February 2019: Legal Innovation Roundup
This month, inspired by the Law Society report (see below), my roundup of stand-out content on legal innovation follows the theme of adoption of legal tech. Adoption (and its close relative engagement) is an important topic for innovation in any industry. While lawyers are renowned for their conservative nature, this challenge is not unique to legal innovation and we can (and should) learn from the experience of other industries.
As ever, this list reflects my personal preferences. If you think I've missed out something that's worth reading or watching, please link to it in the comments.
LawTech Adoption Research Report
If you read only one thing on legal innovation from February, it should be this report published by the Law Society in collaboration with TechMarketView. It is a common sense and in-depth review of the current state of LawTech (I'll save the discussion on legal tech vs. law tech for another time) and its adoption mostly in the b2b context. It is well worth reading the report itself, rather than the 2 page summary, as a lot of the insight is contained in the quotes and figures that are included (if you are short on time, I'd highlight pages 16 to 37 as the most relevant and insightful).
How can innovators increase legal technology adoption?
Days before the publication of the Law Society report, I had offered some of my own tips on increasing adoption of legal technology. I propose that there is no single "silver-bullet" that will solve adoption issues for legal tech. Instead, the best approach is layered, incorporating a variety of tactics and tools.
Redesigning law firm knowledge management
This summary of a session presented by Jeff Rovner at the 2018 Ark KM conference makes the proposal that a push model is needed to drive real adoption of knowledge management tools in law firms. What is a push model? It is where information relevant to you is sent to you at the time you are most likely to need it (rather than you having to look for it yourself). I personally agree wholeheartedly that the future of knowledge management is well-defined "pushes", where information is made available to lawyers as they need it most.
Corporate legal eagles start to embrace artificial intelligence
This brief from Bain provides a high level overview of the current adoption of, and opportunities in using, AI tools in corporate legal departments. The figures, in particular, provide useful prompts for thinking about implementing AI and the latter part of the brief contains some good tips. Being high level, there is little new insight and no distinction is made between automation and AI. That said, this is a good read if you are involved in, or considering, an in-house project using AI.
JLD LawTech survey report
The Law Society has been on top form this year. In addition to the LawTech Adoption Report that inspired the theme for this month's roundup, towards the end of January their junior lawyers division released the results of their LawTech survey. The resounding finding is that there is not enough engagement and understanding amongst junior lawyers as to exactly what lawtech is and how it can improve the way we work. While this isn't exactly a new finding, what makes it interesting is that it holds true among the digital natives in our midst - those that are most likely to be curious about and experiment with technology and new processes.
Bonus controversy of the month: Is legal tech operating in an echo chamber?
One of the more interesting controversies in the twittersphere (which I joined this month) was whether the legal innovation space has become an echo chamber that only serves the top end of the enterprise legal market. Two of the best longer pieces on this point were hosted on Above the Law. Robert Ambrogi argued that the legal innovation space has indeed become an echo chamber, only interested in serving those operating at the top of the profession and not interested in the wider group of legal practitioners nor the consumers of legal tech. Joe Borstein took an alternative view, pointing to the tremendous growth in legal tech as evidence that it must be permeating outside an echo chamber (or, if it is not, the echo chamber is very big). Which argument appeals to you more?
** As with my previous roundups, this list reflects my personal preferences. If you think I've missed out something that's worth reading or watching, please link to it in the comments. **