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More money is flowing into legal tech than ever before, as several gigantic deals dominated the headlines and enlarged quite a few bank accounts. And the push for regulatory reform extended to attorney admissions—between a demand for an online bar exam and an exploration of alternative pathways to licensure, one of the longtime pillars of the legal profession could be ready to make way. That’s just a few of the topics that will be covered in this special year-in-review episode of the Legal Rebels Podcast.

Lawyers, especially litigators, like to say they never ask a question that they don’t already know the answer to. But there’s plenty of unknowns out there—especially when it comes to how a case might turn out or how much it will cost. Predictive judicial and law firm analytics take some of that guesswork out of the equation.

What better way to spend Valentine’s Day than with your favorite lawyers, legal professionals, technologists and thought leaders who will be on hand to teach lucky conference goers about all the latest trends and developments in the field of legal technology?

The website Lawyerist focuses on getting attorneys information they want. Determining what that is isn't hard, says founder Sam Glover, because readers frequently tell him through the site's discussion forum or on social media. "Sometimes all you can get is anecdotes, asking as many people as you can find, to try and uncover information about stuff," says Glover, a 2017 Legal Rebels Trailblazer who uses the term anecdata to describe some of the site's reporting.

At 69, Judge Herbert Dixon doesn’t fit that epigram about old dogs and new tricks. He’s still proselytizing about high tech in courthouses and courtrooms, and he predicts its future. He’s still trying some cases as a senior judge, is a member of the ABA Board of Governors and now a Legal Rebels Trailblazer, and he’s engaged in so many other endeavors that he never seems to be (under immutable laws of motion) a body at rest.

When you ask Randi Mayes about the future of technology in law firms, she says its growth will stem from attorneys’ behavior rather than specific product offerings. “The real possibility for change in the future sits more with the mindset,” says Mayes, the executive director of the International Legal Technology Association. “It’s all about the law firm adopting its client’s worldview and innovating service delivery with those views in mind.”  Randi Mayes is the founder and executive director of the International Legal Technology Association. She has also worked for worked for the Texas law firms Brown McCarroll (which merged with Husch Blackwell in 2013) and Small, Craig & Werkenthin. She lives in Austin, Texas.

Craig Ball likes to say he got into law to stay out of prison. The Austin, Texas-based attorney, professor and electronic evidence expert has always been passionate about technology—somewhat too passionate at times. When he was a teenager, he created a device that allowed him and his friends to make long-distance calls for free. He got in trouble with the law. But luckily for him, the prosecutor and judge didn’t think his crime was all that serious. “The lawyer who helped me out hired me as a law clerk, and that put me on the path to becoming a lawyer,” says Ball, who earned his JD from the University of Texas School of Law in 1982, after which he opened his own law firm. The advent of the personal computer and the internet reignited Ball’s interest in technology. He became fascinated with computer forensics and the nascent field of electronic discovery—areas that still flummox many lawyers and judges today.

Legal technology has changed since 1999, when Ed Walters and Phil Rosenthal founded the legal research service Fastcase—but not as much as they’d like. Phil Rosenthal and Ed Walters are the founders of the legal research service Fastcase. They were associates with Covington & Burling when they started the company in 1999.

Most people see librarians as the quiet personification of technical obsolescence. Jean O'Grady is out to change that. The senior director of research and knowledge at DLA Piper in Washington, D.C., is at the forefront of pushing the legal industry toward embracing technology as a means of enhancing the practice of law. Through her acclaimed blog, Dewey B Strategic (which has been selected for the ABA Journal Blawg 100 every year since 2012), as well as through numerous public appearances and interviews, O'Grady informs lawyers about what the current legal tech landscape looks like and what kinds of innovative tools are at their disposal.

The license plates on Jerome Goldman’s Subaru Legacy reads “OYEZ,” in honor of his U.S. Supreme Court-focused multimedia archive. Now at age 71, Goldman, named a Legal Rebels Trailblazer by the ABA Journal, says he has some more “ephemera” that he hopes will get on the site, which is moving from Chicago-Kent College of Law to Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute. “This means passing along my knowledge gained over 25 years, plus offering complete details regarding my workflow,” says Goldman, who believes that his political science education was instrumental in understanding judicial behavior.

Stanford Law School Professor Deborah Rhode is the enemy of complacency. This Legal Rebels Trailblazer is one of the most cited scholars in legal ethics, though she wears many more hats. She has carved out specialties in discrimination (ranging from race and gender to the unfair advantages that flow to physical beauty, often probing their intersection with legal ethics) and in criticism of legal education itself.

"Working with tech startups, I realized that there is this vast unmet need for affordable legal services," lawyer Charley Moore says. "There's a real need for technology to make it more efficient for lawyers to be able to answer simple questions online and to be able to represent small businesses, individuals, startups and families at fraction of traditional cost."  Moore decided to try to fill that need with Rocket Lawyer, his online, do-it-yourself legal services provider that helps individuals and small businesses access legal forms (and, if necessary, local attorneys.)   Moore was more bullish about Rocket Lawyer's recent move to provide employees at large companies with comprehensive legal plans similar to health insurance.  "Our Q&A service is growing very fast," Moore says. "You can ask a question about any legal situation on any mobile device, and an attorney will respond to that question at an affordable price." 

Lawyers often think technology should always work. That's aspirational, says Sharon Nelson, president of the cybersecurity, information technology and digital forensics firm Sensei Enterprises Inc. "People can screw up, but technology fails too," says Nelson. "You really need to recover from what the problem is, as opposed to pointing fingers and being angry." Nelson and John W. Simek, her business partner and husband, formed Sensei Enterprises in 1997. Simek, an engineer, previously worked for Mobil Oil as a chief network designer and troubleshooter. The two met when she hired him to computerize her law practice. "John had the technical genius, and I had the legal, business and marketing experience," she says "We figured that together I could sell his talents, and it ended up that I sold us both. People were happy to have someone they could talk technology with, along with someone who knew legal ethics."

The impact for people clearing their criminal records can be life-changing, leading to long-term employment and financial security. And research shows that it also helps prevent recidivism. But the path to expungement is not always easy, requiring people with criminal records to navigate an unfamiliar, costly and drawn-out process. That’s where lawyer Noella Sudbury comes in.

"We didn't start out to be disruptive," says John Suh, LegalZoom's chief executive officer. "We were set up to fix a problem. The legal system was broken and too many people were frozen out of it." For Suh, the main goal of LegalZoom continues to be providing access to the legal system for millions of Americans who can't afford an attorney and do not qualify for free legal services. "So much of our legal system is focused on BigLaw or access to justice for those below the poverty line," says Suh. "What about the 84 percent or so of people between that? For them, the system really has failed." What Suh has done during his tenure as CEO is transform the company from a do-it-yourself outfit into one that has partnered with lawyers. "The perception that we're an online legal company with no human lawyers is just not true," says Suh. "Over the last five years, we've embraced lawyers and become quite adept with working with them." There have been over 200,000 one-on-one consultations between LegalZoom customers and lawyers licensed in their respective states, he says.

Ernie Svenson-a.k.a. well-known blogger Ernie the Attorney-was an early evangelist for what he calls The Paperless Chase. The basic premise: "Anything you can do with paper, you can do more with PDF. Way more."  Now he spends a lot of time teaching, training and speaking, all aimed at enabling small-firm and solo lawyers with the ability "to save money, make money and outmatch bigger firm adversaries," he says.  In fact, calling Svenson an evangelist is an understatement. "The walls are closing in on lawyers who haven't adapted, with e-filing in the courts and the increased use of the PDF format by others," Svenson says. "It's here. It's good. Do it."

Lawyer and longtime journalist Monica Bay didn't let sexism or a technology-averse legal establishment keep her from breaking new ground.    "The baby boomer lawyers were so entrenched with the idea that 'only the girls touch anything with a keyboard' that they absolutely refused to do anything involving tech," Bay recalls. "They thought it was beneath them."   Now, Bay says, the profession has stepped away from thinking that technology is reserved for support staff, and beneath lawyers.    "If you don't learn tech," she says, "you are not going to be relevant anymore."

As 2023 draws to a close, the Legal Rebels Podcast looks at the top stories in legal technology for the year. Between the explosion in popularity of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools, the continued use of virtual or hybrid working arrangements and the underwhelming mergers and acquisitions market, it was certainly an eventful year.

Legal professionals are not immune to the pull of platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts. Some are even using short-form videos to inform clients about their law practice; build their business or brand; or shed light on the culture of BigLaw, crafting short-form video content giving an insider look at the profession. Among them is Alex Su, a former lawyer and head of community development at Ironclad, a contract management software company.

One of the areas that has already felt the effects of ChatGPT and other large language models is contracts. Users can now use these AI-enhanced tools to help them quickly draft, analyze and review contracts. All you have to do is type in what you want, and the tech does the rest. Of course, it isn’t that simple. The technology is still in its infancy, and there are limits to what it can do.

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home and communicating and collaborating via real-time communication tools has become the norm for many law firms and offices. The benefits of such arrangements are obvious. However, some firms, including several of the largest in the country, have begged to differ. Citing a need to maintain or preserve office culture and strengthen personal connections, these firms are now mandating at least four days in the office per week.

For decades, lawyers who worked in BigLaw could expect some version of the following: Work long hours, including nights and weekends, with minimal free time, giving up almost all semblances of a social life. The reward: money and a potential partnership. And if you didn’t like it, there was the door. And if you were having mental health or wellness issues, then suck it up and deal with it.

When technologically assisted review first started gaining traction in e-discovery in the 2010s, many of the same superlatives assigned to ChatGPT were used to describe this groundbreaking new process that purported to review documents faster and more accurately than humans. Lawyers would get hours and hours of time back, and clients would save tons of money.

In the United States, there has been very little movement toward establishing a regulatory framework at the federal level for artificial intelligence. Why is that? ChatGPT, the large language model released by OpenAI, is one of several such tools that have revolutionized the legal industry in a short amount of time, igniting debates about whether artificial intelligence has to be regulated—and by whom. The European Union recently took the first step toward passing the AI Act, whereby regulation would increase in proportion with the potential threat to privacy and safety that an AI system poses. China has also drafted rules to regulate AI.

There are plenty of judicial analytics and litigation prediction tools on the market. They may have differences in execution and focus, but the general rule of thumb is that they look at a judge’s past rulings and opinions to predict how that judge might rule on a similar motion or case in the future. For instance, you can look up how a particular judge on prior motions to dismiss on certain employment discrimination cases to get an idea how they might rule on a similar one currently pending in their courtroom. That knowledge can be important for lawyers.

The generative artificial intelligence tool is not just designed to transcribe depositions. It looks for inconsistencies. It suggests questions to ask. It analyzes the transcript in real time to see whether there are issues that have to be cleared up or areas of weakness to address. In other words, it's like having another attorney in the room—only one who's capable of digesting large amounts of data and analyzing it quickly.

Many of us still get a chill running down our spines when we hear about bank failures and bailouts. After all, it was less than 15 years ago when we went through one of the worst economic disasters in history, and institutions such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers Inc., American International Group Inc. and others became famous for the wrong reasons. The Great Recession took years to recover from, and some of its effects can still be felt to this day.

In November, when OpenAI unleashed the newest, most advanced version of its chatbot, ChatGPT, it immediately captured the imagination. So far, it’s been a hit. Casetext launched CoCounsel earlier this month, and it functions as a legal assistant, helping users draft all sorts of legal documents. Users can utilize CoCounsel to help draft briefs, compose research memos, draw up contracts and analyze them, and write correspondence—all by typing their questions or requests into a prompt.

One of the biggest and longest-running legal technology shows in the country, the ABA Techshow, is right around the corner. From March 1 to 4, thousands of lawyers, legal professionals and vendors will descend upon Chicago to talk about technology.

For some academics, researching, writing, editing and publishing a scholarly piece of work can take months, if not years, of painstaking effort, diligent commitment and rage-inducing frustration. In December, Andrew Perlman, the dean of the Suffolk University Law School, authored one in less time than it takes to watch an episode of the Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon.

Legal operations handle a lot of the business and technological stuff that many lawyers either aren’t trained to handle or don’t want to deal with. All so lawyers can focus on practicing law and representing their clients to the best of their abilities.

There hasn’t been much progress when it comes to driverless cars. Most major car manufacturers have sunk hundreds of billions into developing and testing driverless cars; yet the finish line seems to be nowhere in sight. So what happened?

The metaverse is all the rage these days. Users can enter a virtual world where they can interact with people from all parts of the physical world, play games, engage in commerce and do a lot of other things. Some law firms have also seen the potential.

Programmed to communicate as if they were living, breathing people, AI chatbots function by asking you a series of questions and providing you with your available options. Lawyers, law firms and courts have even gotten into the act.

Thanks to nearly two-years of COVID-19-related shutdowns and sheltering-in-place orders, working from home has become the new normal. Face-to-face interactions have been replaced by meeting on real-time videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom, FaceTime or Microsoft Teams, while cloud-based collaborative programs have become absolutely vital if any work is to be done.

Immigration is an area of law that lends itself well to technological innovations. It is in that intersection in which immigration lawyer Greg Siskind does his work.

Much has been made of the gigantic access-to-justice gap in this country. One possible way to help bridge the gap is to expand the pool of people eligible to practice law. Of course, that raises age-old concerns about unauthorized practice of law.

Are you struggling with debt? Do you have collectors breathing down your neck, threatening to repossess your property and filing lawsuits against you in court? For many Americans facing this dilemma, their options are fairly limited.

Facial recognition software is becoming a greater part of our everyday lives. But the technology is controversial and not without its critics. Questions about its accuracy—especially relating to recognizing minority faces—remain. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Smokeball.

Like many Americans, Jazz Hampton and two of his friends, Andre Creighton and Mychal Frelix, watched in horror as two fellow Minnesotans, Philando Castile and George Floyd, were killed by police officers following what seemed to be routine traffic stops. If only there had been a way to de-escalate those situations while protecting the rights of the person detained, as well as the law enforcement officer involved. So they came up with one. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Smokeball.

As a young personal injury litigator in Georgia, Gino Brogdon Jr. says he was accustomed to using different technology tools to manage his practice. But when Brogdon began working as a mediator, he realized that there were limited tech options to assist him in the alternative dispute resolution realm. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Smokeball.

The Innovation for Justice lab launched at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law in 2018 with the goal of designing, building and testing new solutions to addressing the justice gap impacting millions of Americans. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Smokeball.

Evisort co-founder Jake Sussman says when the company began developing its contract management and analysis platform, its goal was to use artificial intelligence as a last resort. But it soon became clear that AI was the only way to solve the contract challenges that Evisort wanted to help users tackle. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Smokeball.

AJ Shankar, the founder and CEO of e-discovery platform Everlaw, likes to say his company’s technology is designed to help clients find needles in a haystack. But he notes that the haystacks that law firms and corporate in-house teams have to confront have grown in size and complexity in recent years. This has prompted cloud-based Everlaw to enhance and broaden its e-discovery offerings. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Smokeball.

Law prof Michele Pistone says there aren’t enough immigration lawyers and pro bono attorneys to meet the demand of immigrants seeking legal assistance. This justice gap is a primary reason that she created a program to train paraprofessionals to handle legal work in the immigration realm. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Smokeball.  

Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati announced last month that it had teamed up with Workiva Inc. to create an application that automates the S-1 form that companies must file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission when going public. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Smokeball.

Priori is an online platform known for using data and technology to connect in-house legal teams with lawyers and law firms who can assist with a wide variety of projects. But Basha Rubin, CEO and co-founder at Priori, says the company noticed that clients were sometimes turning to its online marketplace for help with problems that “might be best solved by a ‘new law’ company or a nontraditional legal provider.” Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications, Nota, and Smokeball.

The LSAT is facing competition from the JD-Next exam, and many states are reconsidering their licensing methods as the bar exam as we’ve known it sunsets in 2028. Kellye Testy, the executive director and CEO of the Association of American Law Schools, talks with the ABA Journal’s Julianne Hill about why those changes are happening now and what it means for law schools and students.

Sonja Ebron and her wife, Debra Slone, saw firsthand how difficult it can be to represent yourself in civil cases through experiences they had being sued and suing others. Ebron says the couple’s legal battles spanning several different practice areas ultimately prompted them to develop a platform called Courtroom5, an online toolbox that helps self-represented litigants handle their cases from start to finish.  Unlike many other technological tools for pro se litigants, Ebron says Courtroom5 is particularly well-suited to help people with complex civil matters and can be utilized by consumers nationwide.  “Our goal is to simplify the process as much as possible for people who first of all really don’t want to be in court and secondly don’t have the legal background,” she says. The company, which is based in Durham, North Carolina, is also working to add a feature to help users connect with lawyers for a-la-carte services. In this new episode of the Legal Rebels Podcast, Ebron discusses the build-up to the launch of Courtroom5 in 2017 and breaks down the different ways the platform can assist users. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Nota.

NextChapter’s success last year came in its first full year after being acquired by legal research company FastCase. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Nota.