Tag: digitaltransformation

Categories
Legal Tech

Artificially Human?

Man playing chess with a robot.
Photo by Pavel Danilyuk at Pexels.

I have a theory about life which I espouse in my less optimistic moments. My theory is that for many people, things become less and less familiar as they age. What is socially acceptable changes, people dress and act differently, friends and family move away and pass away, technology changes, and so on. Eventually everything is so unfamiliar that they do not feel that they belong in the world, and they are then ready to die of natural causes.

read more about using ai to write content “Artificially Human?”
Categories
Legal Tech

Just Sit Home and Eat Doritos

Huge red and black Transformer robot.
Photo by Somchai Kongkamsri at Pexels.

I was telling my wife about the recent post by Frank Ramos about LinkedIn having an AI product to help us write our posts. Those of you have followed me for a while know that I think that I am kind of smart, but I know for a fact that my wife, Maureen McKay, is way smarter than me. She has a great ability to look at a fact situation and see where things are going to end up. Here is her take on the use of AI to write posts:

read a tiny bit more about maureen’s take on where ai is headed “Just Sit Home and Eat Doritos”
Categories
Legal Tech

Paralegals Jumping on the Technology Bandwagon

Marching band of female musicians wearing blue and white uniforms and playing drums.
Photo by Александр at Pexels.

Many of you know that I have deluded myself into thinking that I am some sort of an ‘internet influencer’ (like the Kardashians, only better looking and not as rich).

In this exalted role, I try to stir up thought about legal tech on behalf of Appara, which sells records management and document automation software.

One of the reasons that Appara wants me to write about legal tech is to bring attention to an obstacle that their industry faces, being that lawyers fear implementing technology since doing things faster means spending less time, which means less billable hours.

read more about how Paralegals should look at legal tech “Paralegals Jumping on the Technology Bandwagon”
Categories
Legal Tech

The Devil is in the Details

A woman in a devil costume with horns against a fiery red background.
Photo by Kyle Miller at Pexels.

I spent some time speaking to one of the founders of Appara to better understand how using their software would have made my life easier back in the day.

You can read my thoughts on their site by clicking the link below.

The Devil is in the Details
Categories
Legal Tech

Field of Dreams

Baseball stadium at night.
Photo by Timo Volz at Pexels.

Bob was a brilliant lawyer. He loved technology and was a wizard at math.

Back in the day when we used fax machines and they stood alone somewhere near the photocopier, Bob became enamoured with the idea of software that would allow the assistants to send faxes from their desktop. Bob ran various scenarios to demonstrate how much money we would save if we purchased this product. He calculated the salary and benefits earned by each assistant per minute and multiplied it by the number of minutes each assistant spent walking to and from the fax machine every day. We were going to save a fortune.

read more about questions to ask before buying legal technology “Field of Dreams”
Categories
Legal Tech

Danger Ahead!

Tiger
Photo by Pixabay at Pexels.

Back in the day, I used to teach junior lawyers how to practice law. I had me some rules. They went something like this:

  1. Do not delegate something that you do not know how to do yourself. If you do, how are you going to know if the work product is correct?
  2. Do not include anything in a document if you do not know why it is there. I will be unimpressed if you give me a document and cannot explain why you included every single word in it.
  3. As a corollary to Rule number 2, never say to me that you included something ‘because it was in the precedent.’ If you do that, I will be apoplectic and that will not be a good thing for either of us.

These rules helped me train a number of junior lawyers to be pretty good at what they did.

read more about the danger junior lawyers face using legaltech “Danger Ahead!”
Categories
Legal Tech

My Summer With the Great White Sharks

Shark.
Photo by George Desipris at Pexels.

In 2014, I was pretty fed up with life and I decided to do something different. Since my years practicing law had not prepared me to take any really big risks, I decided to take a small one. I rented a cottage on Cape Cod for the summer and set out to prove that I could work from anywhere.

read more about working remotely and legal tech “My Summer With the Great White Sharks”
Categories
Legal Tech

Old Law, New Law: Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

Half of a typewriter juxtaposed with half of a laptop computer.

In the old days, the path to success in the legal profession seemed fairly straight forward: Get top marks; article for a good firm (the larger the better); get hired back; work a tonne of hours; become a partner.

With success came prestige and money.

read more about success and adaptability “Old Law, New Law: Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places”
Categories
Legal Tech

Don’t Miss the Tipping Point

pencil drawing on graph paper with a point marked "critical!"

Back when I started practicing law, fax machines were just coming into vogue. This was an extremely useful development, especially since email had not been invented yet.

The timeline for the introduction of fax machines into law offices had two distinct markers.

read more about the coming tipping point “Don’t Miss the Tipping Point”
Categories
Legal Tech

The Button

A hand about to push a red button marked "easy"

In my second year of practice, word processing was just becoming a thing.

My firm had fourteen lawyers but no word processor. Fred was the senior partner. I told him that we really needed one of those new-fangled machines.

read more about document automation “The Button”