Category Archives: LegalTech

CodeX FutureLaw 2021: Computational contracts create a Big Bang in legal

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Originally published on the Legal Executive Institute.

By Joseph Raczynski

The bleeding edge of the legal industry is now building interfaces at the intersection of code and law through computational contracts.

These computational contracts (sometime called smart contracts), according to Stanford University, are a universal Contract Definition Language that will allow terms and conditions to be represented in machine-understandable way. As a result, computers will be able to process and reason over the contracts automatically with a guaranteed degree of accuracy. The Stanford project sees this as not only a significant reduction of legal transaction costs, but it also opens a variety of new options to create better contracts.

With these building blocks taking shape, we can finally peer into how technology will guide legal into a fundamental paradigm shift around legal contracts. This idea, among others, were discussed and debated at the recent CodeX FutureLaw 2021 conference, held virtually.

Before the legal pyrotechnics on self-executing contracts, the conference began in more of a reflective state. Thomas Kim, Chief Legal Officer and Company Secretary at Thomson Reuters, spoke about the industry transformations ahead, emphasizing the intelligent, thoughtful adoption of new technologies. In crafting his message, Kim focused his attention on the compelling need to establish industry standards around technology, where companies must create global values. Pivoting to regulation, which he believes will ramp up, Kim explained that is vitally necessary for companies and their technology to weave a fair fabric of social consciousness and awareness.

Finally, Kim described the key principles around artificial intelligence which Thomson Reuters has offered to the industry, prioritizing safety, security, privacy, and humanity.

codex

In another session, Allen Kay, a preeminent American computer scientists and Turing Award Laureate, led an eccentric yet nuanced keynote on intellectual curiosity and bias. He purposefully quizzed the audience, asking: “With so many bright people on the Supreme Court, why do we have such different opinions?” Utilizing theatrical metaphor throughout, he unpacked a theory of human perspective, with the theater in our minds. “Humans are easily fooled, want to be fooled, pay to be fooled, fool ourselves, and we pay to fool others,” Kay said, adding that most of our mind is still operating on instinct from 200,000 years ago.

Kay’s incisive vision on the human condition laid out the inherent concerns surrounding the next era of computational power and the biases built into them. Our malleable minds can be shaped by those in power with their narrative, he surmised, and without the legal industry applying critical thought, the producer of the play will create a scene in their own vision, i.e. bias within the code for the legal industry.

Forming the law into computational contracts

The conference then shifted to the concept of computational contracts covered by two different panels, which both were in near uniform agreement that we are going to see serious disruption to the contractual components of legal agreements in the near future.

Harry Surden, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado, moderated the panel and described the complexity of helping computers understand the English language, which is no easy feat. Michael Genesereth, professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, then began with a premise that we need to rethink how contracts are written, stating that there’s a need to “form the law into computable contracts.”

To do so, however, first we have to create a domain ontology, which is the first vocabularies and vernacular that can be used to describe a universe of the legal discourse. In this instance, we are referring to dependencies between types of knowledge in legal reasoning. It sounds easy, right?

codex

One surprising theme the panel offered was the interstitial nature of using AI to convert contract language to a form of computational contracts. “We are currently trying to rebuild the horse out of metal and machines rather than progressing to the car,” said Oliver Goodenough, Law Research Professor, University of Vermont. Instead, he said, we will get to a point where we need to rethink the contract itself and then code around it.

What panelists proposed was a system that used the ontology of a legal system, coupled with interdependencies and outside data to build a dynamic contract. Eventually, this would be a no-code solution that would be akin to the WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) web pages that people build today, rather than using HTML.

The second panel focused on computational contracts by using the insurance industry as a backdrop. Michael Pieciak, Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation, described what computational contracts look like, noting these contracts are so rich in technology that it took a 122-page report to describe the algorithm they use for insurance underwriting.

Roland Scharrer, Group Chief Data & Emerging Technology Officer at AXA, described the complexity of what his company has built and how it works, adding that contract creators can get insights from data within the industry and then write the contracts. “This technology is real and being used now,” Scharrer said.

Panelists also observed that in the not too distant future, the contracts will be more complex, and users will be able to leverage external data with the contract itself. Eventually, the contract will be able to execute itself. We also will see an increase in the use of decentralization components, which is being embraced by the FinTech, eCommerce and insurance industries.

While sessions touched on automation and disruption, the binding element which connected all of the day’s debate was a focus on creating a more equitable, open, and fair legal landscape imbued with thoughtful, unbiased technology. Reflecting on the keynote, it’s fair to surmise that the opportunity is immense — yet, we must commit to critical thinking, challenging traditional norms, and re-conceptualizing how technology can enable access to justice and better legal services for all.

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs): Asset ownership via blockchain rockets into legal

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In a two-part series, we will look at Non-Fungible Tokens, explaining what they are and how they will impact numerous industries; and how decentralized finance (DeFi) is critical to understanding NFT’s importance within the legal industry.

Originally published on the Legal Executive Institute.

By Joseph Raczynski

Welcome to the early days of where blockchain goes mainstream, and the legal industry needs to take notice.

While Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have been around for several years — remember CryptoKitties or even the original NFT, called CryptoPunks? Even if you don’t, NFTs have officially exploded into popular culture, begging the question: So, what are they?

A Non-Fungible Token is a token stored on the blockchain, which itself is a secure distributed database with redundancy, immutability, and clarity into tracking data or ownership. A token proves ownership of an asset. For example, a deed to your house is a sign of ownership to that plot of land and building. In the case of the first digital token, Bitcoin, a single Bitcoin is the title of ownership to the underlying value of the Bitcoin.

The best part about a token on the blockchain is the ability to track ownership and therefore authenticity, undeniably proving ownership.

CryptoPunk #7129 Sold for $90,000 recently

Fungible refers to an asset that is easily exchangeable. In the classic example, a dollar is very fungible — you can hand a dollar to me in exchange for some gum, and I can then re-use that dollar for a can of soda. The physical dollar maybe different because I swapped with another in my wallet, but it is easily replaceable and exchangeable, so it is fungible.

Now, it gets interesting. A non-fungible token is a unique token that is not easily exchangeable or replaceable with another. With the mania that is occurring with NFTs, the best example is with art. Recently, Mike Winkelmann, known as @Beeple, a renowned artist who has worked with Nike and Apple, sold 20 pieces of his own work on the digital marketplace Nifty Gateway for a total of $3.5 million. And in the latest eye-opener, he sold a collection of many of his works combined into a masterpiece, titled EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS at Christie’s for $69 million. These transactions occurred on Ethereum, the primary blockchain platform of record for storing value, but Winkelmann’s art itself was simply digital images.

With the NFTs, we are proving that rare and scarce representation of things can create value, and that value can be captured on the blockchain. Let your imagination run wild for a moment: What this means is that nearly anything and everything that is represented digitally could also carry provable value.

Would you pay 2.5 million for ownership of Jack Dorsey’s first Tweet?

For example, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, is in the process of selling his first Tweet, the original Tweet of Twitter. It is, as of this writing, estimated at a value of $2.5 million and projected to go higher. Why might you ask? Well, it is feasible to collect royalties on that tweet once you own it; or, you could hopefully resell it in the future. Lastly — and again, I beg your imagination for this thought — in the not too distant future, with people living in virtual reality, these pieces of art will have a home inside those worlds, too. Other examples, the NBA has now gotten in on the action by leveraging NBA Top Shot, selling limited edition, finite numbers of virtual basketball cards, including a short clip of a LeBron James dunk, which recently sold for more than $200,000.

In the past, I discussed asset tokenization, which is the simple idea that nearly anything could be represented on the blockchain as having value. It this is now happening. This could be a painting, your car, a house, or even a Tweet. Essentially, if you have something original, that you can then prove is yours, that item can derive value.

Through the lens of the legal kaleidoscope, we are entering a complicated but colorful place, and there are an incredible number of areas this will touch. As technology push us to rethink what we know, NFTs shall do the same. In this nascent area, contemplation about the impact on both the practice and business of law will hit multiple fronts. Here are just a few:

  1. Intellectual property — NFTs carry a huge target on their virtual backs from the IP angle. At the heart of these tokens is uniqueness and ownership, and that means that eventually, litigation will follow.
  2. Trust & estates — Possession comes in the form of a digital wallet. Access to the private and public keys will need to be accounted for and administered for these sorts of new assets.
  3. Anti-money laundering — One worry, at the moment, is that the buying and selling of these digital assets could be a way to disguise or launder dirty money. Although the underlining technology of the blockchain is leveraged, a general misunderstanding of its complexity makes it a temporary safe haven for the scofflaw.
  4. Tax & accounting — Millions of dollars are being transferred, soon to be billions; and those in the tax & accounting field will need to better understand this space to assist their clients. How are sales treated? What does appreciation impact? And how can we account for the transactions?

NTFs are likely here to stay. They will continue to evolve, however, representing nearly every assets class going forward. Law firms, corporations, tax & accounting firms, and government agencies will need to pay attention to this space in order to account for how this new technology impacts their individual [digital] pictures of the law.

Understanding the lessons of the pandemic and human nature at Legal Geek

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Originally published on Thomson Reuters, Legal Institute.

By Joseph Raczynski

The pandemic was “the great equalizer” for the legal industry, combining the good from before with the great from the now.

A recent half-day virtual event, Legal Geek Presents Thomson Reuters Takeover, underscored this idea and offered a glimpse into the latest legal insights on the future of the legal profession and the impact of the opportunities arising in legal technology.

Lizzy Duffy, Senior Director of Global Client Services at Thomson Reuters Acritas, gave a sharp keynote that cut to the heart of the changes we all experienced during the pandemic over the last year. She shared the vision we lived, a sense of humanity, where we peered into each other’s homes, met pets, and universally heard one of our colleagues quip, “You’re on mute!” Raising important lessons from this time, Duffy focused on the positive, examining what we can learn from the last year and how we can push away the unhealthy habits we once had.

Turning toward numbers — since Duffy specializes in data around current legal trends — she said one major lesson of the pandemic (and potential benefit) is the renewed focus on doing more with less. Over the last year, the pandemic created a surge in work for law firms and corporations, specifically around contracts and financing. Alas, legal budgets did not grow in tandem, she said. While corporate general counsel experienced an uptick in disputes, for example, the spending did not follow, Duffy said, identifying an imbalance in legal organizations desire to provide more to clients and customers, but doing without any increase in resources. The pinch of the increased need for services coupled with less resources became real in lockdown.

Law firms also have refined their drivers as a result of the pandemic, according to Duffy. The parameters now include, what is delivered, how it is delivered, and who is delivering it. First, law firms have to distinguish themselves with what is delivered, by offering highly specialized, experienced talent, while also increasing their range of services provided. Second, technology and thinking innovatively greatly influenced how it is delivered, and leveraging alternative resources were accelerated. Third, diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) became an important standard for all parties as to who is delivering it, while trust and personal relationships —  seemingly omnipresent, were even more important in a virtualized environment for clients and law firms.

Geek

The struggles highlighted during the keynote demonstrated a divide between virtual and in-person experiences. Acritas found that 15% of practitioners experienced an overall deterioration in their perspectives by being less efficient and productive, missing collaboration with colleagues and learning opportunities. Conversely, 34% said they felt they were more efficient, enjoyed leveraging technology, and felt more productive.

Duffy noted our human existence of commonalties, yet juxtaposed our differences. In the end, the path forward is a hybrid approach, where law firms and corporations acknowledge these different experiences and adapt to allow individuals the latitude of picking their own Tao-ish professional path towards balance, flexibility, and order.

Geek

In the session Now What’s Trending?, Rawia Ashraf, Senior Director of Legal Practice and Productivity, and Jim Leason, Vice President of Customer Proposition, both at Thomson Reuters, led a discussion making sense of the latest trends in legal technology. They dove into a panoply of topics including, working from home, alternative legal service providers, the Cloud, and transaction management.

Ashraf recalled a conversation she had in 2018 about Cloud adoption, where a leader in the industry mentioned that it was going to take a pivotal event to push the legal industry fully into the Cloud, thinking it was going to be a major security breech. It ended up, of course, being COVID-19.

During a participant poll in this panel, Ashraf asking attendees what percentage of law firms were not comfortable with the Cloud, based on the 2020 ILTA Technology Survey. While most respondents thought it was 28%, Ashraf informed the audience that it was only 11%. Clearly Cloud technology has grown in importance over the last handful of years, and this was greatly accelerated over 2020.

Another issue that Leason and Ashraf tackled surrounded cost. With projected real estate footprints falling, where do the unallocated savings go? Leason believes a good percentage will be invested in technology; and with a multitude of newer applications and services coming into play, it is a natural progression for efficiency and productivity in the marketplace.

Lastly, Legal Geek brought us breakout sessions around artificial intelligence, discussing ethics and contract review, which are strong themes in machine learning. The session highlighted Thomson Reuters’ recently launched AI Principles, a set of guidelines designed to ensure the organization is promoting the ethical research, development, and adoption of AI. Given the bias that can be found in various algorithms which can be greatly exacerbated by AI, it was comforting to learn the industry is conscious and actively doing something.

The Legal Geek event really brought home that 2020 has been a time to reflect, learn, adapt, and adopt. While we all have commonalities in our goal of serving a client, we may do it differently. Leveraging technology, what we have learned about ourselves, and tapping into our own basic nature will make the path forward easier and better for everyone. That will be especially true if we can embrace the flexibility we have recently enjoyed and combine it with the good of the old, thereby creating a healthier ecosystem that’s well enabled by technology.

Podcast: The Hearing – Federico Ast – Cofounder & CEO – Kleros

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From the producer: Here at The Hearing HQ we’ve really missed travelling. So being whisked (virtually) to Buenos Aires for this week’s episode was a real treat!

Meet Joe’s guest, Federico Ast, the CEO and founder of Kleros. He’s deeply intelligent, thoughtful and one hell of an aggravator in the world of justice. Federico has a philosophy-centered approach to improving judicial systems around the world, and talks to Joe about how deliberative democracy can fast-track access to justice.

Kleros is an online dispute resolution system based on blockchain, crowdsourcing and game theory. We hear how Federico has used his experience of the Argentinian economic collapse of the 90s to problem-solve dispute resolution for the internet age.

Listen Here:

Apple: The Hearing – A Legal Podcast – EP. 73 – Federico Ast (Kleros) 

Google: The Hearing – A Legal Podcast – EP. 73 – Federico Ast (Kleros) 

Podcast: The Hearing – Doug Pepe – Partner – Joseph Hage Aaronson LLC

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From the producer: You may have watched as Mark Zuckerberg explained the internet to Congress in a way that felt a bit unnecessary. Well, this episode is sort of the opposite of that. Joe Raczynski is joined by legal and mathematical macroeconomics genius Doug Pepe, to take us through blockchain, tokens and cryptocurrency in a way that’s genuinely enlightening.

The legal industry is sometimes accused of not keeping up, but we know that’s not true. Lawyers are occupying this space now. Their clients are very active and they have a crucial role to play in the serious policy issues being debated.

Doug, a partner at Joseph Hage Aaronson, started his blockchain journey by building gaming computers with his young children, and then teaching them how to mine bitcoin. Fast forward and Doug is now an expert on blockchain privacy, smart contracts and digital identity.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-68-doug-pepe-jha/id1389813956?i=1000503066806

Google/Android: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9wb3J0YWwtYXBpLnRoaXNpc2Rpc3RvcnRlZC5jb20veG1sL3RoZS1oZWFyaW5n/episode/aHR0cDovL2F1ZGlvLnRoaXNpc2Rpc3RvcnRlZC5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9hdWRpby9lcGlzb2Rlcy9FcDY4X0RvdWdfUGVwZV9taXhkb3duLTE2MDgzMDQxMDgzMzgzNDc3MDctTXpFMk9UVXROelF6TVRNME16WT0ubXAz?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjo-ObCpN_tAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAw

Find out more at tr.com/TheHearing

ILTA’s 2020 Annual Legal Technology Survey

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It’s out! In a year unlike any of the 30 previous annual surveys, the 2020 International Legal Technology Association’s (ILTA’s) Annual Survey breaks down the technology transformation afoot resulting from the ongoing pandemic. With insightful data-driven industry trends, this year’s ILTA survey highlights the rapid pivots, swerves, and shifts happening in the legal technology marketplace.

All of us are intimately familiar with the chaos that impacted law firms, employees, clients, and the courts that followed the initial shutdowns in March. What has resulted is a robust renewed interest in tech tools that enable work to continue to flow and ultimately solve client needs. So, which trends floated to the top of legal tech?

Zooming to its zenith, the video conferencing tool Zoom made huge waves. It was the clear favorite for law firms that sought to bring internal and external people together immediately and without much ado. While Zoom struggled with capacity issues and some serious security concerns initially, those fears were allayed over time.

What will be fascinating, of course, is next year’s statistics. Zoom could be a bridge to the video conferencing world, where Microsoft is king. The interoperability suite that Microsoft provides would seem to indicate that Zoom has indeed hit their peak in the legal marketplace. Couple that with industry leaders creating a secure legal ecosystem with the courts that integrates video, calendaring, docketing, and case information all under a strict security blanket, and Zoom might have challenges in the legal marketplace going forward.

ILTA

Another trend brought up in the ILTA survey — one which is cited year after year but was accelerated in 2020 — was cloud adoption. If you have ever been in or seen a server room, you will know its brrrrr affect. Not only do they have a cacophonic hum of a dozen beehives, but they are more frigid than a Minneapolis January morning. If a firm can jettison a good percentage of that infrastructure in favor of an arguably more secure cloud environment, which doesn’t require thermals, it’s a win. To that end, cloud embracing extends to nearly every part of the business, including MS Office, email, VoIP (hosted phones), DMS, case management, eDiscovery, etc.

ILTA

Turning toward specifics of the work from home phenomenon and its impact on the survey, there are several interesting points to raise. Antidotally, I knew several firms that during the height of the pandemic still had their support staff in their office, while others adopted technology. One area of adoption that boomed was Remote Online Notarization (RON); and having recently used RON myself, I was thoroughly impressed. The hoops I jumped through to prove my identity was far greater than the in-person model. To that end, it seems many firms leapt through the rings as well with DocVerify and E-Notary leading the market. Fully 21% of law firms were using these tools, an impressive embrace of tech over in personal interaction.

Another tech tool getting a pandemic push was mobile. Steadily increasing over the years, people embraced their iPad and mobile device much more this year, unsurprisingly. With a broader push by content producers, application developers, and kids, the world is rapidly moving to mobile first. Meaning that at some point, the expectation will be that most work could or should be done via a mobile device.

The next iteration of this will be to jettison laptops and grab ahold of a plug to connect mobile devices to larger screens. Samsung is experimenting with this now via DEX. This could see your mobile device becoming your computer, one-in-the-same. Short of that, you see legal tech applications increasingly built and optimized for mobile devices. This trend will likely continue.

ILTA

Another interesting trend spotted this year was the drop of “security” from the top concerns cited by law firms. While security has long stood atop that list of concerns, it was replaced this year by two doggedly difficult ones: “Change: Users’ acceptance of change” followed by “Change: Managing expectations (users and management)”. That seems to boil down to communication, action plans, stakeholder buy-in, and disseminating information in order to get people on board. An easy task, right?

What does the future hold?

In the coming years, here are three areas that I might expect the ILTA survey to cover in greater detail:

Legal platforms — We are on the cusp of a major movement across the legal landscape in which thousands of legal startups and their well-established brethren have hit critical mass. How can these disparate apps and services be integrated along with appropriate data controls? The hope is to have these applications meet their users on an agnostic legal platform, open to all parties and integrated across both the business and practice of law.

Office impact — With people working remotely for the better part of 18 months, does it make sense to still have an office, and if so, how big? Do satellite offices come into vogue now, and, if so, how does that look technologically?

Virtual reality – What seemed laughable five years ago will be thrust into the spotlight soon. While little discussed, Apple will likely have a VR headset called “Apple Glass” in the next 12 to 18 months. As the bellwether of mobile technology, this will create new avenues to digest, interact with, and expand on legal applications. Imagine Zooming away through an Apple Glass headset and interacting with your avatar clients as if they were in the room, or leading a jury through a crime scene via 360-degree recorded video. This is right around the corner, and my expectation is that you will see this listed on an upcoming ILTA survey soon.

Clearly this has been a year of transformation. Faster than in any of the last few decades, we saw law firms confronted with an existential threat turning quickly toward technology. With this pivot, I would surmise that the future of technology is LED bright within the legal industry, and it will continue to become more invaluable.

Podcast: The Hearing – Ron Levine – General Counsel – Herrick, Feinstein LLP

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In this week’s episode, we showcase a conversation with Ron Levine, General Counsel at Herrick, Feinstein LLP.

Ron, a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, speaks as a thoughtful realist, proponent for good, and a practitioner of what he preaches. He bears witness as a 40-year litigator, discussing the fascinating dealings of what happens behind the class action suit scenes, describing a lack of transparency, and what he would do to improve the system.

Ron dives into the importance of technology, as a crusader for others in the field. Specifically, in the eDiscovery space he stresses the importance of tools, AI, and being smart about (of all things) the use of email.

He also discusses what the future of litigation might look like with prediction modelling and big data.

Listen on Apple:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ep-62-ron-levine-herrick-feinstein-llp/id1389813956?i=1000493632731

Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9wb3J0YWwtYXBpLnRoaXNpc2Rpc3RvcnRlZC5jb20veG1sL3RoZS1oZWFyaW5n/episode/aHR0cDovL2F1ZGlvLnRoaXNpc2Rpc3RvcnRlZC5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9hdWRpby9lcGlzb2Rlcy9FcDYyX1Jvbl9MZXZpbmVfbWl4ZG93bi0xNjAxNjYwNDM3Njk4NzMzMTY5LU16RXhPVE10TlRVeE5UUTNNRFE9Lm1wMw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiotKvnlqTsAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQCA

ILTA-ON goes on: Biggest legal tech conference of the year presses onward

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Originally published on the Legal Executive Institute.

By Joseph Raczynski

In a year like no other, the most prominent legal technology conference recently wrapped their weeklong virtual event as the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) morphed its annual ILTACON event into ILTA>ON.

After initially vacillating on a hybrid in-person and virtual event, before ILTA decided to go with a fully virtual event with more than 100 sessions and various virtual activities. According to the site, ILTA>ON (as it was known) had roughly 3,800 attendees and vendors compared to past years of around 5,000 — a very respectable haul given the circumstances.

As with the 12 other ILTA conferences in which I have partaken in the past, each day begins with a keynote speaker. One of the highlights from the daily keynotes was the first day presentation by Stephen Carver, a professor at Cranfield University in the U.K., titled Leadership Under Stress: Exploring Project Failure at NASA, which dissected the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster.

ILTA

Prof. Carver’s talk explored NASA’s failures in planning, procurement, leadership, and change management with the intent to help attendees apply the learning to law firm technology projects. “It’s all about a really small bunch of people not communicating and not learning from their mistakes,” Carver said, adding that sometimes from failure, you have to reimage the entire organization.

Another keynote highlight was provided by Jia Jiang, CEO and founder of Rejection Therapy, a social self-help game, who regaled participants with story after story of his own self-induced humiliation tests — done as experiments in 2012 — to overcome his own fear of rejection. His goal? To be rejected every day for 100 days.

Embarrassing examples included asking strangers on the street for $100 to see their reaction, requesting Krispy Kreme create him donuts in the shape and color of the Olympic rings, and asking a pilot at a rural airport if he could fly his plane, even though Jiang had no flying experience. His underlining theme — fear of rejection can hold you back. It is our natural tendency is to avoid rejection at all costs, which can be detrimental to our businesses, careers, and lives, he said. His goal was to teach the importance of becoming rejection-proof, the basic principles of turning a No into Yes, as well as how to get more Yes answers.

Lastly, another keynote speaker, Richard Punt, who leads legal strategy and market development at Thomson Reuters, offered his insights in a talk titled, After the Quake: Predictions for an Uncertain Legal Future, where he took the audience beyond the here and now to see what the future of the legal industry might look like.

Making a virtual event work

The monumental efforts of the ILTA community of volunteers fostered as close to an in-person event as possible. The numerous educational sessions were available via Zoom and ran the gamut from leadership, business development, company track updates, data science, knowledge management, legal services, legal operations, marketing, and finally finishing on the future of the legal tech space.

Intelligently sprinkled among sessions were activities and events facilitated in a networking fashion, with the Watercooler and Hallway as places to meet informally. People could simply jump into the Watercooler and connect with small groups, or one-on-ones via video. Often after a specific session, people were encouraged to meet with the speakers in the watercooler room. This compares to the often bum-rushing of speakers that occurs at typical live ILTACONs, post-session. Other events included wine tastings and comedy events.

Overall, the level of engagement and content delivered at ILTA>ON was impressive. Another highlight included a session that walked participants through how law firms can create workflow apps using a combination of web services and data to build a process on Microsoft Power Automate. In their example, participants learned how they could build a COVID-19 check-in app for firm employees. Another great set of sessions was on data science, unpacking internal data at firms and how it can be leveraged.

Finally, I had the privilege of being selected to report on how ILTA did on their Law Firm 2020 Predictions that were made seven years ago. With a Back to the Future movie theme in the background, I reviewed past predictions to see what came true and what industry sages got wrong with legal technology between 2013 and today. I also peered into the abyss of legal tech’s future over the next five years, before taking a 1.21 gigawatts ride and shooting into that future, focusing on technology in 2030, 2040, and into the Singularity.

It was a Great Scott! moment indeed.

LegalTech Report Card and Predictions 2020 to 2060 – ILTA Conference 2020

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I had the privilege of being selected to report on how ILTA (International Legal Technology Association) did on their predictions from 2013 up to today, during their 2020 ILTA-ON Conference. Even more fun, predicting what technology and LegalTech will look like from 2020-2025, and then going out to 2060.

Remember back when we had ‘Law Firm 2020 predictions’? In the first part of my ILTA-ON presentation, we will go ‘Back to the Future’ reviewing past predictions to see what came true and what we got wrong. Then, we will blast into a journey of what LegalTech looks like in the next five years. Lastly, for those who get motion sickness, grab your Dramamine, because we will take a 1.21 gigawatts ride, shooting into the future. We will predict what the technological and legal landscape will look like in 2030, 2040, and into the Singularity! Great Scott!

Part 1 – Jump Ahead (9:17): Grading the Law Firm 2020 report from 2013: https://youtu.be/UgyDyBSJ3AA?t=558

Part 2 – Jump Ahead (22:55) Predictions for 2020-2025: https://youtu.be/UgyDyBSJ3AA?t=1377

Part 3 – Jump Ahead (40:17) Technology Predictions 2030, 2040, 2050, and 2060: https://youtu.be/UgyDyBSJ3AA?t=2419

Part 2: APIs: The cardiovascular system of the legal platform

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Originally published on the Legal Executive Institute.

By Joseph Raczynski

Previously, we discussed how platforms create an ecosystem or environment that allow people and businesses to interact and accomplish tasks and ultimately create a network that can connect and benefit the entire community.

Within this environment, of course, interoperability flourishes – pushing early adopters and innovators to think boldly about workflow and connectivity. How can connecting various applications help attorneys do their job better?

One core component enabling a successful platform to help lawyers be more efficient is the use of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). These API services allow applications to call upon another computer server to retrieve information. For example, if you check the temperature on your phone and it instantly tells you, then what likely occurred is that your phone’s weather app, working on the phone’s platform or operating system, made a request called a post that asked for the temperature, then listened for a response called the get. Your phone then received this get — some small snippets of computer code in a format that the app could understand — and then displayed it on your phone.

How an API works: The App searches via a “post” and receives a “get” in the form of data from a remote server to display

Increasingly, we are seeing the legal community open large repositories of data so that applications on the platform can interact with it. The legal industry has know-how products that utilize APIs for both the search of that remote content as well as ingesting content into a firm repository. The latter, a data API, permits the legal know-how to be searchable using metadata or full text search.

In this way, a firm could leverage their universal search inside the firm to find answers from said remote data as well as their own internal repositories of information with APIs facilitating efficiency across the platform. Apps can connect with other apps and pass on information and usher in the ability for developers to build possibilities left only up to the imagination. No longer is software or data siloed, where people must swivel chair back-and-forth as the only path to solve problems and get answers.

Law firms can incorporate APIs into a platform that creates near infinite possibilities for more efficiency, access to data, and collaboration. For example, imagine that a law firm hopes to win a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) as its client. In this instance, the REIT owns and manages a collection of 100 office buildings around the US and the UK.

Promoting efficiencies in workflow

By using APIs throughout this process, we can see how the law firm can create efficiencies focusing on workflow and transactions. Let’s see how this process would work and how many APIs the law firms must employ.

First, the firm’s new client initiation begins in the legal platform through an automated form that is linked to multiple APIs so that each process can talk to the other. Each potential client will need a conflicts check, done as a Legal Entity Identifier Service (that’s one API), which affirms the proper and standardized name of the REIT is used. Simultaneously, the firm may want to run an automated docket scan (the second API) for any recent litigation the client has been involved in; thus, producing a risk score as well as creating possible business for the firm’s litigation practice. If legal action is necessary, after the conflicts check, the firm can send all filings electronically to a court via another API (that’s three).

Each one of these steps may trigger alerts to support staff or lawyers, adding tasks to their caseload and resulting in the use of yet another API on the Legal Case Management side (API #4). Additionally, a legal project manager or partner can see a dashboard view of hours spent, tasks completed, and gates remaining, as each task or portion of a task moves through its stages (API #5).

Once the firm confirms the client, the firm’s next step is to review all 1,500 leases the REIT has with its tenants. The firm would bulk load these leases to its cloud-based repository so it could then tap into a hypothetically huge number of APIs to review or analyze. First, the firm’s review would focus on contract anomalies that could put the REIT at risk; then, the firm would apply a Contract Review API to the 1,500 documents which automagically looks for specific words or phrases with a set of predetermined flags for concern (API #6).

From there, the system would automatically send relevant documents to attorneys to review using a document review tool for analysis (API #7). Noting that real estate laws or tax codes change frequently in both the US and UK, additional alerting and vetting tools could analyze the language in the contracts citing new or changed regulations and flag those documents for review (API #8). Another process could identify contracts with end-of-lease terms that could trigger a reminder for lease-renewal to tenants. Updating terms, the documents would be sent to tenants, requesting their digital signature via another API (and that’s #9). As you see in this simple example, nine APIs were utilized for a single client on-boarding.

The next iterative and logical shift within legal tech is now surfacing. The legal platform, an outgrowth of a burgeoning tech infusion from start-ups around the globe, is being built. At the same time, clients are pushing for legal automation, which can be an innate part of a platform. Indeed, automation baked into a platform, enable by connectivity, and buoyed by APIs, is a potent mixture.

The interoperability of applications and data, bolstered by the ability for these platforms to operate on a containerized security mechanism, is paramount going forward. Underpinning all of this, of course, is the user experience. Will the platform enable users — lawyers, paralegals, firm administers, and technologists — to have an easy intuitive experience? Further, can those users interact with applications with ease, just like consumers experience on the Apple App Store or Google Play?

The promise is there, and the stars, they are finally aligning.

A legal tech boom, automation explosion, and a desire for interoperability & security pushes the legal platform forward