The Filevine user conference, LEXSummit2024 kicked off recently in Salt Lake City with a keynote presentation by its CEO, Ryan Anderson. Anderson offered up his view of where the company in specific, and perhaps legal tech, in general, should be going.

Anderson called to mind Steve Jobs and the iPhone introduction in 2007 as a map for the future. Anderson played a video of Job’s introduction of the iPhone. As most of you may remember, Jobs described iPhone as a device that combined three things—the iPod, a cell phone, and an internet communicator—into one. The genius of Jobs and the iPhone, said Anderson, was not that Apple created something entirely new. The genius was seeing the synergy of having a device do three things that three different devices previously did. This combination opened up the potential for innumerable new and different things because it gave customers something they needed and wanted. Given where we are today with the iPhone, the value of that insight seems pretty clear.

Anderson’s pointed out that similarly, legal tech vendors in the case management should be looking to do the same thing. Anderson envisions a platform that would combine case management, document management and time, billing and payments services into one. A platform that’s easy to use. Anderson recognized the headaches law firms face when trying to deal with three different providers to provide the tools to accomplish these three tasks. But Anderson says the reason no one has combined these functions into one product is that the combination is formidable. Combining the three functions into a single platform that works well is even more challenging. What law firms want and, in fact, are demanding is something that is simple and just works. That’s even harder still. Filevine has the ambition to be the best in class in all three areas.

Anderson’s vision is a good one

Anderson quoted the venture capitalist, Tomas Tonguz and technologist, Armon Dadger in his keynote for the idea that as markets mature, they demand a single simple platform. And those combined platforms are inevitable. Anderson also noted that as markets mature, one or two winners emerge. All of these concepts auger for a legal tech vendors doing just what Anderson is outlining.  Anderson’s vision is a good one.

Legal’s Historic Slow Adoption

Historically, one of the reasons for the slow legal adoption of technology has been its complexity. Its difficulty of use. For a long time, legal tech vendors failed to understand that, at least for lawyers billing by the hour, time spent learning how to use a platform and time spent figuring out how to use it was money literally taken out of their pockets. In addition, most law firms impose billing hours quotas on partners and associates. Time spent on nonbillable tech learning is time that has to be made up. That’s why simplicity is so important. This is why products like those of LitSoftware, developers of TrialPad, and related platforms are so popular. They are intuitive and simple to use. But to Anderson’s good point, simple to use is not simple to make.

Anderson is also right about another reason functions need to be combined into a single platform. The requirement to go hereto and yon for solutions that preclude one-stop shopping is frustrating and time-consuming. In most firms, IT or third parties vet vendors and then take their recommendations to a committee composed in whole or in part by lawyers. Again, to these lawyers, time is money. And after a few recommendations are brought to them, they legitimately ask, can’t we just go to one vendor for all this? Good question.

If it were easy, there would be more such combined platforms.

Beyond that, getting solutions to work together is vital to getting stuff done by lawyers and law firms. Again, achieving the combination of functions into one platform that works together sounds good but is hard to do. If it were easy, there would be more such combined platforms.

I can’t speak to whether or when Anderson will achieve his vision. But I think he is right conceptually about what the legal industry needs and what it wants. If he’s right, Filevine may offer the market a game changer, a game changer perhaps not in the order of magnitude of the iPhone but a game changer nevertheless.