Technology

Legal Tech World Tours Take Off -- But How About The Heartland?

We do need a more macro approach to addressing legal technology, but in some parts of the country, the micro view is needed too.

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Pretty sure “legal tech world tour” is not a concept that ever existed. Until now, that is, when there are not one, but two, legal tech world tours.

The more ambitious of the two is currently underway, as Dera J. Nevin travels the world as the self-anointed “global ambassador for legal technology.” With a suitcase of clothes and another of recording equipment, Nevin is preparing a documentary, titled #ToTheMars, that will premiere at the awards gala of the Global Legal Hackathon April 21 in New York.

A credentialed ambassador she is. Until last month, Nevin was eDiscovery counsel and director of eDiscovery services at the law firm Proskauer Rose in New York. But during the kick-off weekend of the Global Legal Hackathon in February, over dinner with hackathon organizer David Fisher, CEO of Integra, the two resolved to tell the story of legal tech innovation around the world.

After a hectic three weeks of arranging visas, immunizations, and itineraries, Nevin set off early in March, with the plan of not returning until she had visited many of the teams, hosts, and sponsors that participated in the hackathon. So far, her travels have taken her to Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Shanghai, Singapore, Dubai, Budapest, Romania, and Kiev.

She’s posting brief dispatches from her trip on Twitter (hashtag #tothemars) and longer ones on LinkedIn describing the places she is visiting and the people she is meeting. The name of her tour and documentary is a tribute to the Global Legal Hackathon mascot created at the Ukrainian venue.

And Another World Tour

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One legal tech world tour would be cool enough. But wait, there’s a second. Starting in May, Legal Geek is launching Around the World with Legal Geek.

Legal Geek is a UK company that hosts conferences, events, and hackathons related to legal technology and startups, including the annual Legal Geek Conference, which is in London in October.

Some of the more hard-core techies among you may remember that Legal Geek did a legal tech road trip through Europe last year in a 1972 VW camper van, meeting with legal tech startups and promoting its conference.

(Photo via Facebook)

In May, they are going on the road again — or, more accurately, taking to the air. The van will stay home as the Legal Geek crew travels the world to Moscow, Singapore, Sydney, San Francisco, and London.

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Why, you ask? “Because we believe LawTech is a movement without borders and we want to meet the coolest legal startups globally to share their stories,” they say.

This tour also has a hashtag, #LGRoadTrip. Even better, it has prizes. At each stop, it will host a pitch event for legal tech startups. The winning startup from across all the events will win a trip to the Legal Geek Conference in London.

But How About the Heartland?

Both tours sound very cool — especially for the people who are on them. But the legal tech tour I’d like to see would venture into America’s heartland.

I want to know about the challenges faced by a solo lawyer in a small town in the Midwest. I want to talk to people in a rural legal aid office struggling to keep up. I want to hear from clerks and judges in an urban courthouse dealing with onslaughts of pro se litigants. And, yes, I want to hear directly from those who are unable to get the services they need.

Much of the development and investment in legal technology is focused on Biglaw firms and corporate clients. That, after all, is where the money is. Consider, for example, artificial intelligence. The most successful products so far are designed for large-scale eDiscovery or major M&As.

Which companies are thinking about designing technology for the rest of the legal world? Which companies really understand the problems and needs of that small-town solo or rural legal aid office or urban courthouse?

Fisher, the hackathon organizer and #ToTheMars sponsor, wrote thoughtfully last week about the need for “collective action” to drive innovation in law — and about the need for such action on a global scale. In an email to me this weekend, he said that he has come to believe that only collective action at enormous scale will move the needle for access to justice.

Siloed innovation simply doesn’t scale very well. The structure of the legal industry (relatively small firms, partnership model, etc.) makes it too costly for great new products to penetrate and scale, forcing them into narrow monetization models.

To use a double negative, I don’t disagree with him. A more global — more macro — approach to addressing legal services delivery could help break down barriers to innovation and promote investment in legal technology and alternative delivery models.

But we also need the micro view. We need to understand the very specific issues encountered by those who are in the trenches of trying to serve the underserved. If we do not understand the problems they encounter, we cannot design technology and systems to solve those problems.

So while others jet around the world in search of legal tech innovation, give me an RV. There is a vast, arid desert of legal services begging to be explored.

Robert Ambrogi Bob AmbrogiRobert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at [email protected], and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).

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