Justice Through Code — from centerforjustice.columbia.edu by ; via Matt Tower
Unlocking Potential for the 80+ Million Americans with a Conviction History.
Excerpt:
A world where every person, regardless of past convictions or incarceration can access life-sustaining and meaningful careers.
We are working to make this vision a reality through our technical and professional career development accelerators.
Our Mission: We educate and nurture talent with conviction histories to create a more just and diverse workforce. We increase workplace equity through partnerships that educate and prepare teams to create supportive pathways to careers that end the cycle of poverty that contributes to incarceration and recidivism.
JTC is jointly offered by Columbia University’s Center for Justice, and the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at the Columbia Business School.
Fastcase, vLex merger accelerates investment into legal AI — from reuters.com by Sara Merken
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
(Reuters) – As artificial intelligence pushes deeper into the legal industry, Fastcase and vLex are merging in a deal the legal research companies said [on 4/4/23] will speed up the creation of AI tools for lawyers.
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The merger creates a law library that is “the biggest legal data corpus ever assembled,” the companies said. The new company will have more than one billion legal documents from more than 100 countries, including judicial opinions, statutes, regulations, briefs, pleadings and legal news articles, they said.
Also see:
In Major Legal Tech Deal, vLex and Fastcase Merge, Creating A Global Legal Research Company, Backed By Oakley Capital and Bain Capital — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi
Excerpt:
In a deal that will reshape the legal research and legal technology landscape on a global basis and threaten the longstanding “Wexis” legal research duopoly, the companies vLex and Fastcase today announced that they have merged into a single entity that they say will have the world’s largest subscriber base of lawyers and law firms and a legal research library of more than 1 billion documents from more than 100 countries.
Speaking about the legal realm and innovations, also see:
On LawNext: 15 Years, 15 Lessons: Clio Founder Jack Newton On What He’s Learned About Building a Successful Company — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi and Jack Newton
Excerpt:
As Clio marks its 15th anniversary in 2023, Newton sat down with me to share 15 lessons he has learned along the way regarding what makes a successful company and a successful leader. He also reminisces about the early days of starting Clio and his early successes and challenges. Notably, he and Gauvreau founded Clio in the middle of the Great Recession, and one of the lessons he shares in this episode is his belief that a recession is a great time to build a company.
For anyone who has founded or is thinking of founding a legal tech startup, this episode is a must-listen. Even for those who are not tech founders, but law firm founders, many of Newton’s lessons apply.
Tools like ChatGPT will revolutionize the work of lawyers. Lawyers & law students must therefore learn how to use these tools now. Here is a practical guide on how to do so: https://t.co/gtbzB7Xvfg
Here are a few new key pieces of advice we elaborate on in the piece:
— Daniel Schwarcz (@Dschwarcz) April 2, 2023
Also relevant/see:
Having spent my career training lawyers, I’m convinced of AI’s transformative power for law – AI can perform core elements of legal reasoning: breaking down cases, applying rules to facts, arguing in alternative, analogizing. Lawyers need to get comfortable with this tech ASAP! https://t.co/VFIwbpTzFd
— Daniel Schwarcz (@Dschwarcz) April 3, 2023
Building a bridge to justice from the other side — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
Our professional-centric approach to resolving unmet legal needs hasn’t worked. Maybe it’s time we empowered the people who are already there.
Excerpts:
Given all that, I think it’s time we tried a demand-side approach instead — one that doesn’t require us to licence and deploy more legal services professionals, but instead focuses on and empowers those who are already dealing with people’s unmet and unrecognized legal needs.
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So if we’re not looking for legal professionals, who are we looking for? If we take a user-centred, needs-focused approach, we’ll find ourselves looking for someone who’s familiar to and trusted by the vulnerable people with unmet legal needs, who’s walked with them, earned their confidence over time — “someone who looks like them, understands their situation, and are trusted members of their community.”
These individuals are already present in the lives of people with unmet legal needs. They’re community activists, librarians, hospital employees, teachers, social workers, homeless advocates, therapists, food bank employees, members of a religious order, financial counsellors, mental health clinic staffers, juvenile case workers, and many others.