practicehacker

Prism Legal’s Ron Friendman liveblogged (a/k/a real-time blogged) Richard Susskind’s discussion of the future of the profession at ILTA 2009.  Here are the Top 10 disruptive legal technologies on the list:

Document Assembly. Has already changed markets. Providing document assembly online allows for economies of scale. Charges and hours don’t have to relate, making this technology “disruptive.

Always on Connectivity. Lawyers can, and are expected to, be on call 24/7.  Deal with it.

Electronic Legal Marketplace. Your value in the  a frictionless marketplace. Clients can select legal services in the electronic marketplace and even choose to go with non-lawyer alternatives.

E-Learning. Law schools have long been falling down on the job. The Internet can revive learning with realistic simulations.

Online Legal Guidance. Interactive advice systems in the “latent legal market” (see Suskind, The Future of Lawyers). Sounds like self-guided document automation.

Legal Open-Sourcing. A la Wikipedia. Crowd-sourcing communities of interested individuals can result in better answers than throwing the problem to a single individual.  Consumers more likely to talk to friend with similar problems than a lawyer.

Closed Legal Communities. See Legal Onramp. Clients and In House Counsel can pool legal information and check a common knowledge-base before consulting pricey outside counsel.

Workflow and Project Management. High volume, low value work can be made into off-the-rack solutions; making certain lawyers into de facto project managers. Project management requires significant training, but lawyers aren’t getting any. This is a disruptive trend because it highlights the fact that as efficiency increases, billable hours decrease.

Embedded Legal Knowledge. In the future legal knowledge will be built into compliance systems making the contributions of highly-trained counsel less necessary except for unusual assignments.

Online Dispute Resolution. Dispute resolution as a service. Services like CyberSettle versus time spent in Court or in the arbitration system.

Thought I’d share some choice video from TechShow 2009 featuring all 4 of the Best of Show winners that I wrote up in TechnoLawyer, plus interviews with some of my heroes such as Bob Ambrogi, Jay Funeberg, and Kevin O’Keefe, as well as sightings of legal blogging all-stars like Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighelle. I’m still excited.

See related videos here and find me on YouTube as practicehacker.

We're the ABA Damnit! We own you!

This was my 10th year at ABA Technology Show in Chicago. This year was particularly cool.  Here’s why:

Meeting The Heavies: To me, seeing people like Dennis Kennedy, Tom Mighelle, Bob Ambrogi, Jim Calloway, Kevin O’Keefe, Brett Burney, Andy Atkins, Jay Foonberg (!) and the rest of my pretend blog friends … I mean pretend LinkedIn friends … is like reconnecting with long lost relatives. Exciting and a little intimidating. But all of them were really great and down to earth. Except that Kennedy. Such a prima donna. I kid, I kid.

Meeting Canadians: Who can forget meeting the Great Librarian of Upper Canada! Beat that. Then there was Phil of the Future (my name for him), Steve Matthews (nice guy), Brett Burney (I think he’s Canadian), Dominic Jaar (vive la Quebec libre!), the boys from Clio (or as I called them, the Booth Babes), and a host of other talent from the Great White North. It was great to meet you all: now go back where the ice doesn’t melt until July.

Technology Becoming Accepted: This year for the first time in memory I noticed a preponderance of grey hairs and the careful gait of partners scoping out potential buys for their offices.  This was not the brash, flash-in-the-pan TechShow of the late-90’s in which the Internet was decried as a fad.

SaaS, Saas, and more Saas: Software as a service was all over the place, and by next year it will be pervasive. This year I was knocked out by the number and variety of kick-ass SaaS providers at the show including Clio, RocketMatter, and VLO Tech. Clio was my hands-down favorite for a number of reasons – I intend to use it in my own practice. Whatever your cup of tea, the idea of throwing away the IT department in favor of the Cloud is gaining traction fast.

Less is … Less: One lamentable fact about this  year’s show – there was less of it than I’ve seen in a long time. Another casualty of the economy I’d say, but we shouldn’t overlook the fact that many legal technology vendors have been slaves to profit instead of boosters for innovation and the slow economy is making it painfully apparent what a royal screw job they’ve been giving lawyers all these years. Many players couldn’t make it ? Good riddance to bad company.

Other than that however, it was a great experience as always and one that I heartily recommend to one and all. If you haven’t been to TechShow, go there. If you have, come back. A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

For more coverage see my SmallLaw Column in TechnoLawyer.

Check out Twitter coverage of TechShow.

As always, I’d love your thoughts. E-mail me at mhedayat[at]mha-law.com or tweet me @practichacker.

ttyl

Author’s Note: This year I got to blog the ABA Technology Show once again as I did last year in this pair of posts here and here. In addition, this year I was given the opportunity to publish my work in the prestigious publication TechnoLawyer. And on a related (and equally important) note, this was the second year in a row that I was sponsored by the august DuPage County Bar Association, thanks to the hard work of directrix and champion of technology, Glenda Sharp. To Glenda and this year’s bar President, Fred Spitzzeri, a great big Thank You! Here’s to doing it again next year …

I Attended ABA TECHSHOW 2008 and All I Got Was This Lousy Blog Post

Eliminating the Paper Chase: From Boxes to Bytes (Paperless Office Track)

A Real World EDD Motion Hearing (Litigation Track)

The Mobile Office: Take Your Desktop in Your Pocket (Mobile Technology Track)

Outlook Tips and Tricks (Roundtables Track)

So You Want to Be an ABA Author? (Special Session)

Beating the Startup Blues: A Tech Survival Guide (Solo/Small Firm II Track)

Grand Finale: 60 Sites In 60 Minutes

Crazy Mazy’s Best of Show: SQ Global Solutions

Crazy Mazy’s Best of Show: Legal Bar by BEC Legal Systems

Crazy Mazy’s Best of Show: Electronic Discovery

Crazy Mazy’s Best of Show: Adobe Acrobat Professional

A Report from the Exhibit Hall and Suggestions for TechShow 2009

Recently I heard an excellent podcast from the crew over at AlternaGeek, which by the way is sporting a sleek new look – kudos for design and use of color. So anyway, I’m listening to podcast #8 featuring resident host Linux Chick (their name, not mine). Podcast #8 is an easygoing look at the latest breakout trend in social networking – asynchonous instant communication aka microblogging identified most readily with poster-child service twitter.

micro-blog sites

www.dodgeball.com

www.jaiku.com

www.jyte.com

www.twitter.com

www.pownce.com

www.wis.dm

www.snapfoo.com

new ideas/concepts

moblogging (mobile blogging)

drunk twittering (drunktwitter.com)

twittertroll (searching twitters)

website pulse (or just “pulse.com” or something)

Technorati tags: podcast, technology, website, research, social networking

You say you want to hear more about the state of the profession? 24 hours is just not enough time for everything you have on your mind? Do you have trouble sleeping? If the answer to any of these questions was yes, or if you’re just curious about what is going on today that will affect us all tomorrow, then I urge you to listen to This Week in Law, a podcast hosted by one of the best legal bloggers anywhere and featuring a cast of thousands (of words) spoken by a few guests. This week’s episode: Rate a Lawyer featuring

• Mark Britton: Attorney and CEO of Avvo
• Denise Howell: your moderator and gracious host
• Ernie “the Attorney” Svenson: legal blogging legend
• Dennis Kennedy: the “Indiana Jones” of legal blogging
• Mazyar Hedayat: your humble narrator

 In this episode we discuss the future of Avvo and the legal profession itself. Listen for yourself and let us know what you think.

M E M O

To: Partners, Professors, Deans, Members of the Legal Establishment

From: Your Future

Re: Your Next Associate or other Hire

First, congratulations are in order. You’ve managed a masterwork of social engineering, keeping law students and young lawyers under your collective thumbs for 200 years (give or take). No easy feat.

Second, kudos on using the time-honored pyramid-scheme/MLM techniques that pass for a business model in law firms around America. Even we in the Future didn’t think that Clients, Law Schools, Law Students, and the rest of the population could be fooled for that long. Just goes to show what we know.

Finally, we salute your never give-up, never-give-in, never-think-things-through attitude. Who says you need to change with the times? Let the times change with you, we say!

But just in case any of you actually becomes aware of this post (and why would you — you don’t need or care a fig about blogs), we thought we would introduce you to Charlie … he’s smart, agile, mobile, and demanding. Uh … maybe we spoke too soon about that ‘congratulations’ thing. We’ll get back to you on that.

Sincerely,

Your Future

P.S. Send money. We don’t make nearly as much as you used to …