As many of you know, I regularly participate in Bob Ambrogi’s LegalTech Week journalist roundtable on Fridays. This past week, we actually did the roundtable live and in person at Relativity Fest. I raised two articles/developments during the roundtable. The first one had to do with the settlement by DoNotPay with the FTC, which Richard Tromans of Artificial Lawyer analyzed in a recent article. DoNotPay was fined for alleging offering legal services to consumers that they could not deliver. (Josh Browder,the owner of DoNotPay was not named as a defendant in the action).

The second was the announcement that Rocket Lawyer had been granted approval by the Arizona Supreme Court to operate as an alternative business structure. This approval paves the way for nonlawyer law firm ownership. Rocket Lawyer has previously secured similar permissions in Utah and the UK. I usually don’t post what I talk about during the roundtable since that would be a little redundant But the two articles raise some access to justice (A2J) issues that merit additional consideration and thought.

I’m attending Relativity Fest this week in Chicago. Relativity Fest is put on by the e-discovery software provider Relativity. Relativity is one of the largest discovery software providers. Relativity Fest is its extravagant user conference. According to Relativity, there are a record 2000 attendees at this year’s show, the 15th annual one.

I attended a panel discussion early in the conference on the findings of an annual in-house counsel Survey conducted jointly by the consulting firm FTI and Relativity. On the panel were Ari Kaplan, the principal investigator for the Survey, Adam Weiss, Relativity’s Chief Legal Officer; Wendy King, Senior FTI Director; and Celia Perez, in-house counsel at FreightCar America.

This was the sixth such Survey. Kaplan talked to some 34 in-house counsel in 11 countries.

I recently chatted with Noah Waisberg, co-founder and CEO of Zuva, an M&A contract analysis firm. Noah was kind enough to give me a copy of the book he and Dr. Alexander Hudek recently authored AI For Lawyers, which is an excellent read.

In his book, Waisberg and Hudek talks about something called the Jevons Paradox. The Jevons Paradox is that generally speaking, when the price of a good or service comes down, consumption of it will typically go up. Waisberg and Hudek postulate that the same should be true for legal. As automation, AI, and Gen AI reduce the cost of legal services, there should be more cases brought. 

In my view, that means greater demand for legal services. More demand should mean more revenue and profit for the providers of legal services.

Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind.

Robert Kennedy

The ILTA Conference I am attending this week is great for seeing where the legal tech industry is going. This is true especially for Big Law and large corporations. One trend is clear: we are witnessing the second wave of Gen AI in this legal market segment. In a word: its consolidation.

The gargantuan ILTA (International Legal Technology Association) Conference kicked off today at Nashville’s sprawling Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center. (Well, sort of in Nashville. The Gaylord is in the Nashville suburbs, not downtown Nashville). Over 4000 registrants from 32 counties. Over 200 exhibitors many of whom hawking their AI and Gen AI wares. Almost 350 speakers (as in most shows these days, many of which are talking about Gen AI).

Indeed, one of the Ediscovery vendors wondered out loud to me whether there were still any Ediscovery issues left. All the conversations are dominated by Gen AI. The answer, of course, is that there are plenty of ongoing ediscovery problems. It’s just that, these days, it’s all Gen Ai, all the time.

You have to be careful with data and algorithms when making decisions