What Makes a Modern Lawyer - the Data Might Surprise You

Welcome to LegalTech Matters, a Litera podcast dedicated to creating conversations about trends, technology, and innovation for modern law firms and companies big and small.

00;00;13;28 - 00;00;44;25

Bob

Welcome everybody to today's webinar, What Makes a Modern Lawyer? The webinar was presented by Litera and Above the Law, and a discussion today is going to focus on a just completed survey of technology in the legal industry that looks specifically at how technology, mobile devices, and AI are shaping the industry in 2022 and beyond. Some of the findings of the survey may surprise you, others may not.

But we're going to talk through them in some detail with our esteemed panelists here today. We like this to be interactive, so we will certainly leave time for questions at the end of the program. But go ahead and drop comments, questions. And as we're going through it, I'll keep an eye on that. And if it's relevant or pertinent to what we're talking about, I will pick it up and hand it off to the panelists.

Let's get to it. I by the way, I am Bob Ambrogi. I write the blog Lawsites. I also am a technology columnist for Above the Law. And we have a really great panel here today. So, without further ado, let's go around and introduce them all. In order of the way their pictures appear on this nice little slide here.

So, Jared Correia, let's start with you.

00;01;37;09 - 00;01;38;26

Jared

I should know how to do this by now, right?

00;01;38;27 - 00;01;39;23

Adriana

I mean, seriously.

00;01;40;05 - 00;01;40;17

Bob

Really?

00;01;41;11 - 00;01;42;19

Jared

Yeah, I like talking before.

00;01;42;19 - 00;01;44;03

Bob

This is our technology consultant.

00;01;44;18 - 00;02;05;03

Jared

This is my first webinar. Now, my name is Jared Correia, and I'm a business management consultant for attorneys. I've been doing that for about 15 years and worked with probably 4000 law firms, small, large, midsize in that timeframe. I'm running a company called Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. So, thanks for having me on. It's great to see everybody.

00;02;06;03 - 00;02;09;18

Bob

Great to see you. Next up, Adriana Linares.

00;02;10;12 - 00;02;32;06

Adriana

Thanks for having me to everyone, especially Above the Law. Bob, thanks for being what I know is going to be a super host job that you're doing. I'm Adriana Linares. I'm a legal trainer and legal technology trainer and consultant. I tend to hang out a lot in the solo small-mid firm demographic. I'm not a lawyer. I just do technology consulting to train lawyers how to use their computers.

I work part-time for the San Diego County Bar as their technology and practice management advisor, and I run the tech help line for the Florida Bar.

00;02;41;03 - 00;02;45;14

Bob

Thank you very much. And then last but not least of our panelists, Theo Lister.

00;02;46;08 - 00;03;10;19

Theo

Well, funny. Funny you say that. Hi, everyone. I'm Theo. I work on the Litera product team. And I have only worked in legal for eight years. I think that does make me the baby of the call. I did train as a lawyer and then I betrayed the practice by going into technology instead, which is a more and more common story.

And I'm sure that's good to be here. And we'll see what I have to say.

00;03;15;28 - 00;03;21;20

Bob

So, you're not even just a recovering lawyer. You're a long-ago recovered lawyer and moved on to better things.

00;03;21;20 - 00;03;29;10

Theo

Recovering law student. I couldn't even take the concept of taking that jump.

00;03;30;02 - 00;04;09;10

Bob

Hopefully we don't traumatize you here today with talk of legal stuff but so we this to the survey just a little bit by way of background was conducted fairly recently February and March and just published about 500 lawyers were surveyed about their tech usage and a range of types of lawyers from partners, associates and solos to close to in-house counsel were included in the survey primarily in the United States, although some in the UK and Canada as well.

The survey is broken into a number of components and as I say, we're going to kind of just kind of start by talking through some of these, but it starts with this section on current attitudes toward technology. One of the first questions it asks is how innovative do you consider yourself and your use of technology? We were talking before we started recording about were there any real sort of big surprises in this report?

I think I was frankly a little bit surprised by this. It was only about 13% who consider themselves to be real trendsetters in the use of technology. But when you look at the numbers of 45, 46% plus 31% who consider themselves either ahead of the curve or average in use of technology. I was actually a little surprised by that.

I wonder if some of those lawyers are giving themselves a little benefit of the doubt here in terms of how tech savvy they are or how ahead of the curve they might be. What do the others think of that.

00;05;16;29 - 00;05;44;09

Theo

Well, it's asking how you consider yourself, right? Not necessarily objectively, how are you? But right now, the difference there is it's not just using advanced technology, it's how innovatively are you using technology. Full stop. So, I mean, I've seen partners change their working groups by just using Trello to track work in progress. And Trello is pretty bargain bucket in terms of advanced technology.

But if you're using it the correct way, then you could call it innovative.

00;05;49;02 - 00;06;17;04

Adriana

Oh, I totally agree. When I saw that, I thought, well, either we're just scoring ourselves higher than we should because that's human nature, or what are you considering technology basics to advanced? And then too, I thought the demographics might be interesting. I find, you know, when you are, in my experience, at least big from lawyers who just have more support and more resources, need to know less about how the technology is made.

Right. They're just pushing buttons and got training on it versus if you are the decision maker at a smaller firm or mid-sized firm and really digging into the technology, those might sway the answers. Yeah, the results.

00;06;33;02 - 00;06;51;27

Jared

Yeah, I'll tell you. Like, I'll be honest, I feel like these numbers should be reversed for being honest. Like, I see like 10% of attorneys who say they're slightly behind the curve and not innovative. I'll tell you like that. I view 10% of the attorneys as being innovative, and maybe I have too high a bar for that.

But using and implementing technology across the practice, I don't see that very often at all. And when I have consulting, clients often tell them, like, there's a lot of room for you here to be more innovative than the average attorney. The bar is relatively low, so I know this is like largely a self-assessment, but I think these numbers are out of whack in terms of what I see.

00;07;13;11 - 00;07;38;10

Adriana

Well, and I think too, you know, we use the word we throw around the word innovative and legal like crazy. I don't have lawyers that are innovating. Lawyers are using technology to practice law. But what I think a lot of them do well is use technology creatively. So, a lot of times I wish we would not use innovative across the swath because that's just it's not a thing.

But I like creative, you know? Are you creatively figuring out a way to use a tool like Trello to help you run your law firm better? Then then you're ahead of the curve. But if you're sitting there trying to invent a better mousetrap, like a practice management system, then you're trying to innovate. But that's even, you know, thin layer who are actually innovating.

So, I often wish we would use the word creative instead.

00;08;03;15 - 00;08;11;08

Jared

Perfectly good point. You can almost be too innovative because you definitely shouldn't be creating your own software, but should be using this, not to sell off the shelf.

00;08;11;19 - 00;08;19;00

Adriana

And do it. How many times have you got the call from a partner of, say, a ten-person firm and says, I'm going to build my own because I can't find what I want?

00;08;19;25 - 00;08;37;02

Jared

Right, right. And I say, please don't do that. Because I'll tell you, like, one of the things I've found is like at least post-pandemic is that like I have a lot of people who would call me and say, like, I just don't know what I'm doing. I'm really inefficient. Or I don't know how to use technology. But I think one thing that's happened is lawyers are starting to ask better questions.

So now they'll say, instead of being inefficient, they're like, I need a process or workflow, or they'll say, hey, I need a law practice management software to organize my practice. I think that's positive, but they're still not like innovative necessarily.

00;08;50;24 - 00;09;06;27

Bob

Yeah, a comment or question, I'm not sure which this is from Larry Bridge Smith listening. You're saying might the self-assessment of attitudes toward technology reflect Jeffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm bell curve of innovation.

00;09;07;10 - 00;09;30;20

Theo

Kind of answer that almost, right? Yes. If you're thinking of the innovation diffusion curve, we've got like 2.5% of people are innovators and then everybody else follows a bell curve. And what we're seeing here is pretty much the opposite of that. I don't know. I don't think we fudge the numbers. Right. This is just like some weird reflection of what that curve typically looks like.

00;09;31;21 - 00;09;32;17

Bob

Yeah. Yeah.

00;09;34;14 - 00;09;42;24

Jared

I'm glad you answer that. I've never actually read that book. I only read Highlights magazine. But I appreciate it.

00;09;42;24 - 00;10;25;11

Bob

Well, let's go on to the next one here, which the question was, how important do you expect tech adoption to be in your long-term success and a good 40% think it's pretty darn important. 41% say very important. 16% somewhat important, and 2.23% say not important. And again, what struck me was that sort of the bottom end of that graph with, you know, close to approaching 20% of lawyers kind of saying tech is either not important or not very important to their success.

And, you know, I have to wonder on what planet they're practicing law right now because I don't see how you can be successful as a lawyer without technology being a critical component of that.

00;10;36;07 - 00;11;04;20

Jared

I feel like if you're not using technology in your law practice right now, I don't know what you're doing. Are you like communicating with clients with carrier pigeon? Like at the very least, you probably have an email that's cloud-based at the very least. But yeah, I'm really surprised that that number is as high as this. But I do think it's encouraging that we've got like 80% of people who expect tech to be super important to law firms' success because it is.

And yeah, I just find it wild that some people think they can't they don't need to use it. It's staggering to me still. And every time I think I like every time I have this conversation, I'm like, I'm never going to have this conversation again. And here we are having it again.

00;11;21;00 - 00;11;46;14

Adriana

I chose to look at these statistics as over 80% believe it's important. And then that's a pretty good statistic. Just I decided to add the top two together and that is encouraging. And I mean, the 2.2% to me was so small. And I'm thinking those are partners who maybe founded a firm and don't actually work too much.

Maybe they're the rainmakers. They don't really see how the technology makes the law. And they're just, you know, it's more of on the development side than on the actual. Well, other development side - developing business versus developing documents and, you know, getting things out the door.

00;12;06;02 - 00;12;09;16

Bob

It's always looking on the bright side – Adriana.

00;12;10;15 - 00;12;10;25

Adriana

I try! What's that Theo?

00;12;10;25 - 00;12;16;05

Theo

You've still got to drive down to the golf course in your car to shake a few hands and schmooze your clients, though?

00;12;16;09 - 00;12;16;29

Adriana

Right. Right.

00;12;17;27 - 00;12;47;20

Theo

There is the word adoption in there, which maybe is a little bit different from having technology and then adopting it. And for the people who don't think that's important, maybe they think we've adopted all the technology we need. We don't need to adopt further technology, I think saying we don't need technology at all, I mean, pretty much everything other than my body that I can see is technology of some description arguably, depending on which creation argument you ascribe to.

But I think adding those top two together like Adriana said, means that there's no excuses in terms of vendors at least, you know, there's the old argument that a lot of lawyers don't appreciate technology. And that's the hurdle I think was a shame. That's definitely not the hurdle. It's the adoption and it's making sure that, you know, does the product solve the need rather than just exist or is it usable?

You have training at the right time of need.

00;13;18;27 - 00;13;35;07

Jared

You make an interesting point in terms of like adoption because for me, like whenever I start consulting with law firm, I try to figure out what the baseline of technology is. So, if you're 80% of the way there, like you mentioned, technology, adoption is maybe getting the rest of the 20% of the way there. And that's a different question.

00;13;37;03 - 00;14;13;26

Bob

The next slide gives a little, elaborates a little bit. I guess on this is pretty much the same question but broken down by some of the user types. And what we see is that by a greater percentage general counsel in-house legal people see technology as being of critical importance. Down to law firm partners it drops. Law firms associates you know, a little bit higher and then other I'm not sure what that other group is exactly.

But again, I think it's interesting that general counsel is, you know, by a greater percentage see technology as of critical importance. And, you know, I think that really reflects a lot of what we are hearing about legal departments today and the pressures on legal departments to be more efficient and deliver more with less and do more with less and to monitor their cases and matters and outside counsel more closely.

So, I think that's interesting. But does anybody have any thoughts on this break down here in terms of different types?

00;15;01;26 - 00;15;23;05

Adriana

Well, I'm going to guess here's what I would say. The reason legal counsel is that way is because they don't actually work inside of a law firm. Right. So, they're not being slowed down and hindered by what we have always said, which is thankfully changed a lot lately, which is law firms are always behind the curve. So, you have people who are trained as lawyers, but they're not working in the law firms.

They're probably working at technology companies, corporations, businesses that have IT companies' expectations. Their clients are going to be more at a corporate level versus a mom and pop or individuals. So, it's natural to me that a corporate counsel would be a little bit more tech savvy. Now I speak to enough of them to know that they are not all that they're definitely going to be a little bit ahead of the curve. And I think it's because they don't work inside a law firm.

00;15;49;20 - 00;16;20;27

Theo

There's less of a safety net in terms of deep units surrounding them as well as, as you mentioned, the output of their business is probably likely to be technology focused, and that means they have to immerse themselves in it. And the people who maybe are the reticent ones here saying it's not important of the 3.2% saying it's not important, they are probably buoyed up by a team around them who very much disagree and are doing a lot of that technology work for them.

00;16;20;27 - 00;16;43;08

Adriana

Or their corporate counsel for a very small company or outfit. Right. Because corporate counsel in a corporation, you're going to have marketing departments, boards to answer to, possibly shareholders to answer to. So, everybody has to contribute to the success of a corporation, including the law department. So, their expectations are different. They're working in a different environment.

So, it just it just doesn't surprise me at all. And I'm happy to see it. I wish it would trickle out.

00;16;50;01 - 00;16;50;13

Theo

Yeah, yeah.

00;16;50;25 - 00;17;16;21

Jared

Adriana is right. I think it's a function of pressure like Adriana was referencing. It's that like in-house counsel legal have somebody to answer to. And these companies actually keep statistics and data about how the legal department runs. And that's true of like outside counsel that they work for as well. So, I think it's just a totally different environment where technology becomes more important to kind of prove your worth.

And inside of a law firm, which is a fairly like a fairly closed environment, like those same pressures just don't exist. I say that the thing I'm like concerned about here is the fact that not only are the managing partners at the law firm Partners saying that technology is not essentially critically important as the other segments are, but like I would kind of like to see the law firm associates be a little bit higher because they're the ones coming in the pipeline after those partners.

And if they're not seeing technology, it's critically important that some of these other stakeholders, that's an issue for law firms moving forward. I would assume that that number would've been a lot higher.

00;17;57;01 - 00;18;16;29

Bob

Yeah, well, somebody in the audience pose what's always the sort of the $10,000 question around this issue, which is, is our attorneys slow to adopt tech because of the billable hour. It would seem that there is little motivation to use tech that would increase the amount of work that could be done in an hour if it's going to reduce the amount of hours you would bill.

So, what do we say is the billable hours to blame for, you know, maybe this discrepancy between in-house counsel and law firm partners and associates?

00;18;27;24 - 00;18;29;26

Adriana

I. Go ahead Theo.

00;18;30;06 - 00;18;39;21

Theo

But when's the last time we looked into this? Because I know I know we talk about this fairly frequently, but it's true. It's trailing off, right. The billable hour. It's but I think you're.

00;18;39;21 - 00;18;41;08

Bob

Right, people say it is.

00;18;41;08 - 00;18;54;23

Theo

But I mean, it's the write-offs more important, probably like the amount of low value work, but actually, it never makes it solely on an invoice so yeah, the billable hour is definitely to blame for at least some of this.

00;18;55;20 - 00;18;55;28

Bob

Yeah.

00;18;56;15 - 00;19;27;09

Adriana

Well, I don't know. Again, I hang out a lot with solo, small and midsize firms. And while they do still charge by the hour value though, or they're also looking to be more efficient and want to enjoy practicing law more. So, they're bringing technology in so that while they might still charge by the hour, they aren't getting trapped and aggravated by technology that they don't understand, they don't have or doing minutia work.

So, in my world, I don't see that the billable hours getting in the way. I don't have attorneys or paralegals or assistants ever that say to me, well, I don't really want to complete this task that fast. What I hear them saying is I'd really like to complete this task as fast as possible without aggravation so I can move on to my next task.

So, I don't think that the billable hour in my world is a hindrance. I think we're seeing a huge shift in lifestyle change in attorneys wanting to be remote. We know it can be done now. The experiment is over. Most clients will tell their attorneys, I don't care where you are, just respond to me in a timely way. Get me my documents in a timely manner.

Make it easy for me to get to them. And, you know, so they see delay. They want to get out. They want to use technology to be efficient and modern and mobile.

00;20;20;29 - 00;20;38;15

Jared

Yeah, largely I think that's true. And if you're looking at things like utilization rate, for example, which is relatively low for attorneys like you ramped that up and you have more time to live kind of a lifestyle practice, which is I think what most attorneys want to do, which is to have that flexibility to work from where they want to, when they want to.

And if you're I mean, the way I look at this, like it's how do you spend your day? Like if you can be more efficient and you're right now billing 3 hours a day and you can get up to five, you're living functionally a similar lifestyle, but you have more time for yourself and more money. I will tell you that anecdotally, like almost every attorney I talked to, they want to be more efficient regardless of how they bill

00;21;06;20 - 00;21;07;11

Adriana

It's true. Yeah.

00;21;07;14 - 00;21;10;01

Bob

Yeah. go ahead Adriana.

00;21;10;20 - 00;21;11;16

Adriana

No, no, no, go ahead Bob.

00;21;12;10 - 00;21;30;03

Bob

Well, I mean, I was just going to say back to Theo's point, you know, I've been practicing law for more years than I want to admit on the record. But in all of the years that I've been a lawyer, I have heard that the billable hour is about to die and it ain't it's alive. And well, it ain't going anywhere.

I mean, it is you know, certainly there's much more experimentation with alternative fee agreements and in some sectors that are becoming much more common, but the billable hour is alive and well. And I do, in fact, hear lawyers expressly say to me this point that I don't why would I want to use technology that's going to make me more efficient.

But, you know, I agree with your point Adriana, that it doesn't there's nothing wrong with being efficient if you finish one task more quickly, you then move on to the next one. You're still billing time. You're still earning fees. It just it doesn't make sense as an argument, but it's certainly one that prevails, I think.

00;22;12;24 - 00;22;13;02

Adriana

I think.

00;22;13;24 - 00;22;15;10

Theo

That. Oh, all right.

00;22;15;10 - 00;22;16;05

Adriana

No go, Theo go.

00;22;16;29 - 00;22;42;09

Theo

I think there's a demographic issue here as well in this data. And Adriana, you mentioned this, I think before we came on that, you know, a lot of the time around about the law's reach tends to shift towards the bigger sums. And that does become that culture of, okay, if I instruct a top ten white shoe firm, I kind of want to hand all of that worrying about the matter off to them and just make sure that they've got it completely wrapped up.

I think with that comes the culture of it's okay to spend a few extra billable hours doing some of the grunt work just to make sure that all the I's are crossed and the T's are dotted, which in turn means that those efficiencies you might be looking for aren't always being incentivized the same way that ideally they would be.

00;23;02;25 - 00;23;18;13

Adriana

I'll say two quick last things because I'm sure you want to move on, Bob, and that is I hear from a lot of attorneys who would like to go to alternative billing or flat fee. Their clients don't want them to because a client wants to know exactly. They want to have a better idea of what they're going to be billed for.

So, a lot of times, and that's actually a study somebody should do, ask the clients if you had a choice between check the box for hourly billing or check the box for a flat fee. What are the clients going to ask for? Because as usual, attorneys are going to say, I do what the demand is, what are my clients asking me for?

So, I think that question is always really hard to answer till we get to what I think would be a sub question or previous question. And the other thing I'll just say real quickly about that statistic about the associate people always say, and Jared, you know how it is in our world we hear all the time, well, let's give it to the young associate.

He's good with technology. Give it to that new girl we just hire. She's really good with tech. I'll tell you right now, young associates are not good with tech. They haven't learned how to use tech in an efficient way to run a law firm. What they are is not afraid of it. And they're more willing to test, embrace, sit for an hour or watch a demo, figure out if it's going to work for me and then activate the technology.

But they're not more tech savvy. They're just less afraid to consider it and see what it can do for them faster than maybe some experienced attorneys. That's what I was saying.

00;24;30;26 - 00;24;51;06

Jared

Yeah. Yeah. Going to sound like a really obnoxious old man here. But yeah, my experience with like, younger associates is like they know like technology that they use in their daily lives, like social media stuff, for example, and are very good at that. But like utilizing like business tools is an entirely different thing. And there's a learning curve for that.

But the fact that they're more open to it, I think, is really great. I just wish that these results showed them as being more aggressive about wanting to adopt it and potentially pushing the managing partners to adopt it.

00;25;02;21 - 00;25;31;06

Adriana

Agree!

Bob

Yep. Yep. Well, let's move on. The next section of the report of the Survey Report talks about the most popular tasks for which you're using technology. And this one kind of caused me to give a big yawn. I mean, there's kind of no surprises at all here, I think. I mean, you know, the top task is legal research.

Well, you know, duh, you got it. You need a computer to do legal research - I guess. Document management, e-signatures. Well, you can't do e-signatures without technology, although, you know, I think it probably is interesting to compare this, say, to two years ago before the pandemic in terms of how e-signatures have proliferated. I mean, they've been around for a long time, but it certainly seems like the use of that technology has certainly proliferated over the last couple of years.

But I think maybe one that jumped out at me. I know I tend to look at the lower end of these graphs, but to say that roughly, you know, only 25% kind of talked about CRM as an important technology. I guess I'm or o a task for which technology plays an important role because, you know, I think that's maybe a technology that's still underused and underappreciated in legal.

And there are some really good applications coming out now for managing CRM and legal and maybe they're just not being used enough. But, you know, what do you think? Theo What are your thoughts on this?

00;26;49;18 - 00;27;10;15

Theo

I think maybe the respondents particularly the ones not clicking that button, the CRM might be the ones that protect it from having to manage the pipeline of incoming clients because there's no way or I can't remember what I ate yesterday. And if you're working in a high stakes situation with multiple clients via email, you're going to want to refer back to something.

But it depends on how you frame that CRM system. If it's just reminding yourself of what you said previously, that's one thing. If it's managing the entire process of qualifying a potential client all the way through to landing them on the books, maybe that's the distinction here.

Yeah, maybe. Yeah, yeah.

00;27;34;29 - 00;27;35;12

Bob

Yeah, yeah.

00;27;35;23 - 00;27;56;01

Adriana

Well., if we want to just talk to Xero for just a second, here's how I feel about Xero. Somebody asked me, I think at the end of last year, what do you think the big technologies are going to be for 2022, you know, something like that. And if we look back historically, 20 years ago, attorneys weren't asking for practice management.

They also weren't asking for tools for marketing, and they weren't asking for things like legal research online. Right. So as the technology develops, like Bob you just said, you just said the keywords, I think, which is there's more coming out. So, as we develop more products that are available in the market, attorneys start hearing about things more, they start finding more interest.

So, I think that number would be interesting to look at in about two years because I think that one right there is where practice management was 15 years ago and where cloud-based solutions were ten years ago. So now we're all over practice management. Almost everybody's using it, even solos and smalls, especially solos and smalls because it's so affordable.

So now it's no longer do you use practice management. Now, which one are you using? And then it's no longer do you still have a server? Believe me, it's still a question, but it's much better now and it's what are you using for your online document storage solution? So, I just feel there are certain trends that they aren't ready for and CRMs next.

And I will make a prediction along with CRM. The other answer I gave was Document Assembly. So, we've been saying for years how you've got to use document assembly. You've got this document assembly. Well, there weren't a lot of choices. There was one Hotdocs for 20, 30 years. That's all you had. And it took a science engineer to figure out how to use Hotdocs.

So now, you know, we have a lot of choices. They're easier to learn, they're easier to implement. So, we're getting asked a lot of questions about both CRM and doc automation.

00;29;34;00 - 00;29;57;25

Jared

Bob, I think we look at the bottom of the surveys because for a pessimistic New Englanders, but that's what I want also. I think like I think along the same lines as Adriana on this, in fact, I bet that number was way low, would have been way low like pre-pandemic. I have found that like lawyers that were forced to focus on the intake process more than ever before.

And I was talking to people, I had an earlier presentation today. We're talking a little bit about this. Like I think a lot of people look at what happened during the pandemic and they're like, oh, the economy and culture completely changed. And the way I kind of look at it is like that's not really the case. Like we were living in a convenience economy before this and that only pushed the boundaries of a convenience economy like Netflix, Amazon, they've been around for forever.

Lawyers were just never forced to adjust that model. So, when you're looking at a convenience economy marketplace, when you're looking at legal consumers that want speed, when you're looking at people that want information, you've got to use CRM. You've got to use marketing automation tools. And I think Adriana's comments about like law practice management, were spot on as well, like those cloud-based law practice managers, sufferers came out 2008, 2009.

You dispute who was first but like for 12, 15 years people were like that. Client management law practice management software I think has gone really well. Let's build more of that. And now that marketplace is flooded and now you've got all these tools coming out that are utilizing the marketing side of it. And it's just staggering to me that for so long, law firms totally ignored the lead management side for the client management piece.

And I view this as almost like a second wave of legal tech whereas you saw that adoption of law practice management software from 2008, 2009 onward, you're going to see a lot more adoption of marketing tools, CRM and others moving forward. And the document assembly piece is big too as well. Those are probably - Adriana's right - going to be the two next big tech adoption fronts for law.

00;31;39;13 - 00;31;58;15

Bob

Yeah. Yeah. And there is somebody in the audience asked about what type of CRM software that is out there fits into the legal space. I mean, there are a number of CRM products that are specifically tailored to and created for the legal space. And I mean, we don't want to get into listing a bunch of them here.

But I mean, if you just even just Google Legal CRM, you're going to find a number of them. And there are some that are designed for smaller firms and there are some that are designed for larger firms in different and even you know, different types of practices. But there are certainly a lot of them out there.

00;32;20;15 - 00;32;41;12

Theo

And we really want to see how it's becoming increasingly clear that we're going to be here in two years. May 2024 talking about this again the one thing that I mean Jared, you mentioned you went straight to the bottom. I did. I dug straight into that other category and went into the right. And I mean, the one interesting one to me was somebody saying something remarkable.

And I think that does tie into how the consumer level has been influenced in the pandemic. People used to be BYOD and basically doing whatever they can to get their work done. That's another trend that might end up getting curtailed as things move back to a more office-oriented approach. But maybe in an ideal world that softer blending of at home divides millennials very happy to jump into tech, maybe not too good at it, but if that technology jumping into is what they already have at home, then maybe there's a happy medium of having to train them on something new.

But hey, you know, I crashed the CRM on their first day I joined a law firm. And so, I don't really have much to talk about that comes to that. It's okay.

00;33;33;14 - 00;33;39;05

Jared

I'm just surprised to learn the firm you joined had a CRM. Yeah!

00;33;40;13 - 00;34;00;10

Bob

Just while we're on the topic of what people are using tech for, there was also a question on why aren't there more products geared toward contingency fee practices, especially solo to small. Any thoughts on that?

00;34;01;23 - 00;34;04;28

Adriana

Well, I don't think that's. Yeah, well, let's hear yours, Bob.

00;34;06;04 - 00;34;30;17

Bob

Well, I was going to say, I mean, there are products, there are practice management, case management products that are very specifically tailored to a contingency fee practices. They're more focused on the case management side of things. But even some of those that are out there do include, you know, like some CRM client intake features as well.

So, again, you know, not to list a bunch of products but there are products that are specifically designed for personal injury practices, primarily yeah.

00;34;44;20 - 00;34;45;01

Jared

This is.

00;34;45;27 - 00;34;46;14

Bob

My insight.

00;34;47;04 - 00;34;54;10

Jared

I get this complaint a lot from attorneys and like it if you do a Google search, like you'll find a bunch of products in the space. There's a lot.

00;34;55;07 - 00;34;55;15

Bob

Yep.

00;34;56;17 - 00;35;21;02

Adriana

Yep. I agree. But, you know, what I typically will say is, look, even if you have a contingency practice, don't you want to see where your hours are being spent, what your most profitable type of cases are, where you're spending the most time and you could improve it? So, from the billable side, I get that you might feel like there aren't a lot of products out there, but you'd be surprised that a lot of them are hybrid, and they work toward flat fee contingency or hourly.

But then too, I often say the contingencies easy from send out the bill, but from the perspective of tracking the health of your law firm and the way you're using those hours, I still think you should track at some level the hours, in which case any program, any of those modern practice management programs would work. Now, if you're looking for the special reports, like I was saying, for a P.I. practice or a criminal case practice, then I think there's some good choices out there as well.

00;35;56;02 - 00;36;04;01

Jared

Yeah, and that's true. Every law firm should be tracking time because you need to get behind the productivity. Even if you have a contingency practice, everybody should do.

00;36;04;26 - 00;36;36;14

Bob

Yeah. To be completely self-serving for a moment. You know, there are now several different sites, including one that I run that catalogue different legal technology products by audiences they serve and the types of tasks that they do for you. So, I mean, if you're looking for products, there are sort of like items or categories specifically designed for the legal market that are out there right now. And that can be very helpful in finding CRM or personal injury practice focused software.

The survey goes on next to talk about mobile device usage and starts with this question of are you currently using one unified practice management system that integrates all of your devices, including mobile devices and as you can see, nearly half say no, mobile devices are not integrated into my practice management system.

And then roughly the other half is roughly divided between, yes, everything is in a secure system and can be accessed on all devices. Or yes, I have a secure system for all devices, but use other apps and programs as well.

I have to say, I was a little actually confused by this question. To me, it wasn't entirely clear, and I wondered whether some of the responses could have been a little bit skewed by the fact it was entirely clear because like the second answer of I have a secure system for all devices but use other apps and programs as well.

Does that mean for practice management or does that mean they just use other apps? I found that a little bit confusing, but overall, I think most I would have thought most practice management systems at this point are going to have certainly some integrated mobile capabilities as well as desktop or laptop or whatever else. So, this one threw me a little bit.

00;38;16;26 - 00;38;45;11

Adriana

Well, I'll tell you, this was the slide that made me say to myself, who answered these questions? Where I was big law versus small, because in big law, you don't really have a practice management system built quite the way we do in the mid in the small market. Right. Tends to be enterprise level. And I question what the unified part is, because to me, unified would include your marketing, your technology, your management, and your finance.

And I have a feeling those who are answering this question probably don't necessarily get into the marketing and the management and probably not the finance side of the practice. So, yeah, I think that's just a hard question. Maybe we should go to the next one.

00;38;59;22 - 00;39;00;04

Bob

Yeah.

00;39;00;25 - 00;39;03;11

Theo

All right. Sure. Happy to do that.

00;39;04;05 - 00;39;19;23

Bob

Okay. Well, you know, we go out to the next one, which is also a hard question. How do your mobile device capabilities compare with those working on a desktop laptop? I mean, basically they're asking, you know, to what extent can you do what you need to do on your mobile device and.

00;39;21;12 - 00;39;21;26

Adriana

But it's reflective of the first question, which is, again, you know, big law tends to have enterprise level systems that haven't yet developed for mobile. While down here, solo, small and mid a lot of products were developed specifically for mobile. And it's almost as if the desktop is accidental that they're both just as good. So, it's a tough question too because I'd like to see who's answering the question and what are they using?

Like what are they comparing. Word versus the time tracking system versus, you know, metrics? I don't know.

00;39;59;01 - 00;40;31;09

Theo

Yeah, and like a lot of technology is heading in the direction of ambiguity towards desktop or mobile. You build it the right way and it's effectively a website that loads in one place or another. And then the question is how fat are your thumbs? So hopefully the ability to work in a mobile manner increases if of course, you have your enabled by the IT administrator not locking down your device for particular activities. Looking at the top and tail of this data, though, it was partners who responded the most saying I can't work at all without my desktop or laptop as well as partners likelier to say I can do everything I need to do on a mobile that I could do with my laptop or desktop, which I think is a theme here. I'm seeing in some of the parts of the data that the partners are the most polarized group in terms of having for one extreme or the other.

And I'm curious if anyone has a theory on why that is.

00;41;01;22 - 00;41;23;26

Bob

Well, yeah, just to elaborate, I know that the written report said that it said surprisingly only 3% of associates said they could do everything on a mobile device, while 49% said they can only follow email and mobile. In contrast, 67% of partners said they can do many things or everything on their mobile devices. I mean, my theory as to why that is, is because partners aren't doing much.

00;41;25;01 - 00;41;49;07

Adriana

Right. Exactly. They're answering emails they're maybe opening up a Word document to make some edits on, but they're not, you know, drafting the initial brief on an iPad, someone else is. And then they're taking a look at it and marking it up. And two, with mobile device, are we talking strictly cell phones or tablets? Because there's a big difference, right, in your productivity level between your iPad and your iPhone.

So, again, the question's a little bit ambiguous, but I think you nailed it, Bob. I think it's definitely. Are you mostly texting calling and emailing? Then you can be just as efficient. But as soon as you have to do anything complex, it gets hard on a mobile device. I cannot be productive on a mobile device the way I need to be at my desk every day.

And I'm a full-blown techie. So!

00;42;16;00 - 00;42;34;06

Jared

Yeah, I feel like I'm not as productive on mobile either, but I feel like that's also an age question for me. And I mean, I know a lot of lawyers that are still like heavily vested in the desktop laptop arrangement. I was actually talking to an attorney the other day and we were on the phone, and he was like breathing really heavy.

And I'm like, what's going on? And he was like, taking his desktop computer out of the trunk of his car and carrying it up to his office. It's like a real thing that happened in 2022. And so, my take on this is partly that I think the issue for a lot of lawyers is like the desktop applications or the browser-based applications, more of what you can do is obvious than in a mobile environment, especially on a smartphone where some of the where some of that that some of the tabs are tougher to discover.

Right. You can just array more on a desktop application than you could on a mobile application. So, for most of the people I talked to, I'm like, yeah, the functionality is largely there, but it may take you a little longer to find it. And this has been the issue with lawyers for forever. Like if they're going to look at a technology, they want it to look exactly the same everywhere.

It's really hard to do that with a desktop versus a mobile application, especially on phones. So, for me, I think it's if you want to get used to mobile technology and use it more effectively, it's just a matter of usage. You need to get into it and do it.

00;43;38;11 - 00;43;41;24

Theo

Use an iPad and bypass this whole discussion by having a big enough screen.

00;43;42;18 - 00;43;50;02

Jared

iPad Pro, I'm a huge advocate of that. I love that device. I have like eight of them at my house.

00;43;50;03 - 00;44;11;26

Bob

I just flip add to the next slide here because it's kind of relevant what we're talking about here because this is the question on, you know to what? Which of the following do you use your mobile device? And some of the tasks listed here, we're reviewing and approving documents. 61% tracking and processing deals. 32% creating content. 30% other 30% comparing document versions about 20-19%.

00;44;19;27 - 00;44;22;02

Jared

I like how other is like a gigantic percentage.

00;44;22;08 - 00;44;46;21

Bob

Right. Okay right. What the heck is that? But, you know, this is again, I think this is in a way interesting because I don't know, for me again, I guess it breaks down to what are we talking about, you know, your iPhone or your iPad? But I'm not a big fan of reviewing and approving documents on my iPhone.

I can take a quick review of a document. But if I have to really get in there and start editing or commenting or something like that, I'm not going to do it on my iPhone. I'm going to be back on my laptop doing it. Tracking and processing deals. I mean, does that mean, you know, just following emails that that's one thing.

But if we're talking about using a more sophisticated deal management platform, I'm sure you're going to want to do that on your iPhone either.

00;45;12;11 - 00;45;37;20

Adriana

So well, I was very shocked by that 61% on that top line reviewing and approving documents. Well, who is doing that? Partners in high level attorneys. So back to, you know, who's answered the survey. We probably have a lot of partners that don't create content. They're not marking documents for a table or a citation because you can't on a mobile, really.

So, we know they're not doing that. But it's easy to mark up a PDF file with a nice, you know, digital pen, hit send and send it back to whoever's going to be doing the actual content development and editing.

00;45;52;24 - 00;46;17;00

Bob

Yeah, if this is the question on which I think it was at this. Yeah, this was a question on which they were. The report talks with some of the write in responses they received, and one of them was somebody, an in-house respondent, who said, quote, The security risks preclude the ethical use of mobile for most legal tasks. Jared, what do you think of that?

00;46;20;12 - 00;46;45;15

Jared

Oh, Lord. Sorry. I made sure I unmuted myself this time. This is one of those things where, like, I feel like, when will I stop answering this question? 2050, 2060? And it's a subspecies of other questions, which is like, can I use cloud-based technology as a law firm? Yes. The answer is like emphatically yes, like most states at this point.

And you probably know the number better than I did. Bob have come out with some sort of ethics opinion that says cloud-based computing is fine for lawyers, and I would extend that to mobile. Like, I think it's a non-issue at this point. And even if ethical regulators wanted to make an issue of it, what could they possibly do?

Why are you telling lawyers they can't use their smartphones like you could potentially tell lawyers they couldn't use Gmail ten years ago? There's no way, the horse is out of the barn. Like there is no reason you can't be using mobile technology. Cloud-based technology is a law firm now. You still have to secure it. And that's a different conversation. But you can use it.

00;47;26;14 - 00;47;28;09

Adriana

But it's easier than before.

00;47;28;16 - 00;47;32;17

Jared

Yeah. It's easier to secure than ever before. Yeah. I'm not saying it's complicated, right?

00;47;34;15 - 00;47;53;08

Bob

I was I was talking to a CEO of a legal tech company a couple of weeks ago who was telling me that when he first went to a conference, first time he went to a conference to show off his cloud-based legal technology, one of the lawyers came up to his booth and said, does you know that it's illegal for you to do any for lawyers to use anything in the cloud.

He said illegal. I did not know that. They said, yes, I'm sure it's illegal.

00;47;58;09 - 00;48;03;06

Jared

Bob said that to me last week. So, I feel like we're doing God's work here.

00;48;06;13 - 00;48;07;27

Bob

Point, it's not illegal to.

00;48;07;27 - 00;48;14;28

Jared

Secure the data and be, it's simpler to secure the data.

00;48;15;23 - 00;48;18;04

Bob

That trust is not illegal. Yes. Yes.

00;48;18;27 - 00;48;24;27

Theo

It's got to be done. It's got to be the securing of the data. That's the person is fixating on rather than the inherent nature of using the cloud. But speaking up for the 25- to 35-year-old demographic, which apparently by this point in life have lost at least three mobile phones, uh, which I have not. But who knows? There is, there is something in there about a literal hard drive of potential information, but it's encrypted. That's the thing. It's encrypted. You're not getting in there, but it can feel a little bit like handing away the keys to the kingdom you know.

00;48;53;05 - 00;49;04;16

Jared

Oh, for sure. And that can all be secure. Theo, are you saying that I'm older than 35? Sorry, we should probably continue on.

00;49;04;16 - 00;49;44;10

Bob

Alright. Well, yeah, let's just be for a run out of time here. Get the last couple of slides here on everybody's favorite, artificial intelligence. And it turns out it's not everybody's favorite, according to this survey, but there's so much talk about A.I. in legal of course. And this question is, what is your view of artificial intelligence and just fewer than 10% said it's critical to business success, with a whopping 53% saying it can make life easier in small ways now and will become critical to business success. And then there's that 5% who says I don't understand how it could ever be relevant to legal work. So, you know does this just tell us that that A.I. is getting overhyped or what does this tell us, if anything?

00;50;04;13 - 00;50;35;18

Adriana

Well, back to my solo, small, mid-size firm. I think no one calls me and ask me about A.I., says Adriana, try to launch a solo practice. I'm going to use strictly AI, not the kind of conversations we're having today. I think A.I. is highly overhyped at this point in the day-to-day world of lawyers by those that are developing A.I., but in the actual world of lawyers talking to each other and meeting with each other and, you know, talking about how they're running their practices and talking to people like me and Jared, this doesn't come up yet.

Why? Because I think A.I. is what practice management was. Cloud is, what CRM is and what document assembly is in about four or five years.

00;50;48;26 - 00;51;07;26

Bob

Before but do you think some of those people who aren't calling you about A.I. aren't calling you about A.I. because they don't know that AI is what they need or what they're using? I mean, they're not calling you saying I need, you know, VoIP software. They're calling you saying I need video conferencing software or something. I mean, is it just a matter of terminology?

00;51;09;00 - 00;51;19;00

Adriana

Or define. Yeah, define what AI we are talking about here. Like, we know it's very prevalent in legal research and in judicial analytics and stuff like that. But again.

00;51;19;13 - 00;51;28;29

Bob

I'll just bring up the last slide, which kind of shows how A.I. is playing a role in text just to that effect. Just to that point, you know, legal research is right up there at the top.

00;51;31;25 - 00;51;54;26

Jared

But yeah, this is like a super broad topic and like we could do a whole presentation on this, right? So, like if we're talking about A.I. at the level of like machine learning and that's one aspect of it, natural language processing is another. And then that kind of what we're talking about with the legal research tools, I think is more about like surfacing data and presenting it in a way that is readable.

So, like historical judges' opinions, that kind of thing. So, but I do think like when a lot of lawyers hear about A.I., like I still think the notion is like, can I get a robotic dog to bring my pleading to the courthouse or something? Something like that? And that's not really what I think is going to be in legal.

I think the way I look at it, at least at least in the near term, are there rote tasks that administrative people or lawyers are doing that could be done by technology instead to free up the lawyers to do higher level tasks that they can get paid more for? And I think if you look at A.I. in that in that context, like it can be really useful for law firms.

But obviously the technology has a little bit of ways to go before we get there. That's kind of my take on this.

00;52;50;19 - 00;53;11;19

Theo

Absolutely. There's so many shades of gray between GAI and I think one right hand who said that, you know, they use document templating as I like. There's such a broad spectrum there. I think we're definitely in the disillusionment phase for explainable A.I. The idea of A.I. being able to tell us how it came to a decision and therefore how we make better decisions.

But when it comes to better servicing of data and enabling better decision making that way, I think I actually think that hasn't matured yet. I think there's still a lot more to come in that space.

00;53;23;15 - 00;53;57;19

Bob

Yeah, I wish I was a little bit befuddled by the idea of A.I. for E-signatures. I don't know what that is, but certainly for it is being used more for document management to help intelligently file documents. I mean, you know, legal research is one of the classic use cases for A.I., you know, Westlaw and LexisNexis and all the other research platforms have been able to deliver smarter and smarter and more accurate search results for years now because they're using artificial intelligence algorithms to help drive those results.

But it's I think it's one of those technologies that is much more beneath the surface and driving a lot of the technical other technologies that lawyers are using these days without them even really understanding that it's AI.

00;54;13;22 - 00;54;28;29

Jared

Yeah, I think that's largely true. And I think you can look at A.I. is like undergirding a lot of the technology that's being developed and that's going to develop at some point rather than like a separate component of technology that lawyers should be worried about. Like it's just going to be built into the software they're using over the course of time.

And I think if we're talking about order of operations, like we talked about like the last decade or so is about adapting practice management software so you could manage your clients more effectively. Now we're talking about law firms utilizing marketing automation software and document assembly and I think I'll be a part of that.

00;54;45;17 - 00;55;04;02

Bob

Yeah. We of course went a little bit long on talking about these slides, and we've got a few minutes left for a couple of questions. So, if you have another question, drop it in. And also, let me just put this up in case you want to follow up with any of the panelists here's how you can do that.

But there was, I guess, a comment question back on our discussion about cloud computing and mobile technology which is even though the horse is out of the barn on cloud computing and mobile technology, the issue is there are so many horses now running around that lawyers need guidance on how to navigate that choice, how to ensure ethical obligations, vis-a-vis those third parties, etc. Not all horses are the same, but the way products get marketed to lawyers it would be easy for them to think that all the horses are the same.

You know, it's absolutely the case. And that's I think that's one thing we haven't really talked about here is just the fact that there isn't. So is, you know, there isn't sort of comprehensive training for lawyers around technology. And part of the reason there are still sort of misunderstandings around issues around cloud security other such things is because of that lack of training and education. And obviously, those of you on this on this panel do a lot to try and drive that cause. But there's still a lot more to be done in that regard.

00;56;09;06 - 00;56;28;25

Theo

Obviously, there's no real way of knowing from a user level whether the platform you're working on is outside of the big four, big three cloud providers, how well they have implemented the encryption and security protocols that those providers make very easy to use. So, you know, inside looking out, we can say, absolutely, cloud is safe.

We know what is done to protect your data. But outside looking in that that's when it gets a bit more wary. Even if you know if you're looking at the right horse, you might not know. I don't do horse racing. You might not know its pedigree.

00;56;42;27 - 00;57;12;02

Adriana

Look, I always say if it was built for legal, you're not going to be the first lawyer to ask about encryption and security and ethics. If it's a product that's used in larger law firms, if you think thousands of I.T. experts working for law firms haven't already asked all those questions, you know, if it's built for legal, you're probably in a better state than if it's a mom-and-pop or not built for legal or outside of the big three or four, you know, enterprise level services.

So, don't ask if Microsoft OneDrive is secure what do you think? I mean, come on.

00;57;19;27 - 00;57;43;09

Jared

First of all, I like that my analogy was extended here. So, thank you for that. Secondly, like, I do feel like there's a lot of information out there on this. So, this is like a twofold thing for me. One is like as an attorney, you do have some obligation, I think, to understand how technology works, that the technology and there are actually some ethics opinions out there that lists like questions you can ask cloud providers.

And if that's not quite enough for you, they're a bunch of consultants around the country. And folks are right on this topic that you don't have to pay for. You just access or blog post or whatever where you can discover more about these issues and get down to the nitty gritty. And if that's not enough, like you can also work for an IT a company, you could help install some of these tools as well.

So.

00;58;03;03 - 00;58;35;18

Bob

All right. Well, we are out of time, and I really appreciate your comments and perceptions to all three of you on this topic. And I want to just remind listeners that, yes, this recording is going to be available to you. You can come back to the same link you logged in today and you can view the recording. And also, you are going to get an email with information on how to get access to the full report that we've been talking about today. To our panelists.

Thanks to all of you.

00;58;37;10 - 00;58;38;16

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you for listening to Legal Tech Matters. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.