The Traklight Blog

We were excited to be a part of the New Lawyers and Technology event in Irvine, sponsored by Case.one and hosted by Whittier Law School. Our panel was moderated by Allen Rodriguez of ONE400 and featured Bahar Ansari of Case.one, Jason Velez of 1LAW, and Josh Blandi of Unicourt, all of whom had interesting insights to offer on how new lawyers can bring a fresh perspective on technology to the law, and how technology can help to improve how lawyers serve their clients.

This article was originally featured on Law Practice Today.

This article was originally featured on ABA Journal.

We held our second Denver event on the evening of October 26th, hosted by Lawgical. The evening's focus was a discussion on increasing access to justice through the use of technology in law. The evening kicked off with a Darwin Talk entitled "Time is the New Green" given by Adam Camras of Lawgical and Legal Talk Network.  Every small inefficiency in your life can add up to time wasted, both professionally and personally. That goes for law, where you can still find people running their firms using what are by modern standards crude tools. The firms that are succeeding are the ones who are using the latest in technological innovations and software to be efficient and save those precious minutes and hours that add up over the course of time.

If there is one fact that is most frequently repeated at Evolve Law events when discussing the current state of law, it is that most lawyers are resistant to change. This resistance helps to explain much of the current predicament that the legal industry is in. Businesses are adapting to new economic realities and reshaped marketplaces, but too many law firms continue to operate under the model they’ve had for decades — a model that fails to meet the needs of the modern client or customer. Where law firms have fallen short, legal tech has stepped in to try and fill the void in access to justice and legal help, as well as push the legal industry into the twenty-first century.

This article was originally featured on the ABA Journal.

For the second time, we were fortunate enough to organize a Darwin Talks event at the Minnesota State Bar Tech Conference, with a group of speakers who were able to offer a variety of perspectives on different areas of the law and how to improve them.

Businesses are able to learn and grow through a shared knowledge. None of us walk into a job and know how everything operates, either at that company or in the industry. We're relying on the knowledge of others who have gone before us to educate ourselves, as well as the know-how of our current co-workers. And new people can add to this knowledge in their own way, often bringing new ideas or fresh perspectives to old problems or methods. There's a saying that goes, "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together," and something similar could be said for gaining knowledge.

Our most recent New York event covered the new topic of "Data & Analytics in the Law" as we look to focus more on adoption and implementation of legal tech in panels and discussions. The evening kicked off with a Darwin Talk on Artificial Intelligence: An Historical Perspective from Dean Sonderegger of Wolters Kluwer.

Evolve Law was back in Silicon Valley for another great legal tech event, this one focused on the "Tech Savvy In-House Counsel." The evening kicked off with a Darwin Talk from Tina Fan of SimpleLegal. Tina's presentation was on "Best Practices for Implementing Legal Operations Software". When it comes to implementation, there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer for every company; there are many tools available for firms and companies to use. When looking at implementing legal ops software, in-house legal departments need to examine what their goals are as a department and ask whether they align with what the company goals are, as well as asking why they're looking to implement software and what they are hoping to accomplish with it. They also need to plan for how they want to implement the software and the resources necessary to get it implemented correctly and to get everyone in the department or company on board. Perhaps most importantly, when you're looking to automate a process, you want to make sure that it's a good process that you're committing to.

In our final installment of a five-part series, we close by interviewing Mark Oblad, around contract on automaton plus a look to the future. Blockchain and cryptocurrency law are opportunities for attorneys, not threats. Lawyers must embrace technology, although not all need to become as expert as Mark or other programmers in order to leverage technology.

Much has been written on blockchain recently, even in legal. We continue our series with Mark Oblad, VP, Legal and Finance at JW Player, who has coded a number of tools for automating transactions. Last time we talked about open source and industry source of information for contracts here.  This time, we look first at smart contracts. The concept of the “smart contract” has taken hold and is becoming increasingly the focus of legal technology groups, such as the Computable Contracts Initiative at Stanford Law School’s CodeX, Cardozo Law School’s Tech Startup Clinic, New York Law School’s Center for Business and Financial Law, law.MIT.edu, and Computational Legal Studies.

In our third installment with Mark Oblad, we take a step away from contracts to discuss open source and industry source. If you missed either Part 1 or Part 2 of this five-part series, we suggest reviewing both before diving into this background on the substantive creation of the forms.

We continue our discussion with Mark Oblad on his work within the contracts, smart contracts, and blockchain space in the second of a five-part weekly series. Not all types of contractual relationships have been reduced to fill-in-the-blank documents as discussed in Part I of this series.

Artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and chat bots are all hot topics these days. At a spring Seattle legal technology event, computable contracts were recommended as a focus for a future event. Mark Oblad, who I have interviewed previously here has done a deep dive into this space over the past eighteen months and below is part one in a series of five pieces on contracts, smart contracts, and blockchain.

By any measure, streaming accounts for a large part of how people listen to music now; in a world that is increasingly cloud-based, it only makes sense that our music should move on from the realm of the tangible as well. Digital music has faced a bumpy road to get where it is today, from the earliest days of Napster, but it has largely reached a place of relative peace between artist, publisher, and service, if not quite happiness between the three. But a recent case against Spotify illustrates the cracks that still exist in the current system and the ongoing struggle to ensure fair compensation to those making the music we stream.  

Small businesses face a number of challenges as they try to grow.  Being a small company means have to approach things differently than larger companies in your field. And while a lack of assets can be a hindrance, it can also offer flexibility. Bigger businesses may have the money and workforce, but they can also fall victim to an entrenched mindset that can prevent new and innovative thinking. Here are some ways that small businesses can succeed while the odds are stacked against them..

It is said that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes, and while that may be true, it is nevertheless painful. It can be especially painful for entrepreneurs, for whom mistakes can potentially have far more impact, especially if they are working with others. Unfortunately, there is as of yet no way to entirely avoid the occasional hiccup, but learning from the past failures of others can be instuctive in avoiding similar blunders. 

Summer is here, which means we are in the midst of one of the most dangerous times of the year. With the summer holidays comes the opportunity to relax and enjoy time with friends and family. But there is a level of responsibility that comes with the fun and festivities of the season so that everyone can enjoy themselves without fear of injury. The same can be said of businesses, not only in summer but year-round. Taking steps to make sure your company is secure is vital to allowing your business the freedom to create and innovate without having to fret over potential risks. Here are some of the most important measures you can take to keep your business protected.

Protecting your company's trade secrets and other intellectual property is vitally important, even more so when your company is one of the largest in the world. Top businesses don't stay on top for long if they allow their ideas and methods to walk out the door to competitors. And having a former employee take those ideas to one of the most noteworthy (for good or ill) companies in the U.S. is bound to make for turmoil and legal drama.