Neota Logic attended SOLID last month in San Francisco. The event was focused on legal innovation and disruption and it was great to see so many lawyers striving to innovate.
Here are some key points we took from the event:
1. Data is the future
The event taught us there’s a big demand to automate highly repetitive tasks. Lawyers and general counsel should highlight what these tasks are by analyzing data so they get a true sense of the volume of tasks they undertake. Various panelists mentioned that data was the future and high on everyone’s agenda. Tools, such as Neota Logic, provide an audit trail so lawyers can review, track, and analyze use of individual applications or groups of apps leading to important insights into such things as the sources of use, process blockages, and opportunities for service improvement.
2. Build, don’t buy
Lawyers and legal departments are not just buying legal tech, but also looking more at building their own solutions. Rather than starting to build from scratch, the legal industry is looking to expert systems where they can use tools to build their own bespoke tools that fully meet their needs or the needs of their clients. An example of this was in Scott Rechtschaffen’s presentation where he detailed his experiences of expert systems at Littler Mendelson. Scott states that “we need to find tools that empower lawyers, not technology that scares them.” No-code software is something that lawyers can use, they don’t have to be programmers.
Watch Scott’s presentation here:
3. There needs to be a legal ecosystem
Panelists commented that in-house legal departments, law firms, universities and vendors need to work together to make the change needed. This is something Neota strives to do with our work in education and pro-bono work, as well as helping transform law firms and corporate legal departments. Through our education program, we help students once they have graduated and put them in touch with law firms and other organisations wanting to hire people with strong legal tech skills. Similarly, if corporate legal departments are looking for solutions and don’t have the time to build their own, we put them in touch with law firms who have these capabilities.