legislatures / government / legal

Online tool will help ‘Spot’ legal issues that people face [pewtrusts.org]

On 02/15/2020, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Cost of legal services - including access, ideas, innovation, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, society, technology (general), tools, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Online tool will help ‘Spot’ legal issues that people face — from .pewtrusts.org
Artificial intelligence can boost non-lawyers’ ability to navigate civil court system

Excerpt:

People looking for information on legal questions often start their searches online, without a good handle on the terminology. Today’s machine learning tools can help put nonlegal phrasing into context, using artificial intelligence to match people’s situations with specific legal issues, supplying accurate information and connections to potential services.

A team at the Legal Innovation and Technology (LIT) Lab at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, with funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts, is building an application programming interface, or API—known as Spot—that can serve as a computerized issue spotter. Spot could be used by legal services websites and others to help lay users, and its functionality will improve as it accumulates more data and real-life examples.

What’s so bad about the billable hour? [Cohen]

On 02/15/2020, in ideas, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, workplace, by Daniel Christian

What’s so bad about the billable hour? — from bloomberg.com by Arianne Cohen
John Chisholm says it leads to unethical behavior and runaway costs.

Excerpts:

What would force a change in the model?
The Big Four professional firms [Deloitte, PwC, Ernst & Young, and KPMG] have exponentially increased their legal services over the last few years. While those firms predominantly billed by the hour, their foray into other services such as consulting means they have experimented with other pricing models. One of the Big Four will change its pricing model before any global law firm, and all will follow.
…
How does someone at a firm start a conversation about billing for deliverables that actually mean something to clients?
Try saying, “Recording time is inaccurate and nontransparent, and no one values it. Our clients value projects completed on time, revenue, and new intellectual property.”

5 Things General Counsel Want from Law Firms They Are Not Getting [Savarino & others]

On 02/12/2020, in 21st century, career development, change, collaboration, communications, future, innovation, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, society, using teams, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

5 Things General Counsel Want from Law Firms They Are Not Getting — from linkedin.com by Julie Savarino and from “the excellent presentation at #LegalWeek2020 by ALM Media, LLC, Heather D. Nevitt, James Willer, Gina Passarella, Patrick Fuller & team”

(emphasis DSC)

Direct, straightforward & practical legal advice & guidance they can take to their business leadership.
A team of talented, diverse professionals (not just practicing #lawyers) that bring a wide range of solutions & options.
Innovative technology options & support for legal tech & legal ops.
Proactive communications & monitoring of their business, warnings of potential risks & legal issues & how the firm can support.
Scanning the horizon for what’s coming/developing & future issues that the legal department needs to be aware of & ready to support.

From DSC:
#5 reminds me of the following graphic:

BIGLAW 2040: What will happen when Gen Z is in charge? — from law360.com by Natalie Rodriguez

Excerpts:

The opportunities that BigLaw has begun offering associates to spend months-long stints working out of international offices will evolve from rare resume brags to almost standard career milestones for those interested in leadership positions.

“If you don’t have global experience, you’re not becoming a CEO anymore, and that’s going to be true of becoming a managing partner. If you want to be a global business, you’re going to have to understand the world,” Wilkins said.

The legal leaders of 2040 will also have to expand their circle — think data technicians, cybersecurity professionals, chief knowledge officers, legal tech and artificial intelligence systems engineers, all of whom are going to play much larger roles in the BigLaw ecosystem in the next few decades.

Addendum on 2/11/20:

The Skills Every Future Lawyer Needs — from law360.com by Erin Coe

Excerpt:

To provide those outcomes and solutions, many lawyers of the future will be responsible for building the systems that replace the old ways of working.

They will become legal knowledge engineers, legal risk managers, legal systems analysts, legal design thinkers and legal technologists, and they will be the ones solving clients’ problems, not through one-on-one advice, but through technology-delivered solutions, according to Susskind.

The challenge for existing lawyers is whether they are prepared over the next 20 years to retrain themselves for these new roles.

American Bar Assn. President criticizes U.S. legal system as backward, resistant to change [Barnes]

On 02/09/2020, in 21st century, Access to Justice (A2J), ideas, innovation, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, policy, political science, society, sociology, technology (general), tools, United States, by Daniel Christian

American Bar Assn. President criticizes U.S. legal system as backward, resistant to change — from forbes.com by Patricia Barnes

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Judy Perry Martinez, president of the American Bar Association (ABA), has issued an unusually frank plea calling upon the legal profession to support reform of America’s backward legal system to better serve the public.

“We need new ideas,” said Martinez. “We are one-fifth into the 21st century, yet we continue to rely on 20th-century processes, procedures and regulations. We need to retain 20th-century values but advance them using 21st-century approaches that can increase access to justice.”

Martinez’ comments are contained in a letter appearing in the February-March 2020 issue of the ABA’s monthly magazine, The ABA Journal.

Martinez expressed frustration with resistance in the legal profession to state-level efforts to innovate in the provision of legal services.

Martinez was particularly critical of the lack of access to civil justice in the United States. She cited the World Justice Project’s ranking of the U.S. in the bottom tier with respect to access to and affordability of civil justice. She said the U.S. is tied for 99th place out of 126 countries. Additionally, Martinez said research by the Legal Services Corp. found that low-income Americans received inadequate or no professional legal help for 86% of their civil legal problems, including child custody, debt collection, eviction and foreclosure. She did not spare the criminal justice system. In many states, Martinez says, “overwhelming caseloads and inadequate resources for public defenders severely hamper the Sixth Amendment right to counsel for indigent criminal defendants.

From DSC:
I congratulate Judy Perry Martinez for her stance here, as she’s ultimately fighting for our society — especially for access to justice. Though I don’t know Judy, I appreciate the courage that it must have taken to pen that letter.

Experts say 23% of lawyers’ work can be automated—law schools are trying to stay ahead of the curve [Hess]

On 02/09/2020, in analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, data related items, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Experts say 23% of lawyers’ work can be automated—law schools are trying to stay ahead of the curve — from cnbc.com by Abigail Hess

Excerpts:

While law school graduates out-earn those with just a high school or bachelor’s degree on average, the legal profession is not immune to the same technological trends that have touched essentially every industry.

Advances in technology such as artificial intelligence allow modern software to scan legal documents, streamline communications and find relevant casework for lawyers. McKinsey estimates that 23% of work done by lawyers can be automated by existing technology.
…
Another way law schools are working to increase their value proposition is by offering more lifelong learning resources.

Greif argues that to a significant extent, law schools have always been centers of lifelong learning, through conferences and collaboration with local bar associations, but says that some schools have been ramping up their offerings.

How Blockchain’s ‘paradigm shift’ puts more pressure on legal’s tech evolution [Dipshan]

On 02/04/2020, in 21st century, Blockchain, computer science, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, platforms, programming, Web3, by Daniel Christian

How Blockchain’s ‘paradigm shift’ puts more pressure on legal’s tech evolution — from law.com by Rhys Dipshan
As part of the Legalweek 2020 Q&A series, Legaltech News speaks with blockchain researcher and entrepreneur Bettina Warburg on blockchain’s potential disruption in the legal space, what attorneys most misunderstand about the technology, and more.

Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence may still take up much of spotlight these days, but it’s far from the only technology that can fundamentally alter how the legal industry, and the broader economy, operates.

Blockchain technology, for instance, has wide-reaching consequences for record keeping, contracting, data governance and identity management. And beyond that, it may even change how the digital economy functions and work as underlying driver for integrated, autonomously running machines. What all this means for attorneys is that specialization, technical skills, and more technology knowledge will likely become even more important than it is today.

We are not just in the days of Bitcoin, where one user transfers bitcoin to another user’s account. Instead, blockchain should be understood as part of an evolution toward a third generation Web (called Web3) that provides us with virtual machines that are stateful.

Web3 will be the basis of our transition from a digital economy to a decentralized economy. The economic opportunities of the decentralized economy can include wholly new business models: everything from fractionalized ownership and rights to assets that are secured digitally, to new kinds of verifiable and unique assets (such as virtual world avatars), to the ability for machines to transact with one another autonomously. A stateful virtual machine essentially allows us to have a shared verified reality upon which to transact digitally.

While it may sound futuristic, it is also the most obvious use for a digital infrastructure that can verify the transaction of value.

How wary lawyers are embracing new tech [Purkis & Osborne in the UK]

On 02/03/2020, in 21st century, career development, change, changing business models, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, society, UK, Uncategorized, workplace, by Daniel Christian

How wary lawyers are embracing new tech — from lawgazette.co.uk by Sophia Purkis & Nadia Osborne

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

There has been an eruption of innovation in legal technology – and the role of the lawyer is evolving in consequence. From law firms and corporate practices, to the operation of the court system and management of documentation, technology is changing what we do, how we do it and where we can do it from.

PwC’s annual law firm survey 2019 found that eight of the top 10 firms identified technology as the key change in growth in the next two to three years. In November 2019, the Law Society published a paper, Lawtech: a comparative analysis of legal technology in the UK and in other jurisdictions, recognising the need for domestic lawyers to stay informed and up to date to remain competitive.

Lawyers are instinctively risk-adverse but the successful ones recognise the inevitability of change and opportunities. The introduction of technology requires investment of finance, time and resource. However, the steady march of technology and client and staff demands mean we must embrace the use of legal technology. It is vital to enable legal professionals to collaborate flawlessly with colleagues and clients, and to keep up with other professions and businesses. We must, however, not forget to be mindful of each other and not lose the ability and opportunity to communicate with each other personally. Machines think in binary terms and sometimes things are not that simple.

Artificial Intelligence is transforming the legal industry [Farmakis]

On 02/01/2020, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, change, changing business models, Cost of legal services - including access, disruption, innovation, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, tools, by Daniel Christian

Artificial Intelligence is transforming the legal industry — from law.comby Christian A. Farmakis
Artificial intelligence (AI) is adding efficiencies and transforming businesses everywhere, and legal practices are no exception.

Excerpts:

How is AI technology disrupting the legal industry?
AI legal technology won’t replace lawyers, but these tools will drastically change the way lawyers provide services for their clients. While estimates vary, 23%t to 35% of a lawyer’s job could be automated. As a result, lawyers will need to be more strategic and supervisorial, able to act as project managers and supervise the information being fed into systems, and knowledgeable about the assumptions underlying the machine learning algorithms.
…
What will be the next wave of AI legal technology?
The next generation, which is starting to hit the market now, will be document automation and legal research and writing tools, as well as predictive technology tools. For example, a contract can be put through an algorithm in order to identify how risky it is. It could be used to determine how likely it is to go into litigation or if it complies with the company’s internal contract procedures and policies.

Another use is analytic tools that can measure efficiency and pricing of the legal services. E-billing and practice management tools could measure whether a service contract should cost $2,500, not the $7,500 that’s being charged. In other instances, AI could help firms do estimates for alternative fee arrangements.

Lawyers: Meet the CEO trying to make you obsolete [Goodnow]

On 01/27/2020, in 21st century, Access to Justice (A2J), career development, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, United States, using teams, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Lawyers: Meet the CEO trying to make you obsolete — from abovethelaw.com by James Goodnow
Call it a drive for increased access to the legal system, call it a grab for cash, the legal and business worlds are getting more comfortable with nonlawyers handling issues traditionally reserved for attorneys.

Excerpt:

Mehta and Factor aim to take a bite out of the segment of the legal market that has previously been off-limits to anyone except Biglaw attorneys: challenging, sophisticated contract negotiations and compliance.
…
Factor’s secret sauce is combining attorneys, nonattorney legal professionals, and curated technology into an efficient package. Factor’s team of hundreds of in-house lawyers oversee nonattorneys specially trained in contract management, compliance issues, and leading-edge technology. The goal, of course, is to bring the cost of even highly complex transactions down to a minimum.

Make no mistake: a new front has opened up in the war between alternative legal service providers and traditional law firms.

From DSC:
While I don’t think lawyers will become obsolete, the amount of technology being integrated into law firms and throughout the legal realm is definitely on the increase. I don’t see that trend slowing down, but rather picking up steam.

How to block Facebook and Google from identifying your face [Haselton]

On 01/25/2020, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Facebook / Meta Platforms, Google, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, platforms, policy, political science, the downsides of how people use tech, by Daniel Christian

How to block Facebook and Google from identifying your face — from cnbc.com by Todd Haselton

Excerpt:

A New York Times report over the weekend discussed a company named Clearview AI that can easily recognize people’s faces when someone uploads a picture.
It scrapes this data from the internet and sites people commonly use, such as Facebook and YouTube, according to the report.
You can stop Facebook and Google from recognizing your face in their systems, which is one step toward regaining your privacy.
Still, it probably won’t entirely stop companies like Clearview AI from recognizing you, since they’re not using the systems developed by Google or Facebook.

How technology and law changes for career development [Ghadawala]

On 01/24/2020, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, corporate / business world, Cost of legal services - including access, emerging technologies, innovation, intelligent systems, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, by Daniel Christian

How technology and law changes for career development — from lawtechnologytoday.org by Manan Ghadawala

Excerpt:

But things have been changing in technology and law over the years. Let us look at these developments in technology and law and also see how technology already [is] — and will — impact legal careers.
…
Joni Pirovich from Hall & Wilcox explained, “As technology trends are pervasive across all industries, it’s now incumbent upon law firms to ensure lawyers have a good starting language to interpret technology concepts and how they interact with legal principles.”

The increase in law firm technology did surprise some people. Forbes found out that there was a 713% jump in investments in technology for law firms in 2018—almost 1.63 billion USD—bolstered mostly by the arrival of eDiscovery, which is an electronic method for finding important information specific investigations or suits.

#Automation #MachineLearning #AI #BigData

Ohio, Illinois, & Michigan courts using technology to bring their services to the people [Houlberg]

On 01/24/2020, in law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, Michigan, policy, technology (general), by Daniel Christian

Ohio, Illinois, & Michigan courts using technology to bring their services to the people — from iaals.du.edu by Michael Houlberg

Excerpt:

Each of these three technological expansions within the courts align with IAALS’ Eighteen Ways Courts Should Use Technology to Better Serve Their Customers, in which we examine ways that existing technologies can be leveraged to improve court users’ experiences.

Why you should care about what’s happening with law schools and the legal realm in general!

On 01/23/2020, in 21st century, Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, change, collaboration, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, ethics, faith, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, morals/values, online learning, pace of change, platforms, policy, political science, professional development, society, technologies for your home, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, trends, Uncategorized, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, youth, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
As some of you may know, I’m now working for the WMU-Thomas M. Cooley Law School. My faith gets involved here, but I believe that the LORD wanted me to get involved with:

Using technology to increase access to justice (#A2J)
Contributing to leveraging the science of learning for the long-term benefit of our students, faculty, and staff
Raising awareness regarding the potential pros and cons of today’s emerging technologies
Increase the understanding that the legal realm has a looooong way to go to try to get (even somewhat) caught up with the impacts that such emerging technologies can/might have on us.
Contributing and collaborating with others to help develop a positive future, not a negative one.

Along these lines…in regards to what’s been happening with law schools over the last few years, I wanted to share a couple of things:

1) An article from The Chronicle of Higher Education by Benjamin Barton:

2) A response from our President and Dean, James McGrath:

From DSC:
I also wanted to personally say that I arrived at WMU-Cooley Law School in 2018, and have been learning a lot there (which I love about my job!). Cooley employees are very warm, welcoming, experienced, knowledgeable, and professional. Everyone there is mission-driven. My boss, Chris Church, is multi-talented and excellent. Cooley has a great administrative/management team as well.

There have been many exciting, new things happening there. But that said, it will take time before we see the results of these changes. Perseverance and innovation will be key ingredients to crafting a modern legal education — especially in an industry that is just now beginning to offer online-based courses at the Juris Doctor (J.D.) level (i.e., 20 years behind when this began occurring within undergraduate higher education).

My point in posting this is to say that we should ALL care about what’s happening within the legal realm! We are all impacted by it, whether we realize it or not. We are all in this together and no one is an island — not as individuals, and not as organizations.

We need:

Far more diversity within the legal field
More technical expertise within the legal realm — not only with lawyers, but with legislators, senators, representatives, judges, others
Greater use of teams of specialists within the legal field
To offer more courses regarding emerging technologies — and not only for the legal practices themselves but also for society at large.
To be far more vigilant in crafting a positive world to be handed down to our kids and grandkids — a dream, not a nightmare. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.

Still not convinced that you should care? Here are some things on the CURRENT landscapes:

You go to drop something off at your neighbor’s house. They have a camera that gets activated. What facial recognition database are you now on? Did you give your consent to that? No, you didn’t.
Because you posted your photo on Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and/or on millions of other websites, your face could be in ClearView AI’s database. Did you give your consent to that occurring? No, you didn’t.
You’re at the airport and facial recognition is used instead of a passport. Whose database was that from and what gets shared? Did you give your consent to that occurring? Probably not, and it’s not easy to opt-out either.
Numerous types of drones, delivery bots, and more are already coming onto the scene. What will the sidewalks, streets, and skies look like — and sound like — in your neighborhood in the near future? Is that how you want it? Did you give your consent to that happening? No, you didn’t.
…and on and on it goes.

Addendum — speaking of islands!

Palantir CEO: Silicon Valley can’t be on ‘Palo Alto island’ — Big Tech must play by the rules — from cnbc.com by Jessica Bursztynsky

Excerpt:

Palantir Technologies co-founder and CEO Alex Karp said Thursday the core problem in Silicon Valley is the attitude among tech executives that they want to be separate from United States regulation.

“You cannot create an island called Palo Alto Island,” said Karp, who suggested tech leaders would rather govern themselves. “What Silicon Valley really wants is the canton of Palo Alto. We have the United States of America, not the ‘United States of Canton,’ one of which is Palo Alto. That must change.”

“Consumer tech companies, not Apple, but the other ones, have basically decided we’re living on an island and the island is so far removed from what’s called the United States in every way, culturally, linguistically and in normative ways,” Karp added.

Juris announces launch of AI powered software to help people solve their own legal problems

On 01/23/2020, in Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Cost of legal services - including access, innovation, intelligent systems, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, society, by Daniel Christian

Juris announces launch of AI powered software to help people solve their own legal problems — from finance.yahoo.com

Excerpt:

Legal technology company Juris has announced the launch of their service, DepositLetter, an online tool built to recover illegally withheld security deposits on behalf of renters. Customers complete a five-minute online interview and Juris does the rest automatically to show their former landlord that they know their rights under the law, to demand their money back, and even threaten to sue. DepositLetter is the first service built on the Juris Virtual Legal Assistant platform, a law-powered A.I. expert system made to help people solve their own legal problems.

Also see:

Millennial lawyers demand mobility. Are law firms ready to provide it? from law.com by Alex Babin
Like it or not, remote work is coming to the legal world. Even among law firms, the development of policies to accommodate work performed away from the office appears to be a notable trend.

Excerpt:

Like it or not, remote work is coming to the legal world. Even among law firms, where I am repeatedly reminded that the adoption of technology tends to lag behind other workplaces and industries, the development of policies to accommodate work performed away from the office appears to be a notable trend. In part, this is being driven by increasing numbers of millennials in the legal workforce. According to a 2019 Deloitte survey, nearly 75% of millennials think a “work-from-home” or “work remotely” policy is important. But the changing perspective is also very likely a function of a broader transition in the legal industry toward technology-enabled efficiency.

Learning Ecosystems

What’s so bad about the billable hour? [Cohen]

5 Things General Counsel Want from Law Firms They Are Not Getting [Savarino & others]

American Bar Assn. President criticizes U.S. legal system as backward, resistant to change [Barnes]

How Blockchain’s ‘paradigm shift’ puts more pressure on legal’s tech evolution [Dipshan]

How wary lawyers are embracing new tech [Purkis & Osborne in the UK]

Lawyers: Meet the CEO trying to make you obsolete [Goodnow]

Ohio, Illinois, & Michigan courts using technology to bring their services to the people [Houlberg]

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