely reflected the most pressing issues of the day, including sessions related to the pandemic’s impact on civil rights, disability law, the economy, executive powers, eviction, voting, and workers’ rights, among other topics. There were also several sessions on how the pandemic has affected law schools, especially as it relates to online and hybrid teaching.

The theme of the meeting was “The Power of Words,” selected by 2020 AALS President Darby Dickerson, Dean and Professor of Law at UIC John Marshall Law School.

“Words matter and how we use words matter,” Dickerson said during a welcome video introducing the meeting. “Words are powerful tools. They can inspire social movements, evoke emotions, and create allegiances. They can help and they can heal, but like many tools, words can also be wielded as weapons to hurt and hinder and to mislead and manipulate.”

Digital Trends Top Tech of CES 2021 Awards — from digitaltrends.com

Excerpt:

CES 2021 proved that the technology industry is uniquely suited to carry on in an all-digital environment. These are the companies that invented half the tools, after all. Press conferences went off without a hitch, companies shipped us prototypes to play with, and Digital Trends’ unique CES Experience Center made it possible to virtually come together as an editorial team and share our impressions with you, even from afar.

Oh, and the gadgets. Companies rose to the occasion with the usual spate of outrageous concepts, COVID-fighting devices to meet the moment, and new technologies we’ve been waiting ages for. So naturally, we had to pick the best of the best. Here they are.

6 Key Themes Driving Headlines At CES 2021 — from forbes.com by Daniel Newman

2021 Trend: Pandemic Tech — from web-strategist.com by Jeremiah Owyang

CES 2021: Home health havens — from intelligence.wundermanthompson.com by Emma Chiu

Addendums on 1/18/21:

Lessons For Legal: 2021 CES — from legaltechmonisotr.com by Stephen Embry
11 of the Most Memorable Quotes From CES 2021 — from interestingengineering.com by Donovan Alexander
From mobility to laptops, CES gave us a lot of insights into the future of technology.
Robotics trends at #CES2021 — from robohub.org by Daniel Carrillo-Zapata

From DSC:
Reading through the article below, I can’t help but wonder…how might the eviction crisis impact higher education?

Losing a Home Because of the Pandemic Is Hard Enough. How Long Should It Haunt You? — from nytimes.com by Barbara Kiviat (professor of sociology) and Sara Sternberg Greene (law professor)
Americans who default on their rent may find it hard to escape lasting effects on their financial future.

Excerpts:

Millions of Americans have fallen behind on rent during the Covid-19 pandemic, prompting the passage of eviction moratoriums and rental assistance plans. But as policymakers have struggled to meet the needs of tenants and landlords, they’ve largely overlooked a crucial fact: The looming eviction crisis isn’t just about falling behind on rent and losing one’s home to eviction. It’s also about the records of those events, captured in court documents and credit reports, that will haunt millions of Americans for years to come.

Just as criminal records carry collateral consequences — preventing people from getting jobs, renting apartments and so on — blemishes on a person’s financial history can have far-ranging effects. Records of evictions can prevent Americans from renting new places to live, and debts and lawsuits related to unpaid rent can follow people as they apply for jobs, take out insurance policies, apply for mortgages and more. The process starts when landlords report late payments directly, file for eviction, sue in small claims court and hire debt collectors to pursue back rent. Those paper trails of unpaid rent and eviction get sucked into the digital warehouses of credit bureaus and data brokers.

Micah 6:8

On 01/08/2021, in Access to Justice (A2J), Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, ethics, Europe, faith, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, India, law schools, legal reform, legislatures / government / legal, relationships, religion, society, UK, United States, by Daniel Christian

⁸He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly^[a] with your God.

ICYMI: Legaltech Journalists Pick the Top Stories of 2020 [Ambrogi & panelists]

On 12/30/2020, in change, ideas, innovation, journalism, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, workplace, by Daniel Christian

ICYMI: Legaltech Journalists Pick the Top Stories of 2020 — from lawsitesblog.com by Bob Ambrogi with numerous panelists.

Also see:

20 For 2020: The Legal Tech Trends that Defined the Year — from legaltechmonitor.com by Bob Ambrogi

Excerpt:

As never before, we have been forced to rethink how legal services are delivered and how justice is administered.

Not only have we been forced to rethink, but we have been forced to act.

The silver lining of 2020 is that we have been forced to consider changes that were long overdue and then given the opportunity to implement those changes.

We will all be beneficiaries of these changes – but those who will benefit the most are those the legal system is meant to serve.

So in this year of tragedies and challenges, silver linings and opportunities, here are my candidates — in no particular order — for the year’s top 20 developments in legal technology and innovation.

5 (Unforeseeable, Predicable, And Surprising) Legal Tech Trends In 2020 [O’Grady]

On 12/29/2020, in innovation, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, trends, by Daniel Christian

5 (Unforeseeable, Predicable, And Surprising) Legal Tech Trends In 2020 — from deweybstrategic.com by Jean O’Grady

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

We were all blindsided as 2020 unfolded, yet the momentum of technological change and innovation assured a steady stream of new products. I have identified five trends, which I have divided into three categories: unforeseeable, continuing and surprising.

The trends I believe are worth noting — Unforeseeable: COVID-19 impacts; Predicable: state court analytics and innovative workflow tools; Surprising: legal news re-emerges as a competitive focus among major legal publishers and tech marketplaces emerge.

Clio’s Legal Trends Report 2020: A Look Into the Future of Law [Psiharis]

On 12/22/2020, in game-changing environment, ideas, innovation, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, technology (general), workplace, by Daniel Christian

Clio’s Legal Trends Report 2020: A Look Into the Future of Law — from legaltalknetwork.com by George Psiharis
Clio COO George Psiharis talks through this year’s trends and the sweeping transformative effect COVID-19 has had on the legal profession.

Excerpts:

The legal world has made more forward progress since the start of the pandemic than many expected it could do in a decade. Lawyers formerly resistant to technology suddenly found themselves with no choice but to adapt and embrace digital-friendly legal practice. For a closer look at how these changes are playing out in the profession, Sharon Nelson and John Simek talk with George Psiharis about Clio’s 2020 Legal Trends Report. They discuss who is weathering pandemic-era shifts most effectively, the mass movement to cloud-based services, the importance of focusing on customer experience, and which COVID-era changes will likely carry on beyond the pandemic. George Psiharis is chief operating officer at Clio.

Mentioned in This Episode

The product-market-fit problem is one characterized by a business—or industry—delivering a product that is out of sync with market demand. The issue manifests itself in the form of a massive latent market for legal services, where the majority of those needing legal help don’t get it—which is also a missed opportunity for law firms. Recent studies show: 77% of legal problems don’t receive legal help¹, and 86% of civil legal problems faced by low-income individuals receive either inadequate or no legal help at all².

Online learning and law schools during the pandemic — from tonybates.ca by Tony Bates

Excerpt:

Pre-Covid, law schools and especially law accrediting agencies in North America have been pretty conservative in the past with regard to online or more accurately distance learning (see Online education and the professional associations: the case of law, for more details on the situation in 2018).

We can then fairly safely assume that most of these schools would have had no or little prior experience of online learning before March of this year. So it is interesting that 89% of students in law schools in the USA responding to a Thomson Reuters survey reported that during Covid-19 they were taking classes entirely online.
…
However, for me the most interesting results are in the graph below:

Preferences for permanent changes

It seems clear that at least some level of online instruction will continue in the future, and that online learning will become widespread for at least some types of classes.

Given that there was almost no online learning in law schools in the USA pre-Covid 19, this is a significant conclusion.

From DSC:
I appreciate Tony writing about this topic. He’s correct in saying the ABA and the legal education field — along with the entire legal realm — was behind the 8 ball in terms of online learning (and I would add the use of emerging technologies in general). In fact, I’d say that the ABA was essentially twenty years behind in terms of getting on board the online learning train. It still has a ways to go…but the pressure is on the ABA to get with the times. Our society requires that they do so. The pace of change has been changing for a decade or more now. They can no longer walk on the race track and hope to not get in the way of a world that’s traveling at 180 mph.

The pace has changed significantly and quickly

Make no mistake, if the ABA — and the legal field in general — continues at their previous pace, we all will pay the price. Consider but a few areas that are already having an impact on our society:

#AI #blockchain #XR #AR #MR #VR #robotics #bots #algorithms #ethics #BigData #learningagents #legaltech #NLP #emergingtechnologies

Along with other tags that apply here:

#stayingrelevant #reinvent #vision #leadership #strategy #A2J (Access to Justice)

“The transformative power of virtual courts” [Edwards] + five other items re: legal technology

On 12/15/2020, in change, Cost of legal services - including access, face-to-face, future, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, parents/guardians, society, UK, Uncategorized, United States, by Daniel Christian

The transformative power of virtual courts — from raconteur.net by Ben Edwards

Excerpt:

At the Odeon cinema in Edinburgh’s Fort Kinnaird retail park, the movie posters have been taken down and the popcorn machines covered up as jurors take their seats in one of the four auditoriums to attend a virtual court hearing.

These remote jury centres have allowed the Scottish High Court to restart criminal trials by beaming live court action directly onto the cinema screen, allowing jurors to watch and hear evidence while maintaining social distancing, something that wouldn’t have been possible inside the main court building. With a further 11 screens available in Glasgow, the court is now back up to full capacity.

“The real beauty in this approach is it provides a way of scaling up; we have a model that works and can be applied anywhere,” says Tim Barraclough, executive director of the Judicial Office for Scotland.

Also see:

Reynen Court Now Lets You Take Legal Tech Products For A Test Drive — from legaltechmonitor.com by Bob Ambrogi

Excerpt:

Reynen Court, the platform that describes itself as the app store for legal technology, has introduced a new feature, appropriately called One-Click Test Drive, that makes it easy for law firms and legal departments to test products without having to buy them or negotiate trial licenses.

Using Test Drive, a user can quickly deploy a pilot of a pre-configured application in a secure environment. The application comes fully loaded with dummy data and transaction or case materials. It can be easily launched without requiring IT support.

Legal Tech Traditionally Favored Law Firms. That May Be Changing — from law.com by Frank Ready
Ironclad’s “State of Digital Contracting, Winter 2020: AI and the Elusive Promise of Smart Contracting” virtual event delved into how changes in service delivery models could help to drive a new wave of legal tech directed toward in-house attorneys and nonlawyers.

Excerpts from Working Remote: Advantages Gained from Legal Technology Adoption — from law.com
In this episode of the Perspectives podcast, sponsored by AbacusNext and hosted on Law.com, we’ll hear highlights from the September 9th presentation titled, Working Remote: Advantages Gained Through Legal Technology Adoption.

The Top 25 Artificial Lawyer Articles of 2020 — from artificiallawyer.com by Richard Tromans

What Is Quantum Computing and How Is It Disrupting Law Firms? — from lawtechnologytoday.org by Shannon Flynn

Massive issues coming up re: evictions: A potential nightmare coming down the pike.

On 12/07/2020, in Access to Justice (A2J), health, law schools, leadership, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, policy, political science, society, surviving, telelegal, United States, vendors, videoconferencing, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Logging in to get kicked out: Inside America’s virtual eviction crisis — from technologyreview.com by Eileen Guo

Excerpts:

An unprecedented, imperfect moratorium
Before the pandemic, an average of 3.6 million Americans lost their homes to evictions every year, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. By the end of 2020, this number could increase exponentially, with one report from the Aspen Institute estimating that, without further federal aid, between 30 to 40 million people may be at risk of eviction in the next several months. The financial hardship exacerbated by covid-19 has left many in a precarious situation.

.

Legal aid attorneys chart course for 2021 after spike in demand — from law360.com by Justin Wise

Excerpts: (emphasis DSC)

The coronavirus pandemic and the economic downturn it caused sparked a massive spike in demand for legal aid services from America’s most marginalized communities, leaving a field already under-resourced facing even greater strain in 2020.

At the same time, many organizations had to close their offices in the spring and significantly reduce in-person communication with clients to comply with health guidelines. It all amounted to a “pretty crushing” year in which attorneys transitioned to a primarily remote operation with new channels including a COVID-19 legal intake line, Southeast Louisiana Legal Services Executive Director Laura Tuggle said.

Tuggle said 3 in 4 of the calls on the SLLS hotline are from people seeking assistance on matters relating to housing and evictions. Overall, the group has had a 300% increase in eviction cases this year. It also had a 600% increase in unemployment assistance cases in the first few months of the pandemic.

“The most pressing legal need America faces as we enter 2021 is the tsunami of potential evictions that threaten the millions of people who have lost jobs during the pandemic,” LSC Executive Director Ronald Flagg said, pointing to a study showing that evictions can cause increases in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

A potential nightmare is coming down the pike: Massive # of evictions — which will further exacerbate the Covid19 crisis (at minimum).

DC: How can #highereducation help people reinvent themselves quickly and affordably?#learningfromthelivingclassroom https://t.co/TV5InkWHwn pic.twitter.com/5OgplxXuMO

— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) December 7, 2020

Addendum on 12/9/20:

Black households face greater financial devastation due to COVID-19 shutdowns — from bigthink.com by Molly Hanson
New research spotlights how low-income Black households face greater financial distress and vulnerability as a result of the pandemic economic crisis.

A New Report and Recommendations: Civil Justice for All [American Academy of Arts & Sciences]

On 12/03/2020, in 21st century, Access to Justice (A2J), law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, reinvent, society, sociology, surviving, telelegal, United States, by Daniel Christian

America has a civil justice gap, and the #eviction crisis will only serve to widen the gap. How can we improve #accesstojustice for all Americans? A new @americanacad report has recommendations. https://t.co/q16p3QVnXH pic.twitter.com/xLFExsSv9O

— American Academy of Arts & Sciences (@americanacad) October 22, 2020

A New Report and Recommendations: Civil Justice for All — from amacad.org (the American Academy of Arts & Sciences)

Also see:

Expiring Eviction Moratoriums and COVID-19 Incidence and Mortality — from papers.ssrn.com by Kathryn Leifheit, Sabriya Linton, Julia Raifman, Gabriel Schwartz, Emily Benfer, Frederick Zimmerman, and Craig Pollack
Excerpt of Abstract:
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic crisis has rendered millions of U.S. households unable to pay rent, placing them at risk for eviction. Evictions may accelerate COVID-19 transmission by increasing household crowding and decreasing individuals’ ability to comply with social distancing directives. We leveraged variation in the expiration of eviction moratoriums in U.S. states to test for associations between evictions and COVID-19 incidence and mortality.

Four items related to innovation and legaltech

On 12/02/2020, in future, ideas, innovation, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, marketplaces, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

LawNext: Suffolk Law Dean Andrew Perlman On Innovating Legal Education and Legal Services — from lawsitesblog.com by Bob Ambrogi

Excerpt:

Andrew Perlman is one of the nation’s leading forces helping to establish the future of legal education and legal practice.
…
On this episode of LawNext, Perlman joins me to share thoughts on the present and future of legal education, legal practice, and legal regulatory reform.

Court Forms Online MassAccess

DWF launches lawtech training seat geared towards STEM grads — from legalcheek.com by Adam Mawardi

Excerpt:

DWF is set to launch a new lawtech seat aimed towards trainees with backgrounds in technology and STEM subjects. The pilot, which launches in February 2021, will see one trainee work within DWF’s legal tech team, where they will help lawyers and clients solve problems through document automaton, artificial intelligence and e-discovery.

All of a sudden, legal tech marketplaces are proliferating — from lawsitesblog.com by Bob Ambrogi; with thanks to Gabe Teninbaum for the resource

ABA TechReport 2020

On 12/01/2020, in 21st century, career development, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, workplace, by Daniel Christian

CYBERSECURITY
2020 Cybersecurity
John G. Loughnane
The 2020 report reflects incremental progress in areas fundamental to adequate security, but not enough. Find out more in this TechReport.

BIG DATA & CLOUD COMPUTING
2020 Cloud Computing
Dennis Kennedy
There’s much to learn from the 2020 results and what they tell us about how to move forward into an era that promises to be much more cloud-intensive.

PRACTICE TECHNOLOGY
2020 Solo & Small Firm
Karin Conroy
There are nuanced pros and cons of how solo and small firms approach security and technology decisions; find out more in this TechReport.

PRACTICE TECHNOLOGY
2020 Websites & Marketing
Allison C. Shields Johs
Learn about some basic steps that solo and small firm lawyers can take to improve their marketing in the upcoming year to help them compete in an increasingly virtual world.

PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
2020 Technology Training
Mark Rosch
Lawyers must overcome the Dunning-Kruger effect that is likely coloring their own perceptions about their technology competence to understand that training would benefit them.

PRACTICE TECHNOLOGY
2020 Practice Management
Alexander Paykin
Solo and small firms have to make a choice on how to spend their money in order to survive and to stay competitive with larger firms. Find out more in this TechReport.

2020 Litigation & Technology Assisted Review (TAR)
Stephen Embry
Our Litigation & TAR report is back in 2020 to give you a rundown on the use of technology in the courtroom, training, and e-discovery.

Learning Ecosystems

Could 2021 Be The Year Of Civil Justice Reform? [Bayles]

Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Hosts First-Ever Virtual Annual Meeting

The top trends and themes of the 2021 Consumers Electronics Show (CES)

How might the eviction crisis impact higher education? [Christian]

Micah 6:8

ICYMI: Legaltech Journalists Pick the Top Stories of 2020 [Ambrogi & panelists]

5 (Unforeseeable, Predicable, And Surprising) Legal Tech Trends In 2020 [O’Grady]

Top 5 legal technology stories of 2020 [Black]

Clio’s Legal Trends Report 2020: A Look Into the Future of Law [Psiharis]

Reflections on “Online learning and law schools during the pandemic” [Bates]

“The transformative power of virtual courts” [Edwards] + five other items re: legal technology

Massive issues coming up re: evictions: A potential nightmare coming down the pike.

A New Report and Recommendations: Civil Justice for All [American Academy of Arts & Sciences]

Four items related to innovation and legaltech

ABA TechReport 2020

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