LegalTech New York starts today. I went to LegalTech New York last year. I spoke on a panel about emerging legal technologies. It was my first time at such a large legal conference with thousands of attendees. I live in San Diego, so I go to Comic-Con every year. This was like that, only so much nerdier. It was the same level of enthusiasm, only about e-discovery and data governance.
The thing that surprised me the most was how many people were there. I took this as a positive sign. My beat here at Above the Law is legal technology. Only on very rare occasions does that involve anything remotely sexy. There are no salacious scandals involving doc review platforms. There is nothing controversial about using pivot tables in Excel. But I love it. And judging by the attendance at LegalTech last year, I’m not alone. People paid thousands of dollars to meet in New York for a few days and learn the latest about information governance and dark data and mobile billing solutions. If you need CLE hours, there are certainly easier ways to get them than LegalTech. The thousands of people who went there were there because they understood the need to incorporate technology into their practices to be more efficient and to get an edge on their opposition.
I am going again this year and here’s what I am looking forward to:
Pursuing The Pro Bono Story: A Conversation With Alicia Aiken
This Pro Bono Week, get inspired to give back with PLI’s Pursuing Justice: The Pro Bono Files, a one-of-a-kind podcast hosted by Alicia Aiken.
Small Firm and Mid-Sized Firm Software
Making software is expensive, so if you are going to take the time to make it, make it for big companies and make it cost a lot so that you can make money, right? In the last few years, several companies have adopted the model of making software affordable for mid-size and small law firms. Adobe did this a few years ago with its Creative Cloud model when it brought the price of its software down from several thousand dollars to a low monthly fee. Services like MyCase and Clio target small firms. Apps on the iPad range anywhere from free to the hundred dollar range.
It’s a much wider market, which means more competition, which means more innovation and companies working harder to create useful products for lawyers.
Innovation
The Trump Gold Card: A New $1 Million Pathway To A U.S. Green Card
A new proposal would let wealthy foreign nationals secure an opportunity for a U.S. green card with a $1 million 'gift' to the government, sparking legal and ethical debate.
One thing I love about the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is reading about the new technology that will soon be available to consumers and the neat things that companies have been working on. The same thing happens at LegalTech. Last year, I saw a vendor who had software that scans videotaped depos and looks for physiological signs of lying in the deponent the same way predictive coding scans a batch of documents to find the hot ones. Then, you can just go back and check the video clips to see if it would be a good clip. The point is not to offer it for proof that the deponent is lying, the point is to show those portions and have the jury pick up on non-verbal cues that the deponent is a liar. I have no idea if it works, but it definitely piqued my interest.
I work with a lot of demonstrative aids and graphics in trials, so when a vendor shows me how they can take a radiology scan of my client and 3D print his actual broken wrist, I get excited. I like wireless portable document cameras that a mechanical engineer can take on the stand and show a jury how an improperly designed release mechanism on a device can lead to injury. I like drones that can take aerial photos of accident sites and take video that I can use with 3D image galleries to make an accident recreation scene.
The CLEs
There are a lot of exciting events happening at LegalTech. Not Michael Bay explosion exciting, but if having large corporate clients is exciting to you, you should care about the latest trends in issues affecting data retention policies for large corporate clients. E-discovery is not like the tort of battery. It is rapidly evolving, in part because more judges are being forced to deal with it and rules, guidelines, and best practices are constantly fluxing. Ethical obligations involving legal technology are also changing. Who would have thought five years ago that Google Translate would create an ethical dilemma for lawyers? They have a dynamic set of speakers here and a great set of topics.
Swag
Where else can you get an “I Love Predictive Coding” t-shirt? For free?
Jeff Bennion is a solo practitioner from San Diego. When not handling his own cases, he’s consulting lawyers on how to use technology to not be boring in trial or managing e-discovery projects in mass torts/complex litigation cases. If you want to be disappointed in a lack of posts, you can follow him on Twitter or on Facebook. If you have any ideas of things you want him to cover, email Jeff at [email protected].