workplace

Technology is increasingly being used to provide legal services, which demands a new breed of innovative lawyer for the 21st century. Law schools are launching specialist LL.M.s in response, giving students computing skills — from llm-guide.com by Seb Murray

Excerpts:

Junior lawyers at Big Law firms have long been expected to work grueling hours on manual and repetitive tasks like reviewing documents and doing due diligence. Increasingly, such work is being undertaken by machines – which can be faster, cheaper and more accurately than humans. This is the world of legal technology – the use of technology to provide legal services.

The top law schools recognize the need to train not just excellent lawyers but tech-savvy ones too, who understand the application of technology and its impact on the legal market. They are creating specialist courses for those who want to be more involved with the technology used to deliver legal advice.

“Technology is changing the way we live, work and interact,” says Alejandro Touriño, co-director of the course. “This new reality demands a new breed of lawyers who can adapt to the emerging paradigm. An innovative lawyer in the 21st century needs not only to be excellent in law, but also in the sector where their clients operate and the technologies they deal with.”

The rapid growth in Legal Tech LL.M. offerings reflects a need in the professional world. Indeed, law firms know they need to become digital businesses in order to attract and retain clients and prospective employees.

From DSC:
In case it’s helpful or interesting, a person interested in a legal career needs to first get a Juris Doctor (J.D.) Degree, then pass the Bar. At that point, if they want to expand their knowledge in a certain area or areas, they can move on to getting an LL.M. Degree if they choose to.

As in the world of higher ed and also in the corporate training area, I have it that the legal field will need to move more towards the use of teams of specialists. There will be several members of the team NOT having law degrees. For example, technologists, programmers, user experience designers, etc. should be teaming up with lawyers more and more these days.

OPINION: The odds are still stacked against low-income college students; here are some ways to expand the possibilities [Eubanks-Davis]

On 12/04/2019, in career development, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, economics, education, higher education, ideas, professional development, social learning / networks, social media, society, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

OPINION: The odds are still stacked against low-income college students; here are some ways to expand the possibilities — from hechingerreport-org by Aimee Eubanks-Davis; with thanks to Joseline Hardrick at the WMU-Cooley Law School for posting this on LinkedIn

Excerpts:

Unfortunately, the odds for low-income students are still stacked against them. In fact, only one in four will graduate with a strong first job or enter graduate school. There is no safety net for these students. In fact, for their families, they are the safety net. They’ll start college expecting to leave with good-paying jobs with benefits that allow them to pay back loans, help their parents or other family members financially, and lead a self-sustaining life. Instead, the jobs that college graduates from low-income backgrounds do eventually land set them on an incongruent path to earn 66 cents on the dollar compared to their more affluent peers.

When we help provide low-income and first-generation college students the tools to overcome gaps in skills, assist them in getting a foot in the door at a top internship and connect them with professionals in the field, they will blow us away every time. I, for one, am excited to see a world in which extraordinary diverse leaders can emerge truly from anywhere and everywhere.

Ten predictions for the very near future of higher education [Busteed]

On 12/03/2019, in 21st century, adjunct faculty, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, faculty, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, learning ecosystem, marketplaces, society, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Ten predictions for the very near future of higher education — from forbes.com by Brandon Busteed

Excerpt:

Down (or flat) will be the new up when it comes to tuition prices.
“Elite” will shift from being the sought-after brand to a questionable one for all but the wealthy. Country clubs or colleges? That will be the question.

Instead of going to college to get a job, students will increasingly be going to a job to get a college degree.

The 20 top tech skills that employers want and that can help you find a job, according to recruiting site Indeed — from businessinsider.com by Rosalie Chan and Bani Sapra

Excerpt:

The job search site Indeed released a report this month about the top tech skills of 2019 based on job descriptions that are being posted.

Andrew Flowers, an economist at Indeed, says that in today’s job market, there are two major trends that drive the top skills in tech. The first is the rise of data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The second is the rise of cloud computing.

“Python has had explosive growth,” Flowers told Business Insider. “If I’m around the dinner table and a nephew asks what should I learn? Having done this report, I would say, learn Python.”

6 reasons why higher education needs to be disrupted [Chamorro-Premuzic & Frankiewicz]

On 11/29/2019, in adjunct faculty, business side of he, change, changing business models, colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, faculty, higher education, research, training / L&D, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

6 reasons why higher education needs to be disrupted — from hbr.org by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Becky Frankiewicz

In our view, until the entire higher educational system prioritizes the classroom over the research lab, it will be a challenge for this dynamic to change.

Excerpts:

Employers need skills, not just knowledge or titles:
Students want jobs, not knowledge or titles:
Students are paying more and more to get less and less:
Students have unrealistic expectations (understandably) about college:
Many elite universities prioritize research, often at the expense of teaching:
Instead of boosting meritocracy, universities reinforce inequality:

The fundamental question we see is this: If a university claims to be a top educational institution, shouldn’t it admit the people with the lowest test scores, and turn them into the leader of tomorrow (as opposed to admitting the people with the highest income and test scores, who would probably rule the world tomorrow regardless of those three or four years in college)?

From DSC:
My hat’s off to those who teach in those institutions who “open wide” the gates of entry!!! They are the professors who have to work their tails off to help their students.

And shame on the elite institutions who continue to value research/grant $$ waaaaaay over teaching — all while charging more and more for less and less…and while many graduates students end up teaching a lot of the undergraduate students. Those graduate students most likely haven’t been taught how to teach either!

And what higher ed pays adjunct faculty members is a complete disgrace — while many coaches make millions of $’s. Full-time faculty members — and administrators/provosts/other members of leadership — who were suddenly put into the adjunct faculty member’s role/wages would be outraged and demand immediate change.

Why AI is a threat to democracy – and what we can do to stop it — from asumetech.com by Lawrence Cole

Excerpts:

In the US, however, we also have a tragic lack of foresight. Instead of creating a grand strategy for AI or for our long-term futures, the federal government has removed the financing of scientific and technical research. The money must therefore come from the private sector. But investors also expect a certain return. That is a problem. You cannot plan your R&D breakthroughs when working on fundamental technology and research. It would be great if the big tech companies had the luxury of working very hard without having to organize an annual conference to show off their newest and best whiz bang thing. Instead, we now have countless examples of bad decisions made by someone in the G-MAFIA, probably because they worked quickly. We begin to see the negative effects of the tension between doing research that is in the interest of humanity and making investors happy.
…
The problem is that our technology has become increasingly sophisticated, but our thinking about what free speech is and what a free market economy looks like has not become that advanced. We tend to resort to very basic interpretations: free speech means that all speech is free, unless it conflicts with defamation laws, and that’s the end of the story. That is not the end of the story. We need to start a more sophisticated and intelligent conversation about our current laws, our emerging technology, and how we can make the two meet halfway.

So I absolutely believe that there is a way forward. But we have to come together and bridge the gap between Silicon Valley and DC, so that we can all steer the boat in the same direction.

— Amy Webb, futurist, NYU professor, founder of the Future Today Institute

Also see:

“FRONTLINE investigates the promise and perils of artificial intelligence, from fears about work and privacy to rivalry between the U.S. and China. The documentary traces a new industrial revolution that will reshape and disrupt our lives, our jobs and our world, and allow the emergence of the surveillance society.”

The film has five distinct messages about:

1. China’s AI Plan
2. The Promise of AI
3. The Future of Work
4. Surveillance Capitalism
5. The Surveillance State

Legal Innovation [Raconteur; UK]

On 11/25/2019, in corporate / business world, law schools, leadership, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, strategy, UK, workplace, by Daniel Christian

How to adapt to the future of work [Daniel Goleman]

On 11/23/2019, in 21st century, business, change, changing business models, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, future, game-changing environment, ideas, leadership, legislatures / government / legal, strategy, student-related, technology (general), training / L&D, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

How to Adapt to the Future of Work https://t.co/JaosI4mMtx

— Simon Porter (@simonlporter) November 22, 2019

Also see:

“Much of what’s being sold as ‘AI’ today is snake oil.” [Arvind Narayanan; Assoc. Prof. of CS at Princeton ]

On 11/22/2019, in adjunct faculty, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, blogs / blogging / vlogging, bots, change, collaboration, communications, computer science, copyright/ownership/NFTs, corporate / business world, engineering, ethics, faculty, health, ideas, innovation, learning, learning ecosystem, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Near Field Communication (NFC), platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, robotics, social learning / networks, social media, tools, United States, universities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, web-based collaboration, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Much of what’s being sold as “AI” today is snake oil. It does not and cannot work. In a talk at MIT yesterday, I described why this happening, how we can recognize flawed AI claims, and push back. Here are my annotated slides: https://t.co/iCpyFw5urN pic.twitter.com/pmOTI3vq8p

— Arvind Narayanan (@random_walker) November 19, 2019

From DSC:
I wish that more faculty members would share their research, teaching methods, knowledge, and commentary with the world as this professor does (vs. talking to other professors behind publishers’ walled off content). In this case, Arvind happens to use Twitter. But if one doesn’t like to use Twitter, there’s also LinkedIn, WordPress/blogging, podcasting, and other outlets.

MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab releases groundbreaking research on AI and the future of work

On 11/21/2019, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, future, game-changing environment, lifelong learning, reinvent, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, technology (general), workplace, by Daniel Christian

MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab releases groundbreaking research on AI and the future of work — from liwaiwai.com

Excerpt:

IBM believes 100% of jobs will eventually change due to artificial intelligence, and new empirical research released last October 30 from the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab reveals how. The research, The Future of Work: How New Technologies Are Transforming Tasks, used advanced machine learning techniques to analyze 170 million online job postings in the United States between 2010 and 2017. It shows, in the early stages of AI adoption, how tasks of individual jobs are transforming and the impact on employment and wages.

“As new technologies continue to scale within businesses and across industries, it is our responsibility as innovators to understand not only the business process implications, but also the societal impact,” said Martin Fleming, vice president and chief economist of IBM. “To that end, this empirical research from the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab sheds new light on how tasks are reorganizing between people and machines as a result of AI and new technologies.”

While most jobs will change as new technologies, such as AI, scale, the research shows few jobs will actually disappear. What is fundamentally changing is the way we work.

Key findings from the paper here — from mitibmwatsonailab.mit.edu

Tasks are Shifting Between People and Machines – But the Change has been Small
Tasks Increasing in Value Tend to Require Soft Skills
High- and Low-Wage Jobs are Gaining Tasks and Earning More

Also related/see:

Brookings: AI will heavily affect tech and white-collar jobs — from venturebeat.com by Khari Johnson

Excerpt:

AI is set to have a big impact on high-wage, white-collar, and tech jobs, according to a new Brookings Institution study released today. The report analyzes overlap between job descriptions and patent database text, using NLP to assign each job an exposure score.

“High-tech digital services such as software publishing and computer system design — that before had low automation susceptibility — exhibit quite high exposure, as AI tools and applications pervade the technology sector,” the report reads.

Think you could learn Mandarin? This Kansas kindergarten classroom is Chinese-only — from by Robert Smith

Excerpts:

In a Wolf Springs Elementary School classroom with “Chinese Only Zone” signs taped to the walls, kindergarteners are learning their core subjects in the primary language of a global economic superpower located across the world.

This language-immersion class of kindergarteners is part of a new Blue Valley School District initiative to graduate high school seniors fluent in a second language, an asset school officials believe will give students a leg up as they pursue academics and careers and prepare students to participate in a global workforce.
…
Chinese Mandarin, a group of dialects spoken by more than 800 million people, is a tonal language in which the meaning of words can be reflected by voice pitch. Though its grammar is similar to English, words or phrases are represented by Chinese characters.

Besides the usual educational stresses, parents who put their children in the program would need to be committed to the program. Because these kindergarteners are expected to remain together in a Mandarin-speaking classroom all the way through high school, new immersion students can only enter the program in kindergarten.
…
While other elementary-aged students spend roughly 60 minutes studying Spanish per week, this group of kindergartens spends half of their school time each day with Pan learning math, science and social studies in Mandarin. The groups studies reading and literacy with teacher Haley Watkins in English.

“In under a minute we filled all of the slots. That afternoon we had hundreds of people on the waiting list.”

From DSC:
Wow! This is quite the K-12 cohort/immersion! Add to that type of setup tools like Cisco Webex, Blackboard Collaborate, Adobe Connect, etc. — and not to mention what happens with virtual reality in the next decade — and this type of cohort/immersion will likely be highly effective over time.

So what will the future classrooms of the world look like? My guess is that with 5G and virtual reality on the way, there will be a lot more “connections” being made in the future…with many nations/classrooms being involved.

iStock-1154674846-purchased-11-21-19
[From my purchase of iStock #1154674846.]

Permanent verification — the best blockchain use case for lawyers [Urban]

On 11/21/2019, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Blockchain, emerging technologies, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, workplace, by Daniel Christian

INSIGHT: Permanent verification — the best blockchain use case for lawyers — from news.bloomberglaw.com by Holly Urban

Excerpt:

In the legal sphere, many articles have addressed the ways blockchain systems can be used for “smart contracts,” financial transactions like with Bitcoin or Facebook’s Libra, or other more complex scenarios.

However, a frequently overlooked use case for blockchain in the legal industry is actually much more commonplace—the ability to use blockchain technology as a means to allow permanent verification of legally significant documents and data.

Using blockchain technology, lawyers can prevent fraud, alteration, or forgery of documents, contracts and other legal instruments, copyrighted materials, photographic or video evidence, and much more.

Traditional document verification methods relied almost exclusively on the slow, costly, and insecure use of third party verifiers. The advent of blockchain technology is primed to make these outmoded verification methods a thing of the past.

6 critical IT skills for the next decade: Bay Area CIO of the Year winners share — from enterprisersproject.com by Ginny Hamilton
What skills will IT talent need most? Six award-winning CIOs discuss the top skills on their radar screens – from AI to emotional intelligence

I’d highly recommend all technology professionals build their external network and contribute to the external professional community as early in your career as possible. The wisdom of the tech community is incredibly important, and because you have to curate this over an extended period of time, there is no accelerated option you can tap at a later date. Technology professionals need to constantly be re-inventing themselves to stay relevant. As technology evolves, so too do the people and roles around it. Constant change is the steady state today and as I tell my team, “The pain of change is mandatory, it is the suffering that is optional. And if you don’t like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less.”

From DSC:
This is an especially good read for students who are considering going into a tech-focused career. If you decide to go that route, you had better be ready for constant change….constant, lifelong learning. And as you get older, you will face age discrimination. Enjoy the jobs that you get from ages 18-30 (perhaps even up to age 35). After that, it gets much tougher. Hopefully, that situation will change as more organizations get sued for allowing this discrimination to continue (perhaps implementing is the more appropriate word…vs. allowing it to occur). Here are some examples of those kinds of issues/suits. But for now, that’s the state of things…at least here in the United States.

In Search of a Conversational Bot: Voice Computing Evolves [Pamela Hogle]

On 11/18/2019, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, corporate universities / corporate training, emerging technologies, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, Natural Language Processing (NLP), platforms, tools, training / L&D, trends, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, workplace, by Daniel Christian

In Search of a Conversational Bot: Voice Computing Evolves — from learningsolutionsmag.com by Pamela Hogle

Excerpts:

Voice computing is rapidly changing the way people interact with technology, which will have dramatic impact on how learners expect to interact with eLearning technology.

Using conversational AI in an eLearning context, where learners are focused on a single topic or narrow range of content, could become feasible before developers achieve the goal of an AI that excels at general conversation.

TECHREPORT 2019: Practice Management [Paykin]

On 11/18/2019, in 21st century, change, changing business models, law schools, leadership, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, society, strategy, technology (general), telecommunications, tools, workplace, by Daniel Christian

TECHREPORT 2019: Practice Management — from lawtechnologytoday.org by Alexander Paykin

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center surveyed a sample size of 53,252 attorneys regarding the technology and software both available and utilized in their firms. This TECHREPORT analyzes both the responses of these attorneys on a variety of technological developments and changes occurring in the legal industry and the existing trepidation to adopt certain technologies.
…
The world continues to shift towards a more technological focus, while the legal industry has not followed suit in many aspects. The use of practice management systems has not seen any real growth throughout the last four years despite high satisfaction ratings. There still remains a need for an all-inclusive practice management system that would not require firms to purchase a variety of different programs for specific tasks, and the switching costs of practice management systems remain a concern for many firms—particularly solo and large firms.
…
Overall, technology continues to be developed for the legal industry in abundance, however, in many sectors of the industry, various sized firms are hesitant to adopt these advancements, leading to steady or declining growth rates for much of these technologies. The size of the firm also has a large influence on the technologies a firm may adopt, and this makes it hard to predict what technologies may appeal to what firms.

Most law technology is still fairly new, and it has quite far to go before being developed enough to displace traditional ways of accomplishing tasks that many firms value now. There still exists a desire for more and newer technologies that will make this switch easier, and without the feasibility to switch to these software programs more efficiently and effectively, the legal industry will still wait to adapt to the evolving technological world around us.

Learning Ecosystems

…a new breed of innovative lawyer is needed for the 21st century.

Ten predictions for the very near future of higher education [Busteed]

6 reasons why higher education needs to be disrupted [Chamorro-Premuzic & Frankiewicz]

Legal Innovation [Raconteur; UK]

Permanent verification — the best blockchain use case for lawyers [Urban]

TECHREPORT 2019: Practice Management [Paykin]

Categories

Tags