Law Tech — An update from Piddington’s Bali Conference

There are increasing opportunities for technology to enhance practice. To help inform practitioners of the opportunities here, The Piddington Society had Bennett Greenhalgh present on the application of technology at the 2019 Bali Law Conference.

The following are adapted remarks from his presentation.

Bennett is a corporate lawyer and director of Lindsay Street Partners, an entirely cloud-based law firm. Lindsay Street provides legal counsel and legal operations solutions to in-house legal teams and small law firms throughout Australia.

“It’s not super expensive, it reduces risk and it increases efficiency.”

What are the low hanging fruits for technology in legal practice?

There is a wide range of products in the market and this means that many practitioners have no idea where to start. Then, to make things worse, the market is filled with mostly salespeople and many of the products they’re pushing are duds.

The idea of wasting hours and hours only to end up in a place of frustration understandably puts off many lawyers (small firm lawyers especially) from starting.

“If these lawtech products are able to reduce risk and improve efficiency within a lawyer’s practice, then those lawyers that are already improving access to justice can do more of it.”

I would suggest taking baby steps. The two apps I suggest all lawyers try out aren’t ‘lawtech’ products at all — they are brilliant for everyone.

• (TextExpander) — The first is Textexpander. I think lawyers can benefit from this more than the average bloke on the street because many of them will spend a lot of time in front of a text editor.
  
  Essentially, Textexpander allows you to save the text you use often and reduce it to a ‘snippet’, so that in any field or document you simply type the snippet and the app will replace that snippet with the text you want.
  
  For me, I use it for ACNs, company names, people’s names, standardised emails that I regularly send, and that kind of thing. It’s cheap(ish), reduces risk (no more embarrassing typos) and increases efficiencies (no more looking up how something is spelled, or staring at a blank page wondering how to start the letter — just remember the snippet).
  
  I think many lawyers could get a lot of value from it and I tell everyone to give it a try — I should be getting a commission.
• (1Password) — The second is 1Password (though you could also look at LastPass, which does the same thing and I’m told is equally good).
  
  Password managers are pretty much compulsory for all people these days. This is an app that will insert your login details once you have been authenticated. Remember a single password so that you don’t have to remember the other bajillion.
  
  In fact, these days often I will authenticate using a finger print or my handsome mug and so I don’t need to type in anything. It also allows me to use those extra-long passwords we should all be using, with the five dashes and the 14 characters and the dollar sign etc.
  
  Again, it’s not super expensive, it reduces risk and it increases efficiency.

What is a good firm doing today to improve their practice with technology?

Beyond the low hanging fruit, even the smaller law firms should at least spend some time and resources investigating whether some of the fancier lawtech products are suitable for their practice.

In my view, the area where a firm (of, say, more than five lawyers) can get some great returns is in document automation.

Document automation is essentially the old precedents the profession has used for years but on steroids. The way it works is by taking a firm’s precedents and inserting code into the document itself, so then the firm can plug that document into a separate system (usually a website) so that the lawyer visits the system when looking for the precedent, rather than opening shared drive of word templates.

Once the lawyer finds the precedent he/she is looking for in the library, the system asks the lawyer to complete a questionnaire regarding the transaction or case it relates to. The system spits out the correct configuration of the document based on the responses to the questionnaire and the lawyer can begin from a made-to-measure first draft. This draft already contains party names, addresses, dollar amounts, dates, and other variables, but also can include entire clauses, sections, schedules, or even accompanying documents that always go together with transactions of that type.

Again, it reduces risk and increases efficiency. The two products I would suggest are worth a look are ContractExpress or Automio.

How can the use of technology improve access to justice?

If these lawtech products are able to reduce risk and improve efficiency within a lawyer’s practice, then those lawyers that are already improving access to justice can do more of it, and those lawyers that would like to be involved in improving access to justice but can’t find the time have one less excuse.

“I’m optimistic soon we will see stories of very smart lawyers that are putting these products to use in assisting their communities.”

Unfortunately, the reality is these products don’t come free, and so I think it’s only natural that a practitioner having just invested time, energy and money into these products is going to be more drawn to commercial uses to try to see a return on their investment.

I do think though that in time these products will move over to the pro-bono practices (especially at the big firms that can leverage their commercial practice areas). I’m optimistic soon we will see stories of very smart lawyers that are putting these products to use in assisting their communities.

Alternatively, when the robots take over, hopefully they will treat the disadvantaged pockets of our society much better than we humans ever have.

Bennett is a corporate lawyer and director of Lindsay Street Partners, an entirely cloud-based law firm.

Lindsay Street provides legal counsel and legal operations solutions to in-house legal teams and small law firms throughout Australia.