[Ed. Note – Please welcome back Jessica de Perio Wittman & Kathleen (Katie) Brown as guest bloggers. – GL]

In case you didn’t know, the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) will release a brand-new version of the bar exam in 2026.  The NCBE conducted a study in 2018 and asked practicing attorneys and non-licensed lawyers about basic technology tasks in their law practice.  Attorneys said they expect proficiency in word processing, research platforms, electronic communication, desktop publishing, and document storage, including the cloud.  This should not be a surprise because D. Casey Flaherty has been talking about minimum tech expectations in the practice of law since 2012.  His technology audit proved that many attorneys do not possess basic technology competency per Model Rule 1.1 and Comment 8. Over 10 years later, we are still talking about the importance of technology competency in the legal profession and highlighting ever-present shortcomings in basic technology skills.  Flaherty himself stated that “lawyers in general are woefully deficient in using the software tools at their disposal – e.g., Word, Acrobat, Excel.”

Joseph Lawson, Law Library Director at the Harris County Robert W. Hainsworth Law Library, identified that a lack of time and training opportunities prevent solo and small firm practitioners from accessing legal technology.  The 2019 American Bar Association Tech Report confirms Lawson’s hypothesis:  only 28 percent of solos report the availability of technology training, while more than 95 percent of attorneys at large firms reported access to training.

Some may argue that law firms should not spend their time and money on offering basic technology training because the training should be offered in law school.  We address how law schools provide technology training in our 2023 article, “Taking on the Ethical Obligation of Technology Competency in the Academy: An Empirical Analysis of Practice-Based Technology Training Today”.  In our longitudinal study, we found that 670 technology courses were offered in the technology space.  Now, 670 courses may sound like a large number, but this number includes every e-discovery, cybersecurity, law office management, and law practice and technology course in the country.  This results in an average of 3.38 technology courses at each of the ABA-accredited law schools.  This statistic also includes the University of North Texas, which is currently the only ABA-accredited law school that mandates the completion of a Practice-Related Technology requirement for all J.D. candidates.  To learn more about how law schools are attempting to address the disconnect in technology training, we encourage you to watch the recorded version of the University of St. Thomas Law Journal Fall 2022 Symposium, A Roadmap for Law School Modernity: Teaching Technology Competence (available at https://youtu.be/hILd5qJ1G4I).

Today, the “next big thing” in legal technology is ChatGPT and generative AI, and we recognize that, in contrast, it’s not sexy to talk about basic technology skills. Or the fact that many attorneys still do not possess them.  But we need to continue having these conversations about basic technology training and possessing the requisite skills for efficient legal practice.  All attorneys should know how to:

  • Download forms from databases
  • Use formatting styles
  • Create tables of authority
  • Use Quick Parts and Autotext
  • Save Word documents as efile-ready PDFs, and
  • Set up shortcut keys to insert a section symbol.

Some believe that our law students were exposed to these basic skills because they grew up surrounded by technology.   Iantha Haight disproves the assumption of native technology competency in her article “Digital Natives, Techno Transplants: Framing Minimum Technology Standards for Law School Graduates”.  She claims that the term digital natives “lulls educators into thinking students need no additional training in technology to be prepared for the workforce.”  Even though we have started to dispel the myth of the digital native in the legal classroom, we must now deal with a new generation of law students who went to “Google School”.

What does it mean to be a Google School student?  These students were handed a Chromebook or an iPad with some (or all) of Google G Suite for Education.   Today, some colleges and universities have been using Google Workspace for Education (previously called G Suite for Education) for at least a decade.  In 2017, Google reported that about 15 million primary- and secondary-school students in the United States use Google Classroom.  By this time, Chromebooks accounted for 58 percent of mobile devices shipped to primary and secondary schools in the United States.   In 2019, Google reported that all eight Ivy League schools use G Suite for Education as a productivity tool of choice for their faculty, staff, and students.  For a discussion on how Google Schools are impacting the law school classroom, you can listen to this podcast: https://www.geeklawblog.com/2022/08/teaching-and-pressuring-law-professors-to-teach-technology-katie-brown-tgir-ep-171.html.

Law schools have the challenge of minimizing the use of Google products in the classroom because most law firms don’t allow employees to use Google apps on their work devices. Microsoft and Adobe productivity tools currently have a large footprint on the legal academy and the legal profession. As a result, there is a disconnect in technology knowledge and skill when you compare what students were accustomed to prior to law school and what they’ll be expected to know when they head into practice.  If the next gen bar exam is intended to simulate scenarios in modern-day practice, then the NCBE must also award points to test takers for successfully completing basic technology tasks that they would be expected to use in practice.  The NCBE can ask test takers to:

  • Create documents with specific margins, page numbers, and styles, like the formats expected from local court rules
  • Create a table of authorities or a table of contents
  • Draft an email using mail merge skills
  • Convert a Word document into a PDF and
  • Remove any metadata damaging to their client

We recognize that this is not a complete list, but it provides examples for how the NCBE could test basic technology skills that are expected in modern-day law practice.  Only then, can bar examiners determine whether test takers have the requisite knowledge and skills for entry-level practice.

Author Bio:

Jessica de Perio Wittman (UConn) and Kathleen (Katie) Brown (Charleston) have been friends since their law school days at Seattle University.  Although the two have lived in different states for the past 13 years and now serve as Law Library directors at their respective schools, they still manage to hold Zoom marathon writing sessions on a weekly basis.

 

 

It is pretty apparent that we are in a super Hype Cycle when it comes to AI tools like ChatGPT, but for many of us in the legal profession, we’re not used to reaching this point of the cycle at the same time as the rest of the world. Because things are happening so fast, we wanted to bring in someone like Colin Lachance from Jurisage to talk about how they are integrating Generative AI tools into their products.
Greg was going down an AI rabbit hole on Twitter this week when Colin mentioned his own project he was launching. Jurisage’s tool, MyJr (pronounced “My Junior”) is part of a joint venture between Jurisage and AltaML, and is designed to change how researchers access information by allowing the AI tool to synthesis and read cases as the researchers search and analyze the information. Rather than opening up web browser tab after tab and scanning cited cases for relevant information, the idea behind MyJr is to have it quickly answer that information for you. If you need to know what the relevant arguments are from each side in Smith v. Jones, as MyJr to pass that along to you. Ask it a plain language question, get a quick and plain language answer.
Lachance is working to use the GPT 3.5 tool to pass along cases and create what he calls “guardrails” with the cases so that the prompt and the results limit themselves to the case itself. This protects the researcher from the AI “creating” the answer from all the non-relevant information it has collected in its large language model of machine learning. Lachance has additional goals for using AI within Jurisage’s data, but he’s focused tools like MyJr establishing trust with those using it for researching Canadian, and soon US caselaw.
The MyJr product works as a browser extension and identifies Canadian and US case law citations on any web page. It delivers a preview into key details about the cited case, and a link to a free full-text version, in a popup when the user hovers over the citation. Clicking through to a “more insights” dashboard reveals additional detail as well as access to the upcoming “Chat with a case” feature (Feb 20th for Canadian case, a month later for US). While the paid version of the dashboard won’t officially launch until late March, user can get unlimited pre-sale access today as well as secure a future 50% discount option for a one-time payment of $7.

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Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript

Continue Reading Colin Lachance on Jurisage’s MyJr and How He’s Looking at AI to Assist in the Synthesis and Reading of Legal Cases (TGIR Ep. 190)

At present, the most universal priority for law departments is “controlling outside counsel costs” per 85% of respondents to the most recent TR Legal Department Operations Index.

I understand. I also doubt the marginal utility of simply pressing harder on the traditional levers of cost control (discounts, panels, RFPs, outside counsel guidelines, AFAs). My sometimes solicited, alternative advice:

  • Package work. Identify opportunities to enter portfolio arrangements, including integrated law relationships with New Law offerings.
  • Move work. Right source, including greater use of legal marketplaces to find the right talent at the right price.
  • Re-examine costs on autopilot. Major advances in ediscovery, ADR, court reporting, staffing, etc. present substantial, immediate spend-optimization opportunities.
  • Don’t stop investing in compliance by design. Embedding legal knowledge in business processes is the only viable, long-term approach to meeting the evolving legal needs of business in an increasingly complex operating environment.

If you want to discuss, call me, maybe.

Herein, however, I am not focused on being better. Rather, we will continue our exploration of avoiding worse. The unpalatable message remains that even when something must be done, doing nothing is superior to doing the wrong thing. Running in the wrong direction cannot be course corrected solely by redoubling our efforts.

Continue Reading Trust Fall: the limits of discounts, panels, billing guidelines, etc.

I’m not really into the whole brevity thing. I already wrote a brief post (only 800 words) that concludes with succint advice to law departments on discounts, AFAs, panels, outside counsel guidelines, RFPs, and, in particular, a humbling recommendation they not ask law firms about the use of technology unless the answers will inform structured dialogue to improve business outcomes at scale and pace (because I’d previously written a book on this subject).

At the conclusion of this off-brand concision, I promised my tiny corps of hard core readers an extended universe of nerd content. Fair warning, this is not for everyone.

Continue Reading Scary Stories about our Wicked Problems (Legal Nerd Halloween)

I should be taking a victory lap. Instead, I am on an apology tour urging in-house departments not to listen to me—i.e., ignore my long-standing advice re asking law firms about their use of technology. I’ve concluded that the common application of my advice only adds unnecessary friction to an already friction-laden system—similar to the value-subtractive frictions introduced by ubiquitous, well-intentioned, and misguided approaches to discounts, panels, outside counsel guidelines, AFAs, etc.

I understand the motivations. I also understand the constraints. Everyone operating in our space should be able to connect the dots on these four statistics:

  • 75% of GCs recognize workloads will outpace budgets (problem)
  • 80% of in-house lawyers are burned out (consequence)
  • 70% of law departments are not investing in digital transformation (unavailable solution due to resource constraints)
  • 70% of law departments are asking law firms about technology usage (attempt to cope within resource constraints)

Continue Reading Legal Buy: We’re Asking the Wrong Questions (and it is my fault, kind of)

For the first time ever, we have a guest co-host this week while Marlene wears her fancy sneakers around ILTACon seeking answers to our Crystal Ball question.
Katie Brown, Associate Dean for Information Resources at Charleston School of Law is on a mission to increase the teaching of practical technology skills to law students. In her view, law professors “are required to educate people so that they can go out into the practice and successfully do that. And so beyond just, rule 1.1 with legal technology and having that competency, for us as law schools, I think we have an ethical obligation to be teaching legal technology.” This approach needs to be embedded into the Law School’s culture, because it costs money, time, and effort to do correctly.
In upcoming research collected with University of Connecticut Law’s Jessica de Perio Wittman, Brown and de Perio Wittman calculated that on average, law students have less than 4 classes during their entire time in law school that have some aspect of teaching them the technology skills in that topic. Brown wants to see that number rise.
AALL Crystal Ball Answer

While in Denver at the AALL Conference, Katie not only answered our Crystal Ball question, she also persuaded Abby Dos Santos, Reference Librarian at Caplin & Drysdale, to sit down with her and have a conversation about the pipeline of technology teaching from law school to law firms. We cover both of those answers and then Katie turns the mic on Greg to ask what law students need to understand about court dockets before landing in law firms.

Special thanks to Katie Brown for stepping in and co-hosting this week!!

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Transcript

 

Continue Reading Teaching (and Pressuring) Law Professors to Teach Technology – Katie Brown (TGIR Ep. 171)

I had the good fortune to attend the first in-person CLOC Global Institute in three years. It was an extremely positive experience. Unfortunately, I came home to find I was different kind of positive (new reality; unsurprising after three weeks of travel). I was therefore not able to timely complete my final CGI Dispatch for Artificial Lawyer. Blogs, however, have no deadlines.

To recap:

Dispatch #1 discussed the rise of legal ops in the context of ever-increasing scale, organizational complicatedness, and legal complexity.

Dispatch #2 covered the stellar pre-conference Legal Ops 101 session, highlighting the importance of education when most legal ops roles are net new and, therefore, being filled by individuals with no prior experience.

Dispatch #3 reported on the first day of CGI, which was bookended by sessions on storytelling (one of my favorite topics).

Dispatch #4 was to be a reflection piece. While I could have done without the multiple days of fatigue and brain fog, I am glad I had the opportunity to truly reflect.

Let me set the scene.

LARGE CONFERENCE ROOM — BELLAGIO, LAS VEGAS — CLOC GLOBAL INSTITUTE — LEGAL OPS 101

The presenters are lined up on stage at the end of a three-hour session built around the CLOC Core 12. The Q&A session is commencing. I am part of a sold-out audience of 170+.

Question: At a company where legal ops is new, which of the Core 12 would you start with?

Presenter1: Well, I began by getting the DMS under control.

Me (mouthing silently): What? No?

Presenter2: Typically, ebilling and outside counsel rates get attacked first.

Me (shaking head and whispering): But…but…

Presenter3: Knowledge management.

Me (clutching table and muttering compulsively): No! No! You start with the business! The business!

Presenter4: Department budgeting.

Me (spontaneously combusts)

END SCENE

The above is not a literal transcript. But it is a fair recounting of the conclusion of the excellent Legal Ops 101. What was unfair was my reaction.

While I have been wrong many times before (here, here), I stand by my substantive point in this instance. I am a broken record (most recently, here) about the importance, and unfortunate absence, of centering business needs in law department planning.

But being right is different than being fair. Continue Reading CLOC Global Institute – Reflection (Delayed)

When three legal innovators gather together in their town of Houston, the topic drifts toward the interesting innovation and creativity hubs happening around the city. Both inside and outside of law firms. In a special “after-hours” episode of The Geek in Review, we talk with Norton Rose Fulbright US’ Head of Innovation, Zack Barnes. The conversation is a diverse as the city. We talk about the The Ion innovation epicenter and Zack’s interest in how these types of innovation hubs can use help from the law firms within the city to help guide entrepreneurs in the early stages. 
In addition to the conversation revolving around legal innovation and creativity, we also talk on Zack’s experiences with creating and writing patents as a start-up entrepreneur himself, and finding other start-ups to invest in for companies like Halliburton. One big difference between innovation within corporations and innovation within law firms is the story that the innovators need to tell. At corporations, it’s about establishing a viable product, where at law firms, the story is more around the value and the relationship enhancements to the clients.
Zack also describes how he went to college to be a mountain bike racer and how that love of speed expanded to a faster, but less bone breaking hobby of racing Corvettes. To top things off, we lubricate the discussion with some wonderful local Houston beers. Buckle up and grab your own favorite beverage as we talk all things innovation and happenings here in our favorite city of Houston. Let us know if you are ever in town and we can take you to one or more of the great innovation and brewing spots around town.

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Transcript

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 159 – After-Hours with NRF’s Zack Barnes

One of the things we love to talk about on this podcast is how to take data and make it tell a story. This week’s guests are doing just that on the topic of Community Policing and making sure that there is equal coverage for both the Community part, as well as the Policing part. Ama Romaine, co-founder and Chair, and Wayne Harris, Executive Director of The Initiative: Advancing the Blue and Black Partnership, join us to describe how they are taking quantitative and qualitative data from both communities and the police agencies to identify the current relationship between them, and how they are aligned and misaligned when it comes to community policing.
The conversation about [community] policing… really needs to get to where we recognize that we’re in this together. That there’s very little separation between the men and women wearing a police uniform, and the people that they are working with.” – Wayne Harris
What we are really trying to do is give voice to individuals in their communities and create a way for local leaders, for police leaders, for anyone, really, to be able to understand what a community needs. And then let’s focus on creating and providing those needs for that community. That’s what’s going to create thriving communities in the end and, frankly, reduce the need for law enforcement to solve every single problem that we have.” – Ama Romaine
Links:

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Information Inspirations:

Our fellow geek, Casey Flaherty talks about his recent blog post series with Chad Main of the Technically Legal Podcast.

Is a workcation or bleisure travel in your future? A survey of business/leisure travelers seems to point in that direction.
Contact Us:
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert.
Voicemail: 713-487-7270
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com.
Music: As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.
Transcript:

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 145 – Ama Romaine and Wayne Harris on The Initiative: Advancing the Blue and Black Partnership

Tropes around tech utopianism are attractive fictions that promise quick wins and deliver long-term pain, ultimately undermining our efforts at effective value storytelling (series recap, plus prior screeds against tech-fixated magical thinking here, here, and here)

A new bombshell lawsuit against a contract lifecycle management provider offers a stark reminder of the promise and peril of CLM—and therefore an unfortunate but instructive example of how tech-first solutioning can go terribly wrong.

Bad contracting processes have consequences. At the center of the complaint is a ~$5m contract for CLM services and tech. The plaintiff claim they terminated the contract early for alleged uncured breaches thereof and then mistakenly continued to make ~$1.7m in payments to defendant.

Isn’t it ironic (in the Alanis Morrissette sense of the word) that in a lawsuit centered around a disastrous effort to improve contract management a substantial percentage of the alleged damages are due to alleged failures in contract management.

The business value of better contracting is not in question. As discussed previously, a 20% improvement in contracting efficacy has, on average, 32x the business impact of cutting outside counsel spend by 20%. Tech has an important role to play. But tech should not be the star of the show, especially in the beginning.

When tech is not the primary problem (or the primary solution). The complaint begins its retelling in October 2019 when the defendant gave an in-person platform demonstration. In June 2020—seven months later “following a rigorous selection process”—the parties entered into the $5m contract only to terminate it in April 2021, ten months post execution. Suit was filed in November—more than two years after the demo (which is unlikely to have even been the beginning of this ill-fated journey).

Important for our purposes, the plaintiff specifically alleges only one tech-related misrepresentation giving rise to their claims (the ability to “apply a single contract amendment to multiple agreements simultaneously”). Beyond that, every issue raised in the complaint relates to the enormous amount of work required to properly implement CLM.

Characterized as inadequate in the complaint:

  • Staffing
  • Availability of key resources
  • Status tracking
  • Training
  • Documentation
  • Discovery
  • Design
  • Feedback
  • Data mapping
  • Data conversion
  • Data migration
  • Data validation
  • Template harmonization
  • Contract sorting
  • Clause matching
  • Implementation
  • Integration

The tech is not the central grievance. The gravamen of the complaint is the absence of expertise: Continue Reading Tech-First Failures – Value Storytelling (#6)