I used to have a partner who was fond of saying a lawyer spends half their life worrying about having too much to do. And the other half worrying about not having enough.

 

If true, then most lawyers are in the first half right now: more and more demand for legal work and fewer and fewer people around to help get it done. (For a good summary of the situation and the links some firms will go to to retain lawyers to do the work, see this excellent article by Lizzie McLellan.)

 

One possible result of this mismatch is a technology revolution among lawyers. It’s no secret that for years, lawyers have largely resisted technology. Particularly technology that would reduce the time spent on billable matters. Less time spent on billable matters, less revenue.

Continue Reading Supply and Demand Brings Lawyers to Tech

While we may not yet know the long-term viability of remote work in legal, a new MyCase Survey confirms that remote work has accelerated legal’s use of the cloud. And remote work tools and the use of the cloud have led legal professionals to the greater use of technology and an appreciation for what it can do.

 

At its first-ever customer conference yesterday, the practice management company MyCase announced the results of its inaugural Survey. The Survey is entitled MyCase 2021 Legal Industry Report: Lessons Learned from the Pandemic. The goal of the Survey was to look at how the pandemic has affected law firms and their operations. More importantly, the Survey shows how the pandemic and remote work has affected their use of and comfort with technology and change.

Continue Reading Remote Work & Cloud Computing: Driving Lawyers to Like Tech

Law 360 on Monday of this week announced the results of its inaugural Social Impact Study of law firms. The study was designed to rank firms based on socially responsible business practices. In particular, the study attempted to evaluate firms across four pillars: racial and ethnic diversity, gender equality, employee engagement, and pro bono service. Law 360 only released the scores of those firms which scored in the top 100.

Continue Reading Law360 Announces Results of First Social Impact Law Firm Study

“I’m so tired of being tired. Sure as night will follow day, Most things I worry about Never happen anyway.” Tom Petty Crawling Back To You Lyrics, Wildflowers (1994)

 

So last week was a hard week for me. Or at least I made it so. A couple of issues surfaced the resolution of which could have had some significant impacts.

 

Of course, I put on a lawyer’s hat and envisioned all the worst resolutions and impacts that could occur. I’m especially good at finding the worst of these in the middle of the night. You know. The gut-wrenching stress over outcomes that keeps you up till all hours.

Continue Reading Lawyers & Stress: Three Ways to Beat the Devil

LexisNexis today announced its latest enhancement to its Lexis+ platform, Judicial Brief Analysis. Besides the bells and whistles, there are three noteworthy things.

 

 

LexisNexis today announced its latest enhancement to its Lexis+ platform, Judicial Brief Analysis. According to the LexisNexis Press Release, Judicial Brief Analysis is designed to quickly identify similarities and differences in opposing filings across multiple documents. It thus can help assess the strengths and weaknesses of the argument on both sides of a matter. It’s an AI-based research tool that can compare briefs and present the analysis in a smooth, impressive dashboard. This elegant dashboard will:

 

Continue Reading 3 Things About LexisNexis’ New Judicial Brief Analysis Tool That Aren’t Bells & Whistles

ZERO, a provider of productivity automation solutions primarily for law firms, today announced the launch of Apollo. Apollo is a software product that automatically captures lawyers’ time spent on billable work on any desktop device. According to the ZERO press release, it seamlessly integrates it into their existing billing platform. ZERO claims, “Apollo is a Desktop-based time capture automation solution that records time spent on billable activity”.

 

I have written before about how ZERO transformed itself from an email management company to an automation provider. The transformation resulted from ZEROs focused commitment to listen to its customers. And as I have noted, ZERO offers practical solutions that work.

Continue Reading Zero Announces Apollo, a Desktop Automated Time Entry System,

Last week I had lunch with a bunch of lawyers of different ages and experience levels. At some point, as it usually does, the conversation turned to the state of legal education in the U.S. To a person, every lawyer at the table (myself included) lamented the poor training law schools provide. To a person, every lawyer opined that law school does almost nothing to teach students how to practice law.

 

That observation has been repeated so many places and so many times that it has become accepted as gospel. And seems to be accepted that it can’t be changed. But think about what that means. You go three years of law school, accumulate thousands if not hundreds of thousands dollars of debt. When you graduate, you take an exam that’s supposed to test whether you are competent to practice law. But despite all this, you aren’t ready to do the job you have gone to school to presumably learn how to do. You have no training on how to earn a living or really how to do anything. And you have to pay off your debt. WTF???

Continue Reading It’s High Time to Reimagine Law School

60 Minutes, the CBS weekly news show, did a segment this past Sunday on the powers of so-called deepfakes. Deepfakes refers to the use of AI to alter how a person looks or sounds on video. It can also be used to make one person appear to be and sound like another.

 

According to Wikipedia. Deepfakes (a combination of “deep learning” and “fake”) are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image on a video is simply replaced with someone else’s likeness. Deepfakes use machine learning and artificial intelligence to manipulate or generate both visual and audio content.

Continue Reading Deepfakes and the Litigation Risk

A new Survey reveals that close to 70% of lawyers are not even adequately competent with technology or are at least perceived not to be.

 

On Wednesday, Relativity Fest 2021 featured a panel discussion of Ari Kaplan’s annual General Counsel Survey. This Survey is the third such Survey done by Kaplan jointly with Relativity and FTI Technology. On the panel with Kaplan were Wendy King, Senior Managing Director of FTI Technology, and Monique Ho, General Counsel of Course Hero.

 

Kaplan surveyed GCs in a wide array of companies in virtually every type of business, employee count, and revenue. Kaplan spent over 40 hours interviewing in-house counsel to complete the Survey.

Continue Reading Lawyers’ Technological Incompetence: Ethics and Clients Be Damned

A Relativity Fest Panel today provided their top takeaways of the impact of Covid on the legal profession. Here’s the Panel’s top ten and my top three.

 

Relativity Fest 2021 kicked off today. Like last year, this year’s version is a completely virtual. (Will we ever have a live conference again?). Relativity provides secure, end-to-end legal & compliance software to analyze data for e-discovery, litigation, investigations, and other uses. It’s a giant in the industry. Relativity Fest is its annual conference designed to educate and connect with customers and others in the field.

Continue Reading Top Ten Impacts of Covid on Legal: Relativity Fest Panel Weighs In