Technology

Christian Lang: alt.legal’s Maven, Connector and Salesman

He’s a rare breed, displaying qualities of each of Gladwell’s Tipping Point personas.

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This column is committed to shining light on alt.legal innovators whose work, we believe, should be followed by the greater legal community. And the time to follow alt.legal is RIGHT NOW! In just the past few weeks, there has been a steady drumbeat of major alt.legal news which has made believers out of the biggest skeptics (with friend of alt.legal Bruce MacEwen encouraging readers to follow the money, or at least “don’t fight the tape”).

Just this quarters, we have seen ground-breaking investments in legal technology by leaders in Silicon Valley; we have seen law firms and Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) acquired by Big Four accounting firms, and; we have seen huge infusions of cash into ALSPs by private equity players. The action in the market indicates that we are at a “tipping point” in legal innovation, as Malcolm Gladwell described the phenomenon in his best-selling book by the same name.

It’s all happening fast and is a bit overwhelming (with innovation arising from a trifecta of technology, a globalized workforce, and new regulatory regimes allowing for non-attorney ownership). Thus, I strongly encourage you to become acquainted with today’s interview subject, Christian Lang, and to get to know his rapidly expanding band of legal innovation crusaders!

Why do I think Lang should be your ambassador to alt.legal? It’s because he’s a rare breed, displaying qualities of each of Gladwell’s Tipping Point personas: “maven” (a high-level subject matter expert); “connector” (a person who functions as a network hub in a community and works to bring those together), and “salesman” (a charismatic and outspoken persuader). Together he has the expertise, network and persuasive abilities to turn anyone into an optimist about the future of legal.

First, as maven, Lang knows the law, its purpose and its deep problems. An NYU Law graduate, Lang landed a coveted federal circuit court clerkship (with the 11th) and practiced at Davis Polk (his practice areas were M&A in while based in NYC and general corporate while based in London). Through those experiences, he got to see how law is interpreted, practiced, and made — at the highest levels. He developed a deep respect for the judiciary, practitioners and clients. He has no desire to “blow up the system” as many innovators do, but to allow each constituency to consistently deliver (or receive) the best quality legal work.

Next, as a connector, Lang has been on a personal crusade. Believing deeply in the honor and nobility of the legal practice, he wanted to “build networks and tools” that allow the best lawyers to stand on the shoulders of legal giants and do pathbreaking work (or, put negatively, to prevent the constant reinvention of the wheels).

First, he had to grasp what technologies and solutions already exited in the market, envision what tools were needed, and to identify what areas were most ripe to apply his talents. So, he created the NY Legal Tech Meetup a year ago, and it’s already surpassed 1,000 active members. If a person has made their mark in legal innovation, they have probably made an appearance at one of Lang’s events.

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Finally, as a salesman, Lang is personally inspiring, projects a clear vision and has a forceful voice (he’s not hard on the eyes either, or so I’m told). Specifically, he wants to ensure that NYC dominates the future of legal innovation, as it does with Biglaw practice. He also believes that the traditional venture model (which encourage many failures and a few mega-winners) is wrong for legal and that a better model for change exists. That model, which he is working to implement, is small-dollar investments alongside co-development relationships with the best and brightest lawyers (who are eager to solve problems they face every day).

Joe Borstein: What is your mission with the NY Legal Tech Meetup?

Christian Lang: In the short term, we’re trying to build an open, supportive, and collaborative community within the legal tech ecosystem of NYC (and beyond) that can help organize the space, highlight the amazing work currently being done (and identify the unmet needs!), and promote cross-fertilization among the pockets of activity. We want to help our legal tech family stay in closer, more regular touch and create a platform through which we can activate and engage, in a systemic way, the various constituencies and stakeholders that we need at the table in order to build an ecosystem that can dramatically improve the way we deliver and access legal services.

In the longer term, the meetup is part of a broader, personal mission to ensure that NYC becomes — and remains — the center of the legal technology universe.

JB: With over 1000 local members, you must be running one of the most active communities in NYC legal today. What drives you personally to legal innovation, and more generally, why are other lawyers and technologists to attracted to it?

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CL: That’s probably true. I’ve been blown away (and incredibly humbled) by how passionately people have responded to the vision.

As for legal innovation, I’m one of those odd birds who actually loves being, and is proud to be, a lawyer. And, for me, the promise of tech and other innovations in law is intoxicating. We can help brilliant lawyers stop pushing paper and reinventing wheels and allow them to start focusing on the kind of high-level analytical work they love and their clients need. And we can help clients get better legal advice and perhaps most importantly–can help potential clients, who might otherwise have gone unadvised, access legal services. Plus, I’m also drawn to the creative side of it. As much as I loved being a lawyer, law is a service industry. And while that can be immensely fulfilling for those who seek to be someone else’s trusted adviser, I wanted to take risks and build things. Given all those factors and how far behind the times law is technologically, legal tech is the perfect sandbox.

JB: Let’s focus on the NYC angle for a minute. Despite the rise of Silicon Valley and the recent news that Hong Kong has overtaken NYC as the city with the most “super rich”, NYC is still the undisputed center of the legal community (by revenue and headcount). Is it leading the legal innovation revolution?

CL: Unfortunately, not yet. Other cities have seen the rise of legal tech for what it is: a huge opportunity to take ownership of a newly invigorated, rapidly growing tech vertical, and they’re taking aggressive steps to capture as much of it as possible. For example, London has invested tens of millions of dollars to support legal technology development and to establish the city as a legal technology hub. And in this country, major legal tech incumbents like LexisNexis have set up legal technology incubators out on the West Coast. Yet NYC–where we have the largest number of major international law firms headquartered, where a huge numbers of international corporations (and their corporate legal departments) are based, and where we have an established and flourishing infrastructure for related tech verticals (e.g., enterprise tech, fintech)–has yet to stake its claim to the legal tech vertical. So, I’m trying to lead that charge.

JB: So, Mr. Lang, how are you going to make sure NYC retains its rightful place leading the world of law?

CL: Step one was the meetup–creating a broad-based, diverse, and supportive legal tech community that both activated a network of firms, corporate legal departments, law schools, etc., and established a strong demo pipeline of some of the best legal technology in the market.

Step two of the project–which I’m knee-deep in at the moment–is to launch a new type of legal technology (and I hate this word, but..) incubator here in NYC that leverages the City’s resources to not just support nascent legal tech companies, but to help them build better, more readily adoptable and scalable legal tech through co-development relationships with a set of strategic partners (who, in turn, will reap both technological and (for firms) marketing benefits from working with the most interesting legal tech talent in the market). Having “gone to school” on the positive and negative attributes of the existing legal tech incubators out there, I’ve zeroed in on a non-traditional “incubator-as-a-service” (for lack of a better description) approach that I think will be the silver bullet for overcoming some of the key and idiosyncratic challenges to creating, and investing in, legal technology at scale.

JB: So for those titillated, what types of people and organizations do you need at your side? And who is biting?

CL: To design legal tech properly, you have to dive into the trenches with the lawyers, understand intimately how they work and why a workflow looks the way it does, and then build technology that attaches to that workflow as frictionlessly as possible. It can’t be created in a vacuum. Which is why we’re trying to find the right strategic partners at large corporate legal departments and top law firms who will become co-development labs for the best founding teams out there working to solve the problems that the strategic partners care most about. In terms of who’s biting, the corporates we’re speaking with see the value proposition immediately and are in a position to move more quickly. But, as a former large firm lawyer, I’m hoping we can also bring a number of top firms to the party–those which understand the massive upside of positioning themselves to ride the wave of innovation that is set to wash over law. Finally, we’re hoping to activate the City itself and get it in the race to win this rapidly growing little tech vertical.

JB: I love this vision. I made a bold prediction that in the next decade you will see Bezos-like billionaire lawyers who made their fortune by streamlining legal through technological and business innovations. I’m sure you have read the recent investment headlines (including major Silicon Valley investors getting in the legal innovation game), and would love your thoughts on where this is all going?

CL: Bold, indeed. I’m not sure we’ll see billionaire lawyers. But we may see some very wealthy technologists who make the winning platform plays in a space rapidly filling with point solutions. And I, too, am excited about the investments and what they portend. But I’m also convinced that legal tech doesn’t necessarily need–and may not even benefit from–more (easy) money flooding in. What we need is to crack open the walled garden of the law to create genuine, effective lines of communication between lawyers and technologists (and clients, for that matter) to get the right problems solved in the right way. For my money, I think creating co-development relationships with large firms and corporate legal departments is the key. The traditional venture folks can pour money into companies trying to figure out how best to sell their shiny new widgets. I’ll be working with the buyers to truly understand their needs, getting POCs and MVPs in the right hands for testing, and helping to build the solutions and companies that clients actually need.

Joe Borstein Joseph BorsteinJoe Borstein is a Global Director with Thomson Reuters Legal Managed Services, delivering Pangea3 award-winning legal outsourcing services and employing over 1800 full-time legal, compliance, and technology professionals across the globe. He and his co-author Ed Sohn each spent over half a decade as associates in BigLaw and were classmates at Penn Law. (The views expressed in their columns are their own.)

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