I tell you, no prophet is accepted on his own land.

Assume: /ə-soom/ Verb. Making an ass out of you and me

Sometimes you find pearls right under your nose. You just miss seeing them because you make certain assumptions based on what you’ve heard or how you have been conditioned. This happened to me recently when I discovered there is a Kentucky law school on the cutting edge of teaching innovation, entrepreneurship and legal technology. Continue Reading How a Little-Known Kentucky Law School Became a High-Ranking Innovation School

A long-time law practice mentor of mine used to say after spending the day with really smart people discussing big problems and solutions, that all that thinking gave him a headache. If that’s the case then Carl would have had colossal migraine if, like me, he participated in the Building a Better Lawyer” Design Thinking Workshop at Michigan State University College of Law yesterday. (Want to see more? See  #betterlawyer). Continue Reading LegalRnD’s Workshop on Building a Better Lawyer: Can Law Schools Lead Us Out of the Wilderness?

An interesting article appeared today in Artificial Lawyer (AL), Richard Tromans’ excellent blog on the impact of artificial intelligence, data analytics, and more generally, technology on the practice of law.

The gist of the article is that UK-based insurance law firm BLM has announced a partnership with  the London School of Economics (LSE), to develop litigation prediction models as part of a wider move into legal analytics. Continue Reading Litigation Predictive Analytics: Driving a Stake in the Heart of the Billable Heart?

So I’ve spent the past 3 days walking the Exhibit Floor at ALM’s LegalWeek18. Hundreds of booths; I frankly never knew there were still so many eDiscovery providers. 

 

But one vendor caught my eye. Cloudlex advertises itself “as the only Legal Cloud built exclusively for personal injury law firms”. This got me to thinking. There are all these legal tech providers trying to sell tools to lawyers to make them more efficient. But most of the marketing dollars seem to be directed toward firms whose business model is the billable hour. Continue Reading Plaintiffs’ Lawyers: A Neglected LegalTech Market?

I had a chance to catch up with Avaneesh Marwaha, CEO of Litera Microsystems earlier this week at LegalWeek18. Litera Microsystems is one of the larger document management service and technology providers with a range of products in this space. I first met Avaneesh at last year’s ILTA conference shortly after the Litera Microsystems merger which I wrote about in a piece for the Lawyerist. At that time, the CEO decision was up in the air although it seemed pretty obvious to me at least that Avaneesh was the likely choice. Continue Reading Avaneesh Marwaha, Litera Microsystems CEO, Talks About Tech, LegalWeek and Litera Microsystems

 

I’m spending this week at LegalWeek 2018, ALM’s annual event in New York. Lots of good presentations and talks.

 

One of the more intriguing presentation was on the official opening day of the Conference. Steve Kovalan and Nicholas Bruch– both of ALM—offered a presentation on the state of the legal market. They started by debunking the notions Continue Reading The AmLaw 200: At Risk?

The Janus Issue

The Supreme Court is set to consider in late February in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees whether workers can be forced to pay union dues even when they don’t agree with the Union’s political activities or simply don’t want to. If the Court holds that these mandatory fees violate workers’ First Amendment rights, a large and perhaps unrepairable crack in the power dam held by state bar associations may be about to occur. Continue Reading Is SCOTUS About to Disrupt the Legal Profession?

Every year I try to make it a point to attend the Consumer Electronics show in Law Vegas. This week-long show is a gadget lover’s dream. Thousands of exhibits, lots of demos, plenty of substantive sessions and keynotes by such people as Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO, (Ajit Pai was supposed to speak but for some strange reason, he bowed out after the net neutrality vote). I’m lucky enough to have a media pass, so I get lots of inside perks and access.

Knowing where consumer electronics is headed also tells us where businesses and maybe someday, the practice of law is headed

Why do I, a practicing lawyer, attend? First, I’m a tech enthusiast or, should I say, a gadget king. But more than that, I think knowing where consumer electronics is headed also tells us where businesses and maybe someday, the practice of law is headed as consumer electronics filter over into commercial use. And one of the things I have concluded this year after just a couple of days here is that where the practice of law and lawyers may be headed is a little scary. Continue Reading The End of Lawyers May Not Be What You Think