The article mentions some interesting things, but I have a few quibbles:
> But even with today’s modern communication tools, both customer experience and lawyer workflow have remained stagnant.
At a large firm, legal practice is unrecognizable compared to even 10-15 years ago. Everything is electronic: filing and docketing, document collection/scanning/OCR, legal research, document management (DMS + version control). Everyone communicates almost exclusively via e-mail, and remote work facilities are ubiquitous.
To the extent that technology is available that's not getting adopted, it's because it's not good enough. Predictive coding can be very helpful, but it also has a fixed setup and training overhead that makes it less efficient for smaller matters. That's why arguably the biggest shift in discovery in the last 15 years hasn't been to automating it, but outsourcing it to contract lawyers.
In the area of research, Westlaw and Lexis still rule because of their completeness and accuracy. If I need a copy of some statute enacted in 1873 I can not only find it, but I can get original scans so I can verify the text is free of OCR errors.
Moreover, things that are easy on the rest of the web are not easy when it comes to legal (or scientific) research. PageRank, for example, works great when everyone searching for "skiing near Tahoe" is looking for the same popular pages. But when you're doing legal research, a lower-court case that directly addresses your issue but isn't widely cited is much more valuable than a highly-cited Supreme Court case that doesn't address your issue. And computers still don't really understand either what issue you're looking for or what issue a case is about. So ancient technology (search for this word near that word) still rules the day.
> There are good reasons for this, as law firms tend to be cost agonistic (since they pass costs directly to their client)
This is oft-stated, but economically fallacious. Price is a function of supply and demand. The client cares about total cost for a particular legal service; she doesn't care about how that cost is broken down. If the client's budget for a matter is $300,000, every dollar that goes to costs is a dollar that doesn't go to the law firm. This is true even if you're billing by the hour, because in the long run, a firm will raise rates until hours x rate = client budget.
> PageRank, for example, works great when everyone searching for "skiing near Tahoe" is looking for the same popular pages. But when you're doing legal research, a lower-court case that directly addresses your issue but isn't widely cited is much more valuable than a highly-cited Supreme Court case that doesn't address your issue.
This is true where you are doing fine-grained research, but there are plenty of lawyers who are constantly delving into new areas of law that are adjacent to or tangential to their primary area of interest or practice. When this happens, it can be phenomenally useful to get up to speed on the area of law by seeing which decisions have the highest PageRank, or PageRank weighted by certain factors, etc.
In this way, one way to think about the startup that implements a PageRank algorithm is that it is not disrupting electronic legal research, but rather disrupting legal textbooks. In my experience, the fastest way to get abreast of a new field is to find the leading textbook. One could imagine a sophisticated database which could altogether remove the need to consult a textbook by painting a picture of the leading cases, key pieces of legislation, which sections are most often referred by which cases in which context, etc.
> And computers still don't really understand either what issue you're looking for or what issue a case is about. So ancient technology (search for this word near that word) still rules the day.
I think this is the key. The big revolution in legal research that I'm waiting for is the ability for the computer to understand something like: all cases where a) Claim X was brought as a counterclaim and not as the original claim; b) counter-claimant made Y argument citing to case Z but not case W; d) requested relief was R; and e) court made its decision based on Factor F. Until then, "search for this word near that word (and boolean operators)" is extremely powerful and can get me most of the way pretty quickly.
Can you recommend software packages for case management at a small firm? I just started working with a small public-interest law firm that uses Google docs to track their caseload, an Access database to track their customers, and Drupal to run their public site, which is basically a library of case summaries and briefs. It's a mess.
They're looking for a solution that will let better manage case and customer info internally, and push public info to the public site. The idea is, only enter information once.
Custom development is of course an option, but first I want to see if there are any good available products. Are there any good off-the-shelf or hosted law firm management software packages that provide an API? Thanks for any advice you can spare.
What's your document management story? If you're drafting/keeping track of versions in Google Docs,[1] then you should opt for a cloud-based solution that can integrate. Clio, RocketMatter, and MyCase are the big ones. They run $50/$70 per month per seat. Clio integrates with DropBox too. HoudiniESQ looks neat. Also has Google Docs integration. Self-hosted or cloud hosted. Pricing is pretty reasonable $1280 for ten licenses up front, then $192 per user per year.
[1] If they don't have a DMS story, they need one!
One lawyer I talk to says that every single filing he makes at court has to be paper. He bought a wheely suitcase to carry all this documentation around to court.
If everything is electronic, his firm and the judges they deal with didn't get the message...
I work for a very large company with three dozen law offices across the US. Listening to what is considered "normal" in other offices is always interesting. I am, unfortunately, in an office that practices in courts that are paper-dependent, even though there are rules that allow for electronic filing and service in many circumstances, all it takes is one litigant (or the judge!) to say "eh, I'm not comfortable with this, we're going to do this the old fashioned way" and we're done.
I recently went through dealing with some standard legal agreements for a film project. I never met our lawyer in person, it was all telephone and email.
But when it came to signing documents, that had to be done on paper. And notarized, which was a simple trip to the UPS store. And the originals mailed around, which was a hassle. The parties involved don't even all live in the same hemisphere, so there were some annoying shipping times.
I think at bigger firms ( the kind that can actually afford in house IT) they have runners, paralegals, various secretaries and assistants of sorts, etc to deal with that. Lawyers and IT types don't deal with mountains of paperwork. I do know of a solo practitioner who deals with tons and tons (literally) of paperwork. I have a feeling people are projecting their big(ish) law experiences on the profession as a whole.
In some courts there is a requirement to both file an electronic copy on the docket and provide paper courtesy copies to the Judge's chambers. Some things are easier to work with when they are printed, and the courts put the onus to provide paper copies on the litigants.
While it is very common to bring printed docs to court, it was probably the last step of the process where he printed everything. Everything before that was probably electronic and even if he received printed docs, those would be scanned and OCR'ed.
This really is jurisdiction dependent. At larger law firms that have to deal with paper courts still have runners that handle the docket and other details of filing (assuming the court allows it). At small firms this is the lawyer's responsibility.
Or, software is maybe too good, but law firms that bill by the hour are not interested in efficiency improvements because more hours means more money for them. Fortunately, with fixed fees becoming more popular this is changing.
> But even with today’s modern communication tools, both customer experience and lawyer workflow have remained stagnant.
At a large firm, legal practice is unrecognizable compared to even 10-15 years ago. Everything is electronic: filing and docketing, document collection/scanning/OCR, legal research, document management (DMS + version control). Everyone communicates almost exclusively via e-mail, and remote work facilities are ubiquitous.
To the extent that technology is available that's not getting adopted, it's because it's not good enough. Predictive coding can be very helpful, but it also has a fixed setup and training overhead that makes it less efficient for smaller matters. That's why arguably the biggest shift in discovery in the last 15 years hasn't been to automating it, but outsourcing it to contract lawyers.
In the area of research, Westlaw and Lexis still rule because of their completeness and accuracy. If I need a copy of some statute enacted in 1873 I can not only find it, but I can get original scans so I can verify the text is free of OCR errors.
Moreover, things that are easy on the rest of the web are not easy when it comes to legal (or scientific) research. PageRank, for example, works great when everyone searching for "skiing near Tahoe" is looking for the same popular pages. But when you're doing legal research, a lower-court case that directly addresses your issue but isn't widely cited is much more valuable than a highly-cited Supreme Court case that doesn't address your issue. And computers still don't really understand either what issue you're looking for or what issue a case is about. So ancient technology (search for this word near that word) still rules the day.
> There are good reasons for this, as law firms tend to be cost agonistic (since they pass costs directly to their client)
This is oft-stated, but economically fallacious. Price is a function of supply and demand. The client cares about total cost for a particular legal service; she doesn't care about how that cost is broken down. If the client's budget for a matter is $300,000, every dollar that goes to costs is a dollar that doesn't go to the law firm. This is true even if you're billing by the hour, because in the long run, a firm will raise rates until hours x rate = client budget.