Today's (Legal)Tech: The State Of Legal Technology In 2015

LegalTech: If you’re a legal technology geek, then this is the conference for you.

This week, I’m going to depart from the format I typically follow for my “Today’s Tech” column. Instead of reporting to you about how lawyers, judges, and law professors are using technology day in and day out, I’m going to tell you about some new legal technologies that you may want to consider using in your law practice.

I learned about these new tools last week when I made my annual pilgrimage to one of my favorite legal technology conferences: LegalTech New York. I love this conference because it’s where many of my favorite people in the legal technology space converge to talk shop, eat good food, and enjoy all that New York City has to offer. It’s also a good place to find decent swag, assuming you know where to look. More on that later.

But first, let’s talk about the people. If you’re a legal technology geek, then this is the conference for you. There’s an abundance of people willing to discuss the ins and outs of using technology in the practice of law from sun up to sun down. And, most of them really know what they’re talking about.

I was fortunate enough to spend time with some of the brightest minds in legal tech, including Kevin O’Keefe of Lexblog, Ed Walters of FastcaseDan Lear of Avvo, Tim Baran of Rocket Matter, Bob AmbrogiScott Malouf, Mark Berman, Lisa SolomonKelly Twigger, and Ari Kaplan, just to name a few. I even got to spend some time with Above the Law’s very entertaining Joe Patrice:

I also spent a lot of time meeting with representatives from various legal technology companies. Whenever I attend LegalTech, one of my goals is to learn about new and interesting legal tools that are NOT related to e-discovery or information governance, since these areas simply don’t interest me. Trying to locate vendors with offerings outside of these two categories is no small task at LegalTech. The conference organizers seem to be single-mindedly focused on these subjects and you can’t walk more than two feet in the Exhibit Hall without tripping over a booth offering software related to either topic.

But, I doggedly sifted through the slew of emails I received from vendors until I found a few with products that interested me. As is the case every year, a theme seems to emerge after I’ve met with the various vendors, and this year it was documents, documents, and more documents.

I met with three different representatives from companies that offered document management for the litigation preparation process: Factbox, Allegory, and Opus 2 Magnum. Each product is designed to simplify and streamline the litigation preparation process and to allow teams of lawyers to collaborate and share notes about case-related evidence and documents in a secure web-based platform.  But each product does so in very different ways and is aimed at different segments of lawyers. So if you’re in the market for software that will facilitate trial preparation and collaboration, these are worth looking into, but you’ll have to give each one a spin in order to find the right fit for your needs.

Sponsored

Next, I met with Donna Payne, CEO of Payne Group, a company that offers a number of different software products designed to allow law firms to manage, format, and secure documents. Their latest offering is Redact Assistant, which is a really useful, easy to use tool that simplifies the process of removing sensitive content from a single file or multiple files.

Another software product I learned about was Plainlegal, which provides document automation for IP filings that also autofills deadlines. Plainlegal’s CEO, Nehal Madhani, explained to me that the software integrates with most calendar systems and that they would be expanding into other areas in the near future, such as immigration and business forms.

Next, there was Brainloop, which offers virtual data rooms for collaboration. This is a competitive area, but Brainloop is attempting to create a niche for itself in the legal space by offering ITAR-compliant software, which is necessary for law firms with clients who are involved in transactions that involve the sale or distribution of goods or services covered by the United States Munitions List.

Finally, I met with Justin Somaini, Chief Trust Officer, and Nitin Gupta, Director of Professional Services, of Box. Box provides online document storage and collaboration and has been making a big push into the legal space. In keeping with that goal, their most recent announcement — that they now offer customer-held encryption codes via Box Enterprise Key Management — will make the platform even more appealing to lawyers.

So now that I’ve covered the people and the products, there’s just one thing left to talk about: the swag. This year there were two companies that really stood out on the Exhibit Hall floor.

Sponsored

First there was Catalyst’s Las Vegas-style card table designed to demonstrate how big-data analytics work in the context of technology-assisted review. It was a really creative way to explain a difficult concept, and the accompanying book that they also distributed, “TAR for Smart People,” which was written by Bob Ambrogi, John Tredennick, Jeremy Pickens, and Mark Noel, offered really useful supplemental information.

And last but not least, the swag that had everyone talking: Recommind’s “Cards Against Lawyering” card game. Here’s a photo of me and my colleague, Sarah Bottorff, at their booth holding the game:

This card set was such an original concept and was really impressive since it undoubtedly required a ton of work to pull together. I was actually really excited to play the game when I returned home, but the card game didn’t make it home with me. Go figure.

In any event, this year’s LegalTech was all that I expected it to be and more, and I’m already looking forward to next year! If you’re interested in legal technology, I highly recommend that you consider attending. Hope to see you there!


Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Director of Business and Community Relations at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached atniki.black@mycase.com.

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