The LawTech Silicon Valley, presented by ALM Media publications The Recorder and Law Technology News, was a day-long event in Palo Alto, Calif. on October 7, 2014. The event featured eight panels that addressed some of the challenges law firms face when adopting legal technology. Here are ten “take-aways” from the conference:
1. More technology than ever before is available to support the diverse law practice of small, midsize and large firms. Selecting appropriate technology is a challenge facing many practitioners.
2. Technology has enabled the creation of different legal service delivery models, such as virtual law firms, national and global collaboration, and consumer legal services delivery. State bar regulations created to avoid these new models are eroding.
3. A growing number of attorneys are tech savvy. Curiously, many panelists observed that law firms have been slow to adopt technologies that could improve their practice. This view was echoed in the recent LTN article Surveys: Law Firm Tech Adoption Sluggish, October 2, 2014
4. Among the transformative technologies available to law firms are cloud services, which help relieve firms (particularly solo practitioners and small firms) from the burden of managing IT infrastructure. Cloud services may provide more security than the firm’s data infrastructure, as cloud service providers can invest more in security than many law firms.
5. Effective legal technology should respond to the users’ needs; it has to solve the users’ problems to be useful and adopted. Effective tools are intuitive, simple to use and well designed.
6. Data analytics technology has, and will continue to have, a significant impact on data management. “Predictive coding” technology has revolutionized litigation-related document review and related technologies can be broadly applied to records management.
7. Many law firms are employing new technologies and associated processes to deal with their clients’ technology such as cloud services and bring your own device (BYOD) environments.
8. Security, security, security. Recent data breaches highlight the need for firms to have strong security procedures in place to protect their data and their clients’ data. A growing number of clients are requiring law firms to provide them with information regarding the firm’s security practices and protocols. Law firms may look to insurance products to help them manage disclosure risks.
9. Security again. Lawyers have the added ethical responsibility to ensure that they protect their client’s confidential information. Attorneys should ensure that they understand how clients’ data are protected when data are in their custody.
10. As diverse technology adoption permeates law firms, clients and attorneys should have a good “IT IQ.” This conclusion is supported by Comment 8 to the ABA’s Model Rule 1.1 regarding attorney competence which admonishes attorneys to “keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology.”
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