- More Security, More Security, More Security
With a very low tolerance for risk and finding the perpetual threat of cyberattacks to be tiresome and unseemly, law firms will go “all in” on cybersecurity. This will include:
- Across-the-board adoption of better, more secure software for client-facing processes – e-signing, videoconferencing, contract creation, research.
- Across-the-board adoption of better, more secure software for internal processes – billing, file storage, practice management, timekeeping.
- Integration with client systems for seamless data sharing, especially in the electronic discovery and remote litigation spheres.
(As a legal tech company, you may think that we are engaging in wishful thinking. We are. But we are also just distilling and relaying everything we have heard and seen and learned in the past year.)
- Access to Justice Reckoning
“Access to justice” describes the ability of any person, regardless of income level, education, or demographics, to have a fair chance to use the legal system to advocate for themselves and secure their legal rights. Historically, we think of access to justice primarily as being able to retain and afford representation. But, seeing the huge spikes in participation levels from litigants and witnesses when virtual proceedings became an option, underscores that access more precisely means literal physical access.
Remote litigation means someone, a fact witness or character witness or expert witness, is able to provide outcome-altering testimony because they no longer have to leave their city or take leave from their job to testify. Or an hourly worker facing eviction may can attend their hearing without a cataclysmic effect on their income. In Maricopa County, Arizona failure-to-appear rates in eviction cases dropped from 40% in 2019 to 13% in 2021. It means that AmLaw100 firms can minimize or eliminate non-billable time that the attorney has to be away from the office in order to provide pro bono services.
Now, we must scale that with secure, accessible and purposefully designed legal proceedings software.
- Increased Demand for Data to Use Beyond Marketing
Widespread innovation and adoption of technology platforms will necessitate lawyers being able to access data from, regarding, stored in, and otherwise related to those platforms. Immediately. And once accessed, law firms will employ new teams to extract insights from the data. These insights will change how firms assess cases, identify trends in litigation, counsel clients, and approach transactions.
Firms will use data to institute new practice areas (See, for example, Trend No. 6 regarding new law firm departments), eliminate errors and improve quality and speed of deliverables, provide more detailed information to members and clients, and be more informed than competitors.
- Law School Evolution
Law students are starting to demand that they be taught what they need to know to succeed as a lawyer today. Columbia Law School already offers a course called “Data and Predictive Coding for Lawyers.” From its course description, “The legal profession has seen a rapidly growing use of quantitative data. Law students enter a world of contemporary legal practice where empirical methods like predictive coding and statistical inference are commonplace. Public policy debates often rely on cutting-edge empirical methods that can be difficult for lawyers to understand.” Seton Hall University School of Law offers a course focused on Data Analytics, examining “how statistics and data can be used in real-world legal practice.” Penn State Law offers an entire Law, Science and Technology concentration.
Law school curriculums will necessarily begin offering students more clinical experiences, more preparation for actual practice, more access to technology, more collaboration with tech innovators, more attention to lessening the gap between academic legal study and the business of law. Curriculums will need to become more agile to keep pace with new cyber-torts and cyber-crimes, new methods of crypto payments and digital currencies, new digital privacy concerns, and new technologies impact public policy.
There will be more emphasis on things which enhance employability like conversation skills, client etiquette, data analytics, and the tenets of business attire. There will be more emphasis on mental well-being.
- Innovation No Longer Optional.
Moore’s Law, named after an observation by co-founder of Intel Gordon Moore, states that the number of transistors that can fit into an integrated circuit will double every two years, which in turn means that computers get faster every two years. This law has held true since it was first coined in 1958. Think about how long it took everyone to get a fax machine versus how long it took everyone to get Facebook.
In 2023, things will be faster than they ever were before; even faster than they were in 2022 and way faster than they were in 2021. Technology will be more important, less optional, and more user-friendly.
Law firms that postponed investing in modern technology will begin to feel the consequences of that postponement, consequences including losing clients and being unable to retain attorneys. Attorneys must market themselves as being faster, more accurate, better informed, more prepared, and more secure. Technology helps you be all those things – when you have the right technology. Firms that position themselves as innovators can proclaim to existing and prospective clients that their commitment to technology sets them apart from other firms.
We don’t know what we don’t know. The hotel, publishing, movie, recording, taxi industries have all undergone transformations in the last decade. We are getting data from sources we never knew existed and learning things we never thought possible.
One thing we do know is that remote litigation is here to stay. And in a mere year, Calloquy has ushered in the Next Era of Litigation.
