Unconference! Beat poetry and quantitative analysis – we are all futurists now!

05
Jul
2012

Joanna Goodman

Joanna Goodman reviews Law Tech Camp London

Law Tech Camp London which took place on Friday 29th June at the CBI Conference Centre in London was genuinely different from other legal technology events. It was different from the ones that pop up every year. It was different from the biggest and most profitable ones. It was different from the ones that claim to predict the future. It was the UK’s first legal ‘Unconference’ and everyone is talking about it.

As there has been unprecedented coverage of this event across legal publications and the blogosphere, this review will focus on what differentiated Law Tech Camp London from other legal technology events plus a selection of personal highlights.

For more information, the Legal Informatics blog has a useful page of links to resources about Law Tech Camp London 2012.

Three key differences
Law Tech Camp London looked at the future of law from a different angle: training the lawyers of the future. It examined the role of technology in helping the profession – and legal education and training – adapt to change. This is unsurprising because it was organised by the College of Law, University of Westminster Law School, Michigan State University  - and the ReInvent Law laboratory – and My Legal Briefcase.

Secondly, the format was based on the highly successful Law Tech Camp Toronto. It really was about learning and sharing, which goes some way to explaining the amazing energy and enthusiasm in the room.

This ‘Unconference’ was not commercially focused. It was not aimed at decision makers and influencers in law firms or corporate legal purchasing departments. Anyone who wanted to attend could apply for a (free) place until the event reached capacity, which it did. Anyone could propose a talk and everyone who did so was accommodated until all the slots were filled.

Thirdly, there was a ‘light touch’ approach to technology, which was presented as an enabler – of learning, innovation and embracing change in a dynamic market. Although there was (rightly) reference to big data, eDiscovery, cloud computing and social media, and presentations by representatives of technology providers, there was no hard sell. Nor were there stands offering leaflets, USB sticks, sweets and cute toys. I am not denigrating supplier exhibitions – they can be useful and informative and they are often valuable market indicators – but their absence demonstrated that this was about thought leadership: developing actionable ideas and strategies.

Four guiding principals
The event started with four excellent presentations on the transformation of legal services.  Ajaz Ahmed, founder of Legal365 and Kevin Doolan, partner at Eversheds, started from the premise that people hate lawyers! Ahmed felt that deregulation would lead to improvements – but emphasised that the way forward was not branding (sorry Quality Solicitors) or market research (for insecure middle managers). Customer loyalty – and call them customers, not clients – is based on empathy.  The new model should reduce complexity – don’t sell law, sell solutions!

Doolan observed that in uncertain times people rush in to make and pay for predictions. This would explain the legal sector’s current preoccupation with predicting its future. Doolan’s hypothesis was that we overestimate the short-term effects of change and underestimate the long-term consequences. Just because something doesn’t catch on right away doesn’t mean that it won’t eventually become ‘the new normal’.

Professor Stephen Mayson reminded us that lawyers are not just purveyors of legal services: their role is to protect and promote the public interest – and access to justice. He then set out seven guiding principles – which have been noted elsewhere – the final one being to train people for the market of the future, not the market of the past.

Finally Geoff Wild from Kent County Council gave a superb account – illustrated by an entertaining slide show – of how he has transformed the council’s legal services from a cost centre into a profit centre that now has the largest legal budget in the country and works for 330 public sector organisations nationwide. He quoted Darwin: “The species that survive are those most adaptable to change”.

Pecha Kucha – no chit-chat, just PUSH
The opening session was followed by Seven Ideas, Six Minutes Each (Pecha Kucha Style). Although some found the obscure name (Pecha Kucha) disconcerting, the concept worked brilliantly.

Pecha Kucha means chit-chat, but there was none of the usual conference fluff and padding. In fact there was a wider use of media than you get at most legal technology events. We had some PowerPoint; some Prezzi; some people just stood up and spoke and there was beat poetry from Michael Bossone, founder of LawWithoutWalls.

Many people have tweeted and blogged this video and I make no apology for including it again. Bossone’s empowering words delivered in a unique way reflect the character of the event. If you haven’t seen it, it is worth six minutes of your time. And if you have, you’ll know already that it is worth another listen.

The poem speaks for itself and energised an already active twitter stream.

The tweet board was truly entertaining and encouraging – and was supported by excellent wi-fi connectivity. There were 1,583 tweets at the event, not all from delegates, and there were over 450 more over the next couple of days.

Quantitative methodology and big data analysis
By referring to the actual number of tweets, I reveal myself as a maths geek and another highlight was the application of quantitative analysis to legal services.

It started with Ron Gruner’s six-minute presentation on the use of metrics in law. Gruner referred to the management quote attributed to Peter Drucker , “You can’t manage what you can’t measure” and the counter-argument that you can’t measure value. But Gruner argues that you can and explains how. You can find his presentation here.

There were two presentations on big data, which is a hot topic in legal IT as elsewhere. Dr Jack Conrad from Thomson Reuters guided us through the way a case can be transformed into a series of data points that can then be used to predict outcomes. This raises issues about identifying the data set to be analysed. Another consideration is that big data is not just historical data; the reason people are uncomfortable about big data analysis is that it includes other information, such as geo-location and transactional data, which brings in the privacy debate.

Dr Daniel Katz, one of the event organisers and Associate Professor at the MSU college of Law, explained that quantitative legal prediction is commonly used in eDiscovery and legal procurement. In 2002, forecasting techniques were applied to case data to predict the outcome of Supreme Court cases with excellent results. The statistical model correctly predicted 75% of cases compared with 59.1% accuracy from a group of independent legal specialists.

This is great, but what do clients really want to know? Their big question is, “Do I have a case?” Here the calibre of prediction is a function of factors including quality of inputs, inherent system variability, time scale and complexity.

The most mature version of legal outcome prediction is Lex Machina – which operates in the patent litigation space.

The point is that quantitative legal prediction is already here and Katz and others consider it an important element of legal training.

Paul Bernal, lecturer in information technology, intellectual property and media law at the University of East Anglia Law School, who made an impressive presentation on social media and privacy in the breakout session posted this tweet: Can we quantitatively predict whether quantitative prediction will take over the legal profession? I guess we have to wait and see...

Irrational rejectionism and new roles and qualifications
The keynote speaker was Professor Richard Susskind and the first part of his speech was based on his seminal book The End of Lawyers? which accurately predicted the decomposition of legal services.

Here’s a link to an excellent report of Susskind’s presentation, written by Neil Rose at Legal Futures, who has produced a significant amount of expert commentary on the liberalisation of the UK legal market :

http://www.legalfutures.co.uk/latest-news/more-less-liberalisation-technology-susskind-lays-vision-future

Notwithstanding  Susskind’s reiteration of a topic he has covered numerous times, he is an excellent speaker. As always, there were some fabulous soundbites:

• By 2050 the average desktop machine will have the same processing power as the whole of humanity
• More people own mobile phones than toothbrushes
• Irrational rejectionism: Lawyers want the technology demo not to work!

At this point irony struck when this comment appeared on the tweet board: Is Nostradamus speaking?

In the second half of his presentation Susskind gave us a preview of his new book, Tomorrow’s lawyers: An introduction to your future.  Here he mentioned technology creating new jobs for lawyers: the legal knowledge engineer, the legal technologist the legal process analyst and, interestingly the dual qualified legal hybrid. “Should we extend the remit of law schools and colleges to include other disciplines such as risk management, project management, legal knowledge management and disruptive legal technologies?”

This theme was reiterated by Guido Boella from the University of Turin whose analysis of the relationship between law and artificial intelligence has led to the introduction of a new combined qualification in law, science and technology.

Do you want to be Kodak or Instragram?
Many of the day’s presentations encouraged innovation – at the right time and in the right way. Renee Newman Knake asked delegates: do you want to be Kodak or Instagram?

Jon Busby of Epoq, who is an excellent photographer, used his camera as a prop when he explained the importance of finding out how to make the best use of the technology you already have – you don’t necessarily have to read the camera’s instructions, as these can be unreadable; learn how it works intuitively – and communicating with customers in the way they are most comfortable with. Busby doesn’t take a laptop to meetings He meets his customers for coffee and finds out what they need.

The final session answered some of the questions raised in the first presentation. Technology can help us work differently and work smarter. But we also need empathy – to listen to our customers, find out what they need and, supported by technology, deliver it at the right price. “Only a few people need to innovate, but we all need to communicate,” observed Busby.

There were no professional ‘futurists’ at Law Tech Camp London. But one of its intrinsic messages was that we are all futurists now.  Monica Goyal of My Legal Briefcase cited Marshall McLuhan’s famous quote:  “We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future”.  Ron Gruner quoted Alan Kay: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”.

Law Tech Camp London demonstrated how technology is helping the legal profession shape its own future.