5 takeaways from Legal Geek 2018
A week has gone by since Legal Geek 2018, also known as the ‘Woodstock of legal’, where over 2000 delegates arrived at London’s trendy Brick Lane venue to meet and discuss the latest trends and insights into LegalTech.
For those who couldn’t make it, here are Neota’s 5-top takeaways from the event:
- Legal design – the term ‘Legal Design’ was frequently mentioned at the conference with a dedicated ‘Legal Design Conference’ the following day. Nicole Bradick, CEO of Theory and Principle, demonstrated the importance of thinking about the user journey when implementing new technology. Bradick used the example of a court document which was so badly designed no one used it. Once redesigned based on the user journey attendance rose by 36%.
- Legaltech education – the importance of working with law students was a common theme of the conference. Neota’s very own Maeve Lavelle, Director of Education and Communities, presented on joint partnership programmes with Universities and law firms. Not only is it important to train future legal generations on new tools to help innovate in their chosen career but the apps they deliver make a huge difference to the not-for-profit charities they work with in these programmes.
- Should we believe the hype? – Noah Waisberg, CEO of Kira, warned of media hype around legaltech products that gave users unrealistic expectations. Noah makes a good point but at Neota we still think media hype is still important and should be embraced. Without the hype, ‘LegalTech’ and ‘Legal Design’ might not be as prominent as they are today.
- Don’t buy legaltech – understand the problem you are trying to solve – this is something we feel very strongly about at Neota Logic and LawGeex did a great job at explaining this at the conference. Organisations should primarily figure out what their challenges are in order to work out the best solution. There’s just 8% success in adopting legal tech, largely due to organisations buying solutions that only partially overcome their challenges.
- Gender Diversity – Ivy Wong Product Manager at Lexoo, along with an all-women panel, addressed what the legal sector can do to encourage gender diversity. They mentioned change needs to come from the top, at a global level. With regards to mentoring there’s a need for both male and female mentors, rather than for women to be exclusively mentored by women.
High fives all round to the Legal Geek team for a great event!