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September 2020 THE LEGAL TECHNOLOGIST ISSUE NO. 12 SEPT 2020 FEATURES INTERVIEW INTERVIEW Engaging with tech In-house challenges Becky Baker interviews James Moore Lizzy Denny talks with Tom Hambrett, GC from Flex Legal about what lawyers at Revolut, about the challenges in-house should learn from the tech industry teams face when using legal tech Our Staff. Managing Editor / Founder Marc May Global Editor Rebecca Baker Editors William T. White Tiffany M. Sillanpää Roslyn Lai Junior Editors Stephenie Ong Lizzy Denny Marketing Manager Marzia di Bella Contributors Sara Moon Christina Blacklaws Lauren Moore Insight into the future of law Shashank Bijapur Eloise Skinner Tom Hambrett Oluwaseye Kola-Ojo Jan Mary Baloyo Daniel Acosta James Moore Sophie Hannaway Nabiha Khwaja Alex Smith Ana Burbano Matheus Drummond Matheus Depieri Peter Colin Arin Klug Romesh Hettiarachchi Jacob Field Front Cover Stas Knop TheLegal Website Technologist http://www.legaltechnologist.co.uk Twitter http://www.twitter.com/LTechnologist Facebook 'The Legal Technologist' Email [email protected] Making an impact Coding Trainees remotely Lauren Moore 1 Sophie Hannaway 6 Flex Legal Part 3 James Moore / Robot Litigation Becky Baker / Lawyers Part 2 William White 3 William T. White 7 Interview with How to be a Christina Modern Lawyer 8 Blacklaws Part 2 14 Romesh Stephenie Ong Hettiarachchi Challenges adopting legal Legal Tech in tech Nigeria Daniel Acosta 11 Oluwaseye Kola-Ojo 16 Use of AI in Legal tech and Brazil's estate planning 18 22 Supreme Court Arin Klug M. Drummond and M. Depieri MS Word and Improving the legal lawyer tech profession competency Jacob Field 20 Peter Colin 25 Business agility Interview with and the in-house Tom Hambrett 27 team 31 (Revolut) Shashank Bijapur Lizzy Denny An ideal legal Legal tech in technologist South Korea 30 Nabiha Khwaja 33 Sara Moon No-Code in the LPM and process legal sector improvement 36 Alex Smith 40 Ana Burbano Social media Legal tech in and the modern arbitration lawyer Jan Mary Baloyo Marc May 38 42 A note from Dear Readers, Please enjoy another jam-packed edition of the Legal Technologist. We have plenty of great quality content from all around the world - including a the editor number of insightful interviews. The last few months have seen the Legal Technologist continue to grow - with Marzia and Roslyn joining the team. We now have a great team of people passionate about legal tech, who are keen to push the magazine forward. We also recently unveiled our Advisory Board who will be there to mentor us and keep us on track. Over the next couple of months we will continue to work on a legal tech dictionary, which will make our articles more accessible to all. We'll also be partnering with legal tech companies on events and increasing engagement across the board. We'll also continue with the development of our SME legal tech comparison tool under the 'Legal Tech Toolkit' banner. Watch this space for further details! I really enjoyed putting this issue together, and I hope you enjoy reading it - please do let us know what you think of it! If you're interested in contributing to future issues please do get in touch with me or any of the team. All the best Marc May Global Perspectives Europe The Flex Legal Series, Part 3: What lawyers should learn from the tech industry Becky Baker William White All businesses are being forced to engage with new people who are actually using the software. It's really technology and use data to optimise their operations. Law important to have end users involved very early. The firms are no exception. But how should law firms approach earlier we can get people using the platform, the software development? And how can law firms engage with quicker we understand the differences between what's data science? Our Global Editor, Becky Baker, discusses in my head as the developer and the reality of using the these questions and more with James Moore in the third platform. As co-founder, I make sure I have visibility and final part of our Flex Legal series. across the whole company because I want to understand what's going on and where we have James is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Flex problems. Legal, an on demand legal service for paralegals. Before this, he was Chief Technology Officer and a board member The second is that computers are really good at at a major software company. repetitive tasks that you don't want to go wrong. We look for areas where we can use that capability. After Becky: Flex Legal aims to differentiate itself in the spending a lot of time talking with clients, it was clear market by using technology behind the scenes to that compliance is something they really value. What I create a seamless experience for clients. How do wanted to do was make it impossible for important you make sure that you’re heading in the right tasks not to happen. Technology is great for that. Our direction as you develop your platform? invoicing, timesheets, and compliance are now totally automated. Take employee-related regulations for James: There are a few things that spring to mind. The example. How do we know that everyone's got the right first is that the developers have to be really close to the DBS checks? How do we know there's a right to work 1 Back to contents Global Perspectives check? When does someone fall under the Agency people is a great idea, as is partnering with firms that Worker Regulations? We have a system in place that have experience developing software. We spent three flags if anyone's non-compliant, might become non- and a half years building our platform, and now it’s compliant, and if there’s any action to be taken. brilliant at managing a flexible workforce. We kept having people knocking on our door at semi-regular Becky: I think it’s fair to say that law firms have intervals asking to use our software to run their been slower than other businesses to deploy workforce. That knocking has become more and more technology in this way to improve their clients’ regular, and we're now working with a couple of firms experience. Why do you think this is, and what and co-creating really good solutions. could lawyers learn from the technology industry? Becky: As I understand it, many of those solutions rely on data to improve the running of James: Lawyers are trained not to give strong advice – the business. Our readers will be interested in they give the options. Only when they shift to in-house how data science will impact the legal sector. Can roles do they have to begin to actually take those you give an example of how you’ve been using decisions. There’s a lot of trial and error in software data in practice? development, and you have to get used to failure. I’m hesitant to generalise, but I think there is some truth to James: Data science is a wide-ranging term that covers the stereotype that a proportion of lawyers' self worth a lot of things. A key area for us is understanding our can become tied up in the quality of the legal work they candidates, who’s available when, and who might be a do. good fit for a role. In general, if someone has previously worked for a client and got good feedback, they will By contrast, most developers have made enough want them back. We capture this data and apply lots of mistakes that they learn to detach their self-worth from heuristic rules to it to help guide who pops up in the ultimate outcome. Instead you have to ask whether search results. Ultimately the matches are made by the team is learning and making things better. If we're humans, but the process is enriched with data to help doing those things, then everything’s good. That said, our people doing the bookings be incredible at their software engineering isn’t a regulated profession. You jobs. probably don't want your probate lawyer or conveyancing lawyer trying something new! It's not always complex. Most people can probably teach themselves to do a linear regression — think Becky: When law firms do decide to adopt new about a line of best fit. A lot of our data science is technologies, there’s a choice to be made simple and can be done in Excel or another BI tool. A between developing an in-house solution and key question is how do you drive action from data. At licensing in an off-the-shelf product. Do you have Flex Legal for example, knowing who’s coming to the a view on which route they should be taking? end of their placement in the next 3 weeks and being able to act on that is very powerful. James: As a general rule, where there is generic software to solve a problem they should use that. Becky: It’s clear that good use of data can drive Software is really expensive to develop and the capital business outcomes. Do you think there is anything investment profile is very different from the normal holding the legal sector back from fully embracing the work that lawyers do. If I do an hour's work, I’ve got a benefits of data science? chargeable hour that I can bill out straight away. It’s different with software. I did one project many many James: A major problem is that it’s hard to collect years ago where we must have spent £1m on information at the moment.
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