- [Valerie] Welcome to Making the Case for LegalTech, Transformative Innovation For litigation. Today we'll explore how innovation is reshaping litigation practice and why now more than ever, embracing technology is necessary for lawyers to stay afloat in the era of digitalization. When I reference the term LegalTech, I mean technology tools used by lawyers and law firms to support the business and practice of law. I'm your presenter, Valerie Pennacchio. I was a practicing attorney at two AmLaw 200 firms for almost a decade. I was an insurance litigator, but I also built a practice focusing on counseling insurance companies on how they can integrate emerging technology into their business operations. At the same time, I was growing increasingly frustrated by the manual and tedious administrative tasks performed as part of my job. Even though the firms I worked for were heavily resourced, I just knew there had to be a better way and technology was the answer. So back in November of 2020, I joined the LegalTechnology company, Litera. During my time at Litera, I wore many hats including manager of its practice advisor team, but recently I left Litera for a new opportunity that I'm very excited about. But at the time of this recording, I can't share it just yet, but please find me on Twitter at @ValPannachio or on LinkedIn where I will be sharing updates including the next leg of my LegalTech journey. You'll hear me talk about workflows today. Something in my experience lawyers spent little time thinking about. I was also guilty of this when I practiced but when working with LegalTech solutions that streamline every part of the practice workflow, it's important to have a basic understanding of your own workflows to be able to realize the most value from these tools. Now before I begin, I wanna make clear that the views expressed in this presentation are mine and mine alone and not of my employer's past or present. Also, although I'm still a barred attorney, I am not your attorney and nothing in this presentation constitutes legal advice. Lastly, you will hear me talk about investments in LegalTechnology, but this is by no means financial advice. Here is today's agenda. First, we will cover the acceleration of innovation in legal. I address this in my LegalTech 101 CLE, and for those of you listening in again, you may find me repeating myself, but I think it's so important to explain why innovation in legal is important, especially now more than ever. Next we'll cover litigation workflows and their limitations and risks. I will also cover current market trends and how the current state of litigation amplifies these risks. Lastly, I will provide ways in which technology can be leveraged to improve practice workflows and mitigate these risks. So let's get started and look at the rapid acceleration of innovation in legal. Technology that may be a competitive advantage today, will soon just be an ordinary business practice and it is incumbent on lawyers to keep up. So let's just take a minute. Let's think about how technology has changed your practice since the beginning of your career. Did you have the benefit of West Law or Lexis for legal research? Did you have email or even a fax machine? Now I'm a bit younger than him, but I had one colleague who described to me how during the early days of his practice, he painstakingly redlined documents with a ruler and a red pen. Now, let's think about the past 10 years. We have moved from Blackberries as a competitive advantage to everyone having smartphones and being hyper connected. And speaking of connectivity, we saw the advent of social media being used for the first time to support our networking and marketing initiatives. During this time, we also began to see tech assisted document review. Now, let's think about the past two years and all the changes to how we approach technology in legal brought about by the pandemic. The most obvious is being the use of video conferencing like Zoom and Teams and other collaboration tools like Slack. The truth is technological advancements are snowballing and will not be slowing down anytime soon or ever. Jeanne Ross from MIT is quoted as saying, "The thing that's transforming is not the technology. The technology is transforming you." Now, I disagree in part, technology is transforming, but what is true is that technology will continue to change us, how we connect, our worldviews, and our careers, whether we want to or not, the transformation is inevitable. Arguably, the digital revolution is already upon us and so I wanted to share a few industry non-specific statistics to keep in mind as we begin to dive deeper into how technology will transform the legal industry. First, by 2026, global digital transformation spending is forecast to reach 3.4 trillion US dollars. The world's internet population will spend a combined total of more than 1.4 billion years of collective human experience using the internet in 2022 alone. Lastly, AI technology will be inserted into the processes and products of at least 90% of new enterprise apps by 2025. Supported by increased spending on transformation efforts, the pace of technological progress is accelerating. The law of accelerating returns is an observation and term first coined in 1999 by futurist Ray Kurzweil. The law dictates that the pace of technological progress, especially information technology, speeds up exponentially over time because there is a common force driving it forward. The common force driving technological progress forward is computer processing power. Kurzweil's prediction is a corollary to Moore's Law, which is an observation made by Intel co-founder in 1965, that computer processing power doubles every two years. In the 1990s, Kurzweil predicted that 20,000 years of progress would be crammed into the next 100. Kurzweil uses an analogy to emphasize the power of the law of accelerating returns. He mentions the tale of the inventor of chess and the emperor. Emperor loved the chess game and offered a reward to the inventor. The inventor was aware of exponential growth and asked for one grain of rice in the first square, two on the second, four on the third one, and so forth. By the time the grains of rice reached the last square, the rice price exceeded the emperor's wealth. And at this point, trying to stop innovation is like trying to capture rushing water in a colander. And if the past has taught us anything about the impact of technology, it's that it is imperative to keep up to stay afloat. I'd like to think of this as future proofing your career. A byproduct of innovation is disruption. What is disruption? Disruption is the radical change to an existing industry or market due to technological innovation, disruptive product or service helps to create a new market and value and significantly weaken, transform, or destroy an existing product, market category, industry. The term disruption evokes a negative connotation, but it's not a negative thing. It's a plus for the consumer because the result is a service that leverages technology to make the service or product more accessible and consumer friendly. Also, it's important to note that although all disruptions in the tech space can be defined as innovations, not all innovations are disruptive or come from startups set on taking down incumbents. We should distinguish disruption for another type of innovation that's known as staining innovation, which is when a company creates a better performing product to sell for higher profits, for higher profits to its best customers. One example of sustaining innovation would be laptop computers that were sustaining innovation to personal desktop computers. In contrast, disruptive innovation generates new products, markets, and values in order to disrupt existing ones. There are many examples of disruption, but none are as dear to my heart as the rise of Netflix and the fall of Blockbuster. As a child of the nineties, I spent most Friday nights at Blockbuster selecting movies for my weekend viewing pleasure. Boy, was that an experience. I remember perusing the new releases and that feeling of joy when they had enough copies of the hot ticket of the week, but there was also the converse, the disappointment when they didn't have the movie that I wanted to see in stock. And so then I'd be relegated to a plan B movie and I know that I'm not alone in my nostalgia. Did you know that there's actually a blockbuster themed pop-up bar in L.A.? I would love to go there, but anyway, it pains me a bit to tell the story of its demise. So Blockbuster was an internationally known movie rental chain, founded in 1985. Netflix was founded in 1997. CEO Reed Hastings said that after losing his copy of Apollo 13 that he rented from Blockbuster and then having to pay a hefty late fee of $42, he saw an opportunity in a subscription model and knew that DVD was on the way out. Netflix initially launched as a DVD subscription service, but shortly after it shifted gears to keep up with innovation. Hastings credits the success of the company on this flexibility, and he built the company for the day he knew the internet would enable video streaming. Hastings wanted to give consumers the ability to stream films from the comfort of their homes using a subscription service without the hassle of late fees. Netflix took all the pain points of the old movie rental model and then he flipped that. No travel, no late fees, unlimited streaming, and high quality content. As a result, Blockbuster closed its doors in 2013. And if you're interested in learning more about this, I suggest the documentary, "The Last Blockbuster" that you can find streaming on none other than Netflix. There is disruption across all industries in the media, entertainment, retail, and travel industries. And here's a few additional examples of disruption. We have Wikipedia. So encyclopedias were written and published for profit for at least 2000 years. You'd have to buy a very expensive and voluminous hardcover copies that needed to be updated every few years. And in contrast, Wikipedia is updated constantly and is available for free. You know, after 244 years of circulation, Encyclopedia Britannica published its final volumes in 2012. Other examples of disruption are Uber. That's the world's largest taxi company that owns no taxis. Airbnb, the world's largest accommodation provider that owns no real estate. Facebook, now Meta, one of the most popular media owners, but it owns no content. As you can see from these examples, disruption not only is supported by a technological solution, but also encapsulates a seismic shift in the business model. But as I suggested before, disruption is not a negative thing. It's a net positive for the industry. One reason is that it provides more growth opportunities. When you're on the lookout for disruption, you'll likely spot growth opportunities as well, even if they don't qualify as true disruptive innovation. These new sales channels, markets, or products can help you scale your company and drive more revenue. Also, disruption allows for higher customer fulfillment. Disruption occurs because it allows for better customer satisfaction, which in turn turns into increased revenue. And then here's this sobering finding from Deloitte, 87% of companies think digital will disrupt their industry, but only 44% are prepared for potential digital disruption. Considering the potential for disruption in the legal industry. I'd like to share this quote by John Arneult, the CIO of Goulston & Storrs. "For the first time in those 12 years, I am now convinced we are on the precipice of the promised disruption in legal, not because anyone in the law firms are driving towards this, but because venture capital and tech innovators have finally turned their attention to the industry." To stay competitive, legal teams will need to better adapt to new technology because we are seeing hypergrowth in LegalTech. 2021 saw record high investment in LegalTechnology. According to Crunchbase, LegalTech companies saw more than 1 billion in venture capital investments in 2021, this smashed the 5 million invested in 2020. The previous all-time high was 989 million in 2019. The Thomson Reuters peer index report found a 3.3 increase in tech spend by firms. Despite inflation in a possible recession there are some indicators of continued enthusiasm for investment in LegalTechnology. The LegalTech fund, which is the first and only fund focused exclusively in this space, announced earlier this year that it pulled in 28.5 million into invest in startups serving the legal industry. This surpasses its original 25 million goal with contributions from different corners of the LegalTech curious world. Perhaps this is because poor economic times doesn't necessarily hurt law firms, but instead they force a reconfiguration of revenue streams. Lastly, experts at Gartner expect legal departments to increase their spending on LegalTechnology threefold by 2025. In tandem with increased investment in LegalTechnology, we are beginning to see innovation friendly reforms to state professional responsibility rules. In August of 2020, the Utah Supreme Court unanimously approved a slate of reforms that allow for non-lawyer ownership or investment in law firms and fee sharing with non-lawyers and permit legal service providers to try new ways of serving clients during a two-year pilot period. In May of 2021 that period was extended to August of 2027. Non-traditional legal services entities will now have the opportunity to operate in a regulatory sandbox the state Supreme Court has established. The court also created an office of Legal Services innovation that will evaluate and recommend sandbox applicants to the court as well as oversee the applicants that are are approved for entry into the sandbox. In March of 2021, a Utah based registered agent company said it was launching the first entirely non-lawyer owned law firm in the United States made possible by the state's pilot sandbox. According to a statement by the company, and it's called Law on-Call Service, it charges clients $9 a month for unlimited phone access to license lawyers with legal work starting at $100 per hour and no retainer. Arizona has also passed an amendment to rule 5.4 and permitted non attorneys to have economic interest in law firms and non-lawyer fee sharing. This is key to allowing law firms to raise the capital needed to innovate and adapt. Before Utah and Arizona, the District of Columbia was the only US jurisdiction to explicitly allow for non-lawyer ownership and investment in a law firm provided certain requirements were met under the DC bar rules or professional conduct rule 5.4. In practice very few of these types of firms organized in DC at least two potential issues tempered their use. First, many DC lawyers are barred in other jurisdictions and they may be concerned that the formation or participation in non-lawyer owned firms in DC will constitute a violation of the rules of professional conduct in that jurisdiction. And two, the prohibition in most US jurisdictions, other than DC, limits the ability of this type of firm to expand beyond DC's boundaries. And that may change as other states permit non-lawyer investment in ownership. Florida also announced plans to launch a three-year laboratory program modeled after Utah's regulatory sandbox. This program would allow non-lawyers to hold non-controlling equity interest in law firms, but it would ban passive ownership from outside third parties. Several other states, including New York, North Carolina, Connecticut, California, and Illinois, are at different stages of considering changes to rules prohibiting non-lawyer ownership and investment in law firms. We should also take a minute to note that non-lawyer investment in ownership in firms has been permitted in the UK since enactment of the Legal Services Act of 2007 and since 2001 in Australia. And looking at how our friends overseas fared, it's been observed that as a result of the reform, the legal profession was jump started, not hijacked. Clients are benefiting from market competition due to new entrants and incumbent firms are finally flexing their innovative muscle to keep up. Investors and owners of law firms who are not lawyers will not put up with the inefficiencies that are just part of the business of law today. Also, law firms will no longer be limited to the difficult to scale billable hour model will have more capital and more innovation to invest in technology and will reframe the law firm business structure. With these changes to the professional rules, are we starting to see disruption in legal? Only time will tell. But we are seeing new entrants in the industry, including Big Four accounting firms and alternative service providers and contributing to the rise of consumer legal services apps. The big four making a play for a larger piece of the legal services market traditionally dominated by law firms. For example, in 2019, EY acquired Thomson Reuters Pangea3 legal managed services business, part of the big fours firm to ramp up its legal consulting services. EY's legal function consulting team is focused on helping clients improve how they operate their legal function. In July of 2020, Deloitte unveiled a new US legal business service practice, which will work with in-house legal offices to streamline functions that track client contracts, invoices, eDiscovery, and other functions. Many lawyers perceived the big four only as tax and auditory services, but according to a 2019 Thomson Reuters report, 20% of large legal companies stated that they competed with such a firm in the last year, whereas 23% stated that they lost clients to them. In addition to the expansion of the big four into legal services, we're seeing the emergence of another new entrant into this space referred to as alternative legal service providers, also known as ALSPs. In the most reductive terms, ALSPs are businesses that offer services for tasks that were traditionally handled by law firms. ALSTs, excuse me, ALSPs are diverse in business model and function. There are ALSPs that support eDiscovery and services provided include expert consulting, data identification and data collection, early case assessment, high speed data processing, automated and native redactions, secure data hosting, document production, and managed review. Another category of ALSP are those that specialize in flexible legal staffing. As in-house teams strive to become leaner and more cost effective by working close to capacity, they require exert support to manage peaks in workload and cover vacancies. ALSPs that focus on staffing connect legal departments and law firms with wealth qualified experience and often self-employed lawyers who undertake contract work. Recognizing the increasing proliferation of ALSPs in 2020 Chambers released its first rankings report of ALSPs. To stay competitive many law firms are increasingly committing to innovations. The Altman Weil law firms in transition 2020 survey asked respondents about efforts to make innovation part of firm strategy and efforts to increase efficiency. Conducted in March and April of 2019, the law firms in transition survey polled managing partners and chairs at 810 US law firms with 50 or more lawyers. Completed surveys were received in 362 firms, about 45%, including 49% of the 500 largest US law firms and 46% of the Am Law 200. When asked to identify what their firms were doing to make firms an integral part of firm strategy, to make innovation a integral part of firm strategy, the top four responses were include innovation initiatives and firm strategic plan, to create special projects to test innovative ideas or methods. Three, budget time and or funds for innovative projects experiments. And four, include innovation initiatives in practice group plans. When asked to identify efforts to increase efficiency of legal service delivery, the top four responses were, one, using technology tools to replace human resources. Two, rewarding efficiency and profitability in compensation decisions. Three, ongoing project management training and support. And four, having a formal knowledge management program. I wanna make clear that when we think about applying technology to the practice of law, it's not about overhauling the entire profession, but there will always be things that can and should be streamlined with technology. The point really is to create an overall better client experience, not to take away interaction with the client. And while technology improves the client and attorney experience and relationship, that alone is reason to embrace it. Lawyers, in addition, have this ethical obligation to stay abreast of technological advancements and arguably an obligation to incorporate these advancements into their business operations. Acknowledging the importance of keeping up with technological advancement. In 202012, excuse me, in 2012, the ABA model rules were revised to include a duty of tech competence. Model rule, professional conduct rule 1.1, comment eight says, "to maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology, engage in continuing study and education, and comply with all CLE requirements to which the lawyer is subject." This comment does not require the lawyer to use the new technology. However, let's see, rule 1.5 which says, "A lawyer shall not make an agreement for, charge, or collect an unreasonable fee or an unreasonable amount for expenses." And where tech can significantly reduce the time spent on legal work, arguably time bill to manually perform this work is unreasonable. Since 2012, 40 states have adopted the duty of Technology Competence into their rules of professional responsibility. In addition to this two states, Florida and North Carolina, require tech training as part of its CLE requirements. So the question remains, what can you do as a lawyer to keep up and future proof your career? Strive to be the T-shaped lawyer. In short, a T-shaped lawyer has deep legal expertise that's represented by the vertical bar of the T, but also a solid grounding in another subject and that's represented by the horizontal bar of a T. This other field of knowledge could range from technology, business and analytics to human resources politics or more. The requirement of extra knowledge comes as the clients of today are demanding and expecting more. They need lawyers who can use technology to give them the most efficient and cost effective service possible. The client wants someone who knows the world of business or the industry in which they themselves operate or require legal assistance. And while it's not necessary to become an expert coder or a hacker or a bitcoin master, lawyers of the future will need to understand how these industries align with their client's interests. The T-shaped lawyer must also have strong interpersonal and project management skills, and this is because the legal profession is seeing a move towards horizontally integrated firms. I promise that I will cover how technology is being leveraged to help litigators, but first, to appreciate the value of technology, we must consider the many different litigation workflows and their limitations and risks. I really appreciate the quote from Albert Einstein, "If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions." The thing about technology is no one is going to adopt a technology for technology sake. A cornerstone of change management is that that change has to be perceived as beneficial and for technology to be beneficial for you, it must solve a problem. So let's first identify the everyday, commonplace problems that litigators face. So here's the truth, although my legal practice focused primarily on litigation, my career as a LegalTechnologist is thus far focused primarily on transactional work. This was a very purposeful decision that I made. The life cycle of an M&A deal is much, much shorter than a typical civil action. Lawyers can close deals in a matter of weeks, whereas a case can and often goes on for years. I believed it would be easier to prove the value of a new tech tool, especially workflow technology, against the truncated timeline of transactional work. As a new entrant in LegalTech at the time, my concern was that the value of litigation technology would be diluted against a protracted timeline. The reason a case can progress so slowly is because there are so many phases involved in litigation, each with their own unique workflows, from pleadings to written in oral discovery and related motion practice to dispositive motions, maybe mediation to trial prep and trial, and then to maybe an appeal. And to appreciate the risks attendant to litigation. First, let's review some current trends. I apologize that this will be a bit data heavy, but as a former litigator, I wanna support these findings with evidence. First, we have protracted timelines. Last year Above the Law reported that over the last 20 years, over 5.3 million cases were filed in the federal district courts, including multi-district cases. Of those cases, nearly 5% were pending and yet to be resolved. Case disposed of through judgment obtained through jury verdict had an average case duration of 771 days and court trial dispositions had the highest average duration at 831 days or over two years. But we're all above average here, aren't we, and I'll bet the majority of you have worked on cases lasting far beyond two years, myself is included. We also have malpractice claims hitting new highs. The cost of legal malpractice claims are reaching troubling new heights. In 2022, insurance broker Ames & Gough surveyed 11 insurance brokers representing malpractice insurance to 80% of the top 100 big law firms and it's clear payouts under these policies were on the rise. Of the insurers surveyed over the past two years, 10 made a claim payout of more than 50 million, three participated in payouts in the 150 million to 300 million range, and four had claims of more than 300 million. The report noted that as matters grow increasingly complex, even small errors can lead to big losses and urged firms to put the right protocols in place to mitigate risk. Then we have surging demand for legal services. According to a Citibank advisory demand for legal services was up 6.6% through Q3 of 2021 over the prior year. A Future Market Insights report published earlier in August of 2022, projected that legal services market is predicted to increase at a 4.6% compound annual growth rate during the forecast period from 2022 to 2032. The report attributes the growth in part to the rise of cutting edge technology in delivering legal services. Then we have the war on talent. So at the same time, there is a war on talent. Associate moves between US firms were up 50%, 51% in 2021 over the average from the previous four years. And these trends all amplify the risks arising from the standard litigation workflows. Now I know you're all excited to learn more about emerging technology for litigators, but I wanna take a step back and expound further on the problems litigators face. Since most of our time is spent in the weeds, sometimes we really fail to appreciate the inefficiencies and risks attendant to our workflows and just succumb to this notion that these problems are just a part of our ordinary course of business. So missed deadlines are frequently one of the most common reasons lawyers get sued or their clients file grievances. A lack of confidence in the calculation and management of deadlines results in attorneys spending time reviewing deadlines that would better be spent on building their practice or managing the substantive issues that win or lose a case. Too many attorneys fail to know that upcoming deadlines exist, or even if they know that a deadline exists, they fail to implement appropriate procedures at the firm management level to consistently make sure that every deadline is timely met. There is a greater risk of missing deadlines when they are calculated by hand or in such a way that relies on people to docket or calendar the proper dates. And discovery is becoming more complex. As organizations have shifted to a work from home or hybrid model, there has been a significant increase in the volume of discoverable data and file types from recorded Zoom or Teams videos and audios to a surplus of messaging files across numerous platforms like Slack and Skype. Estimated that data production nearly doubled over the last two years with 2021, creating 74 zetabytes alone. And in case you were wondering as I was, one zetabyte is equivalent to a trillion gigabytes. In this survey recently conducted by Splunk, 57% of participating companies said that the volume of data they generate is growing faster than their ability to keep up with it. Also, legal research presents many challenges. An attorney will oftentimes have a hard time deciding when it's sufficient to stop doing research and be confident that the finished research is in fact exhaustive. Also, let's face it, the language of traditional research is stilted and awkward and unlike any human, actual human interaction, for instance, imagine you wanted to ask a colleague whether an insurers duty to defend includes a duty to fund a counterclaim. You wouldn't say to your colleague, hey, dear colleague quote, duty to defend, endquote, backslash, three, counterclaim even though that's how you would search for that, a case, on that issue using traditional legal research. There's also a lack of centralized case information. Let's just think of all the different places that house information about your cases. Your eDiscovery platform, the DMS, laptops, SharePoint, email, Red-Wells, notepads, and post-its. The problem with this is knowledge transfer. Very difficult for everyone on your team to have access to all of this information at any given time and for the team to know what you've done and what needs to be done. This may lead to an inability to tell a cohesive story. The lack of a centralized repository for case information limits your ability to draw connections between the disparate pieces of evidence that you've painstakingly connected and reviewed and tell cohesive and compelling story on behalf of your client. And this leads to inefficient and redundant work streams. There's just too much time reinventing the wheel and that's time that will never be collected from the client. And here's where I share my war story. So shortly before I left practice, I was preparing to take on one of the biggest and most complex cases to trial that I ever handled. My trial team relied on a single Excel spreadsheet that identified all of our claims and defenses and every piece of evidence that we had that supported each element of those claims and defenses. This spreadsheet was our case Bible and hundreds if not thousands of lines long. And so one day I was updating the spreadsheet to include my adversaries objections and I accidentally deleted a cell and that threw off the entire table. And at the time I was running on a fumes and lots of coffee and I nearly lost it and it took about an hour, maybe more that I just did not have in the day to find the mistake and correct it. And as an act of self preservation that time never even made my time sheet. And there are many other more important and billable tasks that I could have completed during that time as I was preparing for trial. And I realized it wasn't a grave or catastrophic error, but it was tremendously, tremendously stressful. And I bet we all have a similar war story. And so this is the moment you've all been waiting for. Let's focus on how technology tools can support litigation and alleviate many of the risks and problems that we just discussed. First up, let's turn to solutions that help litigators stay on top of their busy schedules and deadlines. Rules-based calendaring tools automatically apply the court rules and statutory deadlines of specific jurisdictions to the due dates of a particular matter. There's no need to manually enter each and every deadline for a litigation matter. Instead, rules-based calendaring systems do this for you and will likewise automatically recalculate deadlines if and when key due dates change. So what you see here are just a few examples of standalone calendaring tools available in the market. We have LawToolBox, JuraLaw, and Calendar Rules. So for example, LawToolBox is a cloud-based software that calculates court deadlines based on the rules of procedure. LawToolBox 365 is an Office 365 add-in that gives lawyers and other legal professionals matters based deadlines inside Outlook. Using the LawToolBox 365 add-in law firms and legal departments can calculate state and federal court deadlines for their matters based on the rules of procedure for each court. And as emails arrive from courts, opposing counsel, clients, and experts, Law Toolbox 365 gets legal professionals another set of eyes watching for court rule changes. And when rules do change, it notifies them and updates their calendars. Users can also automatically update deadlines as events change and remove deadlines as users get reassigned in cases resolved. The shared deadlines button allows users to instantly add deadlines internally to team members Outlook calendars and also externally to the client or the witness's calendar using their preferred calendar. In determining whether a particular calendaring solution is right for you and your firm, here's a couple things to consider. So first, do you want a solution that is in the cloud or on premises? Most rules-based calendaring tools are now cloud-based. One particular useful benefit of cloud-based calendaring software is that because the data is housed on the software provider's cloud servers, there's no need to download new files or manually update the software when the court's rules change. Instead, the court rules are regularly updated by the software provider and the changes are then automatically applied to your firm's calendars. Of course, it's important to note that when you do use these cloud-based software, you are entrusting your law firm's data to a third party and thus you should thoroughly vet the technology provider that will be hosting and storing your data. Another consideration is whether to implement a standalone calendaring solution or a legal practice management tool that has calendaring features. So we will discuss legal practice management solutions in more detail later on, but one benefit of using a legal practice management software that includes calendaring functionality rather than a standalone solution is that doing so centralizes all of your firm's case related and calendar data, including litigation deadlines into the one software platform. The drawback however, is that these solutions, these more robust solutions, often come with a higher price tag and they may have features that you don't need or want enough to warrant the additional spend. Lastly, you'll wanna make sure that the software includes the calendar rules for your for all the jurisdictions and the courts that are relevant to your firm. And you just can't talk about litigation technology without addressing eDiscovery. The beginning of eDiscovery is often traced back to 2005 when the US Supreme Court amended the federal rules of civil procedure to include a category for electronic records. These amendments specifically designated emails and instant messages as records that could be archived and produced if relevant. These changes to the federal rules required civil litigants to comply with proper methods for retaining and managing ESI. So first here are some trends that we are seeing in eDiscovery. Diverse file types. I know I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. There are many different electronic formats including text, images, calendar files, databases, spreadsheets, audio and video files, animation, websites, email, voicemails, social media posts, computer programs, and raw data that may be sought in eDiscovery. And this is only going to grow with the adoption of new technology by organizations such as blockchain technologies that record information in an immutable encrypted ledger. Transcription. So considering the need to review long audio files and the proliferation of discoverable recorded meetings brought about by the pandemic, automated transcription will become an essential tool for finding useful information amid irrelevant chatter. And then there's workflow automation. We are also seeing that law firm associates will increasingly rely on automated tech to accelerate time consuming a discovery processes such as assigning documents to numerous people for review or prioritizing materials to assess through predictive coding. Lastly, we have eDiscovery managed service providers, also known as eDMSPs. eDMSPs will become in critical especially for smaller firms that may not want to or can't invest in eDiscovery software, infrastructure, or personnel. With managed services, you are assigned a devoted case manager who can assist with strategy and planning on how to execute everything relating to eDiscovery, including the initial data collection, processing, review, and production. They can reduce your document universe headed to review, which is actually the largest area of cost in eDiscovery, by leveraging advanced analytics. They can also help you set up proven review workflows to help your team get to the facts as quickly as possible. I just noted that some litigators are confronting the increase in the volume of discoverable ESI with the use of workflow automation, and I just wanted to expound on this a bit further. So the process of the technology assisted review relies on the following steps. One, a subject matter expert screening through tranches of documents. Once each document trache is reviewed, coding is then applied to similar documents across the data set. And then after each review round reporting is provided and any discrepancies are highlighted. The iterative coding process review and report continues until the reviewer accepts the technology applied coding designations. And so you may be wondering how the court's view technology assisted review. Well, former US magistrate Judge Peck of the Southern District of New York is arguably the most notable proponent of analytics and assisted review. He wrote in his landmark 2012 case, Moore versus publicist group, which is the first judicial decision approving the use of technology assisted review, also referred to as TAR and Judge Moore stated assisted review is an acceptable way to search for relevant ESI inappropriate cases. Although the legal profession is transforming one constant is the importance of legal research. The massive amount of data and the uniqueness of each case makes legal research a needle and a haystack problem. Lawyers are leveraging artificial intelligence, AI, to tackle this problem. And I know AI, AI is a buzzword and often when I speak of it, I am met with concerns that AI will replace the work of lawyers. But I assure you that man plus machine is better than man and machine alone. And with AI tools, attorneys can use the time they save doing legal research to do the work only humans can, such as building compelling arguments. Some AI-empowered legal research tools use natural language processing, NLP, to learn human language. With NLP, algorithms analyze prior users queries and results to form a predictive model of what attorneys need in their searches. NLP fills in the blanks and expands or narrow searches to perform better results. So for example, if I wanted to know whether a school can be held liable for quote unquote injury to a student occurring off campus, NLP would know to also look for cases where the student was quote unquote harmed. Other AI legal research tools used predictive analytics to sort and categorize judges complaints, motions, orders, and decisions within seconds to help litigators better tailor their arguments and predict how courts will rule. So here is a couple examples of legal AI tools impacting research. First we have Casetext, which provides insights into cases cited in legal documents. Using natural language understanding Casetext scans the text of legal briefs to locate and analyze case citations, understanding research context, and customizing results to help you find on point authorities faster. Legal question and answer tools are tools that are used to search large text collections to answer a user's legal question. For example, Lexis Answers can analyze millions of documents to create a Lexis answer card with citation. Lastly, we have Lex Machina which is now owned by LexisNexis and that leverages machine learning and natural language processing to normalize, structure, and analyze raw data from millions of case dockets and documents. Lex Machina provides lawyers with actual insights into litigation trends. For example, Lex Machina provides insights into motion grant rates of judges and districts. Motion grant timing or the likelihood of a damages award for specific types of litigation. So for example, Lex Monica claims that it can predict with 64% accuracy outcomes of intellectual property cases. Now let's consider drafting tools. Interestingly, one of the first areas to be transferred by technology document drafting is still arguably one of the least advance. After the initial leap to word processing drafting processes in many legal practices have stagnated. Many law offices seem to believe that standard word processing technology is sufficient for their document needs. But is it really? Legal documents now are longer and more complex and frankly more important than any other documents. From court filings and memoranda to contracts and correspondence documents are the backbone of legal practice and that's why lawyers continue to spend a substantial portion of their time creating, polishing, and reviewing their documents. So here's just an illustration of the challenges posed by the traditional document drafting process. An incorrect client name, date, or dollar value can irredeemably damage a contractual relationship. A mistake in cross-referencing or citation can cause a court to totally disregard a legal filing even when these errors don't have catastrophic consequences. They are tremendously embarrassing and negatively impact an attorney's reputation. Legal professionals need a way to ensure that their documents are perfect. Lists must be correctly numbered. Cross references and citations must be flawless. Court filing requirements must be completely satisfied. And every document that leaves the office should have a consistent look and style that inspires the trust and respect of your clients. And this doesn't even address getting started. The blank pages can be extremely daunting. Now we all know that we usually don't start with the blank page. Historically, lawyers created efficiency through the use of precedent documents to avoid reinventing the wheel. However reusing documents poses two distinct challenges. First, lawyers must be able to find the best, most current standard documents to begin with. And second, reusing content creates the risk of introducing incorrect details from those exemplars. And even the US Supreme Court justices are not immune to embarrassing typos. The US Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer in the first sentence, the very first sentence, in a 2018 antitrust case, dissent misspelled les affair. And this was especially embarrassing given that Justice Breyer is French speaking. Similarly, Justice Clarence Thomas in a 2018 concurrence misspelled palette as in the painter's palette, the palate that Justice Thomas wrote pertains to the palate on the roof of your mouth. It's pretty embarrassing. So one solution that helps lawyers more efficiently produce work that is error free is Litera Check. And as I disclosed during my intro earlier, I used to work for Litera. Litera Check is a Word plugin that uses natural language processing to automatically surface and flag issues in real time to help ensure the accuracy and consistency of all the document terms at each stage of the document creation process. I like to think of Litera Check as Grammarly specifically for legal documents and check allows legal teams to assess their documents legal health. Users can then sort issues by priority and categories so that they can fix the most urgent problems first, such as numbering and formatting errors caused by copying and pasting, reusing previous documents, or errors that arise in working with multiple collaborators. Check also has integrations with Lexis Advanced, Casetext, and Fastcase to ensure that all citations, whether they're the full citation or the short form are correct and in court approved formats and up to date. Another proof reading solution for lawyers is calls PerfectIt, which includes 13,000 legal specific checks that only lawyers and trained legal editors would know to look for. Earlier in the program when I was discussing calendaring solutions, I mentioned legal case management software. In very simple terms, case management is a digital version of the traditional physical case file. I like to think of it as that digital red-well. It primarily serves the function of litigation support. In that case management's primary purpose is to keep all the information of a case or legal matter organized. On the other side, practice management software helps firms manage the business of legal practice in contrast to case management systems that provide a central location where all case information is easily accessible. The purpose of practice management systems is to enable firms to operate more as a company and typically include tools for customer relationship management, task management, financial function such as time tracking, legal billing, settlement tracking, trust accounting, et cetera. Document management as mentioned before, excuse me, calendaring and so much more. End-to-end case management systems such as the ones pictured in this slide, have now adapted to provide capabilities that support many aspects of litigation practice including chronology development, transcript management, exhibit management, and trial preparation. So we have major players such as Opus2 and Litera Litigate that allow for integrations with eDiscovery vendors and the import of tagged hot documents into the case management system. Streamlining litigation workflows in a single platform enables litigation teams to not only work together more efficiently to produce the best result for their client, but it also allows them to provide a consistent, predictable experience for their client. For example, Litigate, and this is another tool from my former employer Litera. When you first log into Litigate, you are taken to a dashboard that provides a high level overview of the status of your matters, case deadlines, and tasks. At the matter level you can upload your key documents from your review platform and included with that will be your document metadata and the issue tags and notes that were applied during review. You can also add additional notes and tags to the document once uploaded and then link the document to other relevant materials. Litigate stores your deposition transcript, exhibits and video together, and links each exhibit to where it's referenced in the transcript. You can also apply issue tags to your designated testimony and export the designation page and line references and video clips for court submission. Litigate also lets you import designations from other tools. Litigate also has a dedicated space for sharing insights about a witness and allows legal teams to link all references related to a witness across the entire case. Litigate also has a tool to automatically create binders for depositions, issues, and productions even just from a very simple list of dates pages. And then lastly, I wanted to cover Litigate's search feature. Litigate allows users to search for and access all stakeholders documents, files, comments, exhibits, and transcripts. More specifically, Litigate OCRs all the documents upon imports so you can conduct your search and filter results by key text and notes. So this brings us to the conclusion of our program. So here are some key takeaways. One, the pace of technological advancement is accelerating. Two, as disruption has impacted nearly every industry, the legal services industry will be drastically changed by technology. Three, considering growing investment LegalTechnology coupled with innovation friendly reforms to the legal practice rule that are placing new entrants in the legal marketplace and giving incumbent firms capital to build their tech stacks the changes in legal may be just over the horizon. For lawyers to stay afloat and comply with their duties under the rules of professional responsibility lawyers are required to stay abreast of technological advancement. And lastly, in thinking about how technology can support the business and practice of law. First, give consideration of the problems that you face and then look to solutions. And lastly, I just wanted to leave you with a little food for thought. In his book "Crossing the Chasm", Geoffrey Moore elaborates the marketing techniques to successfully target mainstream consumers. "Crossing the Chasm" is a concept for visualizing the adoption of a new technology over time. So first you start with a very small handful of innovators and early adopters, which make up about 16% of the population and collectively this is referred to as the early market. And then moving through the massive mid-market eventually into the hands of even the most change resistant consumers. The chasm is the gap between the early adopter and the early majority groups. And this gap represents the chasm that the technology has to cross. It signifies the credibility gap that arises from using the innovators and early adopters as a reference base for the remainder of the mainstream market. And now I want you to think about your own willingness to embrace emerging technology and where you think you fall on this curve. And invariably, the innovators and early adopters will experience some competitive advantage before a tool becomes commonplace within the market. Or when I like to think of it, innovation just becomes plain old IT. Now think about how the problems you face in your practice and think about the problems that can be solved by technology. And when you consider where to even begin, also consider will you gain the most value by being ahead of the curve. Thank you for your time today.