The Future Of Law And Technology: An Interview With Bloomberg BNA's David Perla

In advance of the big ILTA conference, we interviewed David Perla of Bloomberg BNA about the future of law and technology.

Over the past year or so, Above the Law has significantly expanded its coverage of legal technology. This reflects our belief that technology’s vital role in the practice of law will only increase, dramatically so, in the years ahead.

This Sunday, in Las Vegas, ILTACON 2015 will get underway. In advance of this major conference in the world of legal technology, which we will be covering closely, we decided to get some advance insight by interviewing David Perla, president of Bloomberg BNA Legal.

Before joining Bloomberg BNA, a leading company in the world of legal technology, Perla served as CEO of Matterhorn Transactions and founded Pangea3, the globally known legal process outsourcing provider. He and I first met two years ago at an American Lawyer event honoring the top 50 Biglaw innovators of the past 50 years, and we’ve stayed in touch since then. I couldn’t think of a better person than David Perla to offer insight into the world of legal tech as ILTA approaches.

DL: As we gear up for the big ILTA conference, we’re experiencing exciting times for people interested in law and technology. Looking at this topic from a high level, how would you say technology is transforming the practice of law?

DP: A real transformation is taking place relative to the use of technology in law. Historically, technology has merely enabled lawyers to practice law – as the backbone of the tools and information lawyers use. But today, technology is a critical component of the practice of law. For instance, a lawyer today can use our tools to immediately compare draft documents against what is market, rather than reading and manually comparing dozens of precedents, which is how transactional lawyers previously practiced. Likewise, technology can now drive and facilitate business development in a way it previously hasn’t – using data analytics to help firms best position themselves in a hyper-competitive environment. Technology has also advanced rapidly in its ability to provide answers and best position a firm and a client for success. Technology today can help determine where and when to file a case, what cause of action to plead, and even which prospective clients are more or less likely to hire a given firm, and why. All of that is a true sea change.

DL: How far do you think we can go in automating the work of lawyers and when are we going to reach that point?

DP: That’s a big question—one that a lot of people are thinking about. The conversation of the next ten years is going to be about machine learning. Every strong legal R&D team understands algorithms and machine learning, and everyone is attacking automation. One of the essential functions of a lawyer is spotting issues, and we don’t yet know the extent to which all legal issues can be spotted and resolved without humans. That might be the key unresolved question for the future of the profession and technology’s role in it. At Bloomberg Law, we have developed algorithms that can extract the legal principles of a case, without any human review or intervention. The question is how fast we can refine, expand and perfect those algorithms, and how broadly we can apply them and incorporate them into workflows that lawyers need in order to pick up where the technology leaves off.

As to how quickly that future is going to get here, it won’t be tomorrow. Leaders coming of age now (myself included) are not full “digital natives,” but the next generation of leaders will be. I expect that when that group begins taking the mantle in a decade or so, change will accelerate even faster.

DL: I suspect we’ll hear a lot at the ILTA conference about “Big Data” and its implications for the legal space. How is Bloomberg BNA’s technology making use of Big Data?

DP: Law is an enormous unstructured data set. Consequently, lawyers have operated with big data for years. But what we are now seeing is lawyers and legal professionals looking for answers from that data. Instead of trying to figure out what the law is (we’ve solved that), we are now looking at how to best position our facts, our deal, our case or our contract to increase the odds of success for the client. We are now using the data to predict likely outcomes and, thereby, to influence our behavior – where should I file, what should I ask for, etc.

Our goal is to provide tools, based on data, that lawyers can take advantage of on the fly, in the regular workflow of their practices. In other words, we are moving from precedent-based lawyering to statistics-based lawyering.

With Bloomberg Law, we’ve been gathering data on businesses and legal proceedings for decades, and that data can be mined in a lot of different ways to empower lawyers. Our Corporate Transactions tool in Bloomberg Law, for instance, can tell a lawyer what the prevailing market terms are for certain contract provisions right as the lawyer is drafting the contract. Likewise, that data can help a law firm demonstrate to a client or prospect why it, rather than a competitor, is ideally suited for a particular matter or case, using data that shows the firm’s experience and expertise and data that shows the client’s historical law firm hiring patterns, and success/failure rates of competitor law firms.

DL: You’ve been at Bloomberg BNA, one of the most prominent and successful companies in this space, for a little over a year now. What has been the most exciting development or product launch since your arrival?

DP: I’m most excited about the team we have in place here and the unique way we’ve structured our different units—R&D, Product, Sales, Account Management, and others—to respond to the needs of our clients very quickly, and to build workflow-based tools for the various users at our clients. The Corporate Transaction product is a great example of that. We made a decision to build an integrated product, and in less than six months we had the tool built and integrated into Bloomberg Law. Anyone with experience in product development will understand why we’re proud of that accomplishment.

I’m also very excited about a new Corporate Representation Analytics tool we just released, which can tell you who represents who in federal court. It’s going to be hugely useful for business development. This empowers attorneys and legal professionals with dynamic information about their clients and prospects.

DL: How do you decide what to tackle next, and what’s in the Bloomberg BNA pipeline?

DP: Mike Bloomberg regularly reminds us not to try to build products that clients say they want, but rather to figure out what the clients’ problems are and create incredible products that solve them over the long term.

One of the biggest problem areas for lawyers and their clients today is data security, and we’re really excited about the privacy and data security tools that we have in development right now. We’re also at work on healthcare tools that will expand our reach from regulatory to transactional work in that arena.

DL: We look forward to seeing what you and Bloomberg BNA roll out next. Thanks for taking the time to join us!

Executive Team: David Perla [Bloomberg BNA]

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