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  • Don’t miss this excellent compendium by Melissa Lin of LexBlog: Top 10 in Law Blogs: Artificial Intelligence, Executive Orders, and Law Bloggers. (It’s only a bit redundant to the posts below.)

 

  • For more than two years I’ve been writing that systems such as Wordsmith (from Automated Insights) can do a very good job of drafting law firm ‘content marketing’ materials such as client alerts. Here’s some solid (frightening?) evidence of how far such systems have progressed. From The Guardian: “AI can write just like me. Brace for the robot apocalypse.” More about this tech here.

 

  • Major (and heavily covered) AI news from the US government last week:
    • Pentagon outlines its first artificial intelligence strategy. Coverage here.
    • White House Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Is Accelerating America’s Leadership in Artificial Intelligence. Official release here. Other coverage here and here. And here’s a legal spin from Ballard Spahr, here from Gibson Dunn and here from Reed Smith.
    • There’s quite a bit more news about AI, blockchain and other and tech in America (national and city news) in this weekly roundup from IP Watchdog. IP and Innovation on Capitol Hill: Week of February 11.

 

  • Harvard Business Review: AI Needs to Become Less Elitist. “The best thing the technology community can do to help is to debunk the notion that only people who know how to code can work with AI.” Post.

 

  • This piece is not legal AI per se, but is something lawyers should read: How to tell patients AI is part of their care. Three important situations are discussed.

 

  • Luxembourg Passes Blockchain Framework Bill Into Law. “The new law aims provide financial market participants with more transparency and legal certainty in regard to the circulation of securities with blockchain technology. The bill is also geared to make the transfer of securities more efficient by reducing the number of intermediaries.” Post.

 

 

  • EDRM At Duke Law School Releases TAR Guidelines. “Demystifying the technology assisted review process and providing some guidance on how it can be applied to document review in discovery.”  “The difference between manual human review and TAR — and ultimately, the benefit to the legal profession and clients — is that machine learning programs are capable of making relevancy judgments much more quickly and consistently than humans.” Post.

 

  • I guess this is good news: Vatican, Microsoft team up on artificial intelligence ethics. More coverage here.

 

  • More law firms should target AI and blockchain with industry group initiatives. One reason is: Venture Capital Funding For Artificial Intelligence Startups Hit Record High In 2018. Post.

 

  • This five-minute read is worth your time: Gartner Debunks Five Artificial Intelligence Misconceptions.

 

  • From the UK: A.I. Judges: The Future of Justice Hangs in the Balance. “Automation is creeping into the courtroom, and it’s going to change the way we think about the law.” Post.

 

  • And here’s a similar development in Singapore: How will the judge decide? Law firms look to big data. Post.

 

  • This is an old (2017) academic piece from Germany, but may be of interest to some: International Law and Artificial Intelligence.

 

  • This survey only had 72 respondents, but the results may be directionally interesting if statistically imprecise: 2019 Survey of Law Library Use of Artificial Intelligence – 40% of Law Firms Sampled were Using AI Tools to Predict Money Awards of Damages.

 

  • Here’s a very useful overview of: 8 Thought-Provoking Cases Of NLP And Text Mining Use In Business.

 

  • Herbert Smith Freehills has launched a new initiative that will allow its global staff to spend up to 10 days per-year working on “innovation projects.” Post.

 

  • Legal Analytics Market Expected to Reach $1,858.9 Million by 2022. “The legal analytics market is projected to grow from an estimated USD 451.1 Million in 2017 to USD 1,858.9 Million by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 32.7% during the forecast period.” MUCH more in this 111-page report. (It cracks me up when forecasts like this show projections to five or six significant figures. “$1.9 billion” would have been plenty precise.)

 

  • From Australia’s Legal Practice Intelligence: Now we know how one of the Big4 will take over the legal services market. “KPMG has shown its hand on how it aims to become the dominant global player in legal services. Will it be through Artificial Intelligence, through Uberisation, through weaponising its battalions of accountants?” Post here.

 

  • From MyShingle.com: AI Lawyers Help Build Business for Human Lawyers. “AI and other technologies can actually help create jobs for lawyers by helping to aggregate tiny law problems in one place so that the ensuing economies of scale justify the cost of a lawyer.” Post here.

 

  • iManage and BLM Law Team Up on AI Claims Analytics Project. Post.

 

  • This year’s onslaught of hackathons is upon us. Here are two:
    • This, from Artificial Lawyer: Clause + Integra To Run Blockchain Billing Challenge at GLH 2019;
    • ALA + iManage Host Chicago Node. More about the Chicago event here.

 

From Law Firms:

 

  • Holland & Knight: David P. Sofge: Caught In The Middle With AI. “Some tech companies have been caught in the middle of this ideological fault line, called upon to address internal disagreements between marketing people intent on landing lucrative government contracts and, on the other side, key scientists and research personnel who are asking for clarification on the terms and conditions for use of their AI systems.” Post.

 

 

  • Dentons: Alessandro Engst, Valerio Lemma: Artificial intelligence and big data analytics for the insurance industry: hot topics in the regulation of InsurTech. Post.

 

 

  • Perkins Coie: Gwyn McAlpine, Amy Monaghan: Artificial Intelligence: “I Don’t Care If Your Technology is a Ham Sandwich.” 42-minute podcast from ILTA Radio. “In this episode, our guest is Joe Davis….” “We talk about trends and impact of AI in the legal industry, strategy, data science and model training and FOMO. And yes, ham sandwiches.”

 

 

From Artificial Lawyer:

  • READ THIS –> Too Much Money To Care About Efficiency? A New York Conversation. “What use is legal tech if some of the very people it is designed to help don’t feel the need to use it, or ask for it to be used…?”
    • Which brings me to this related article from The Law Society Gazette: ‘The majority of law firms remain partnerships and money that would be spent on lawtech usually comes direct from the partner profit pool, something that can create a high bar to adoption,’ the report Lawtech Adoption Research, by technology sector analyst TechMarketView, notes. More coverage here and here.
    • In this piece, Gabriel Teninbaum, professor at Suffolk University Law School, explains why this is so wrong-headed. Law firms either keep up with tech or get left behind.

 

  • IP + Data Time Stamp Co. iDefendo Launches Public API To Increase Uptake. Post. “Intellectual property and data verification company, iDefendo, has made public an API that it hopes will allow anyone to make use of its technology.”

 

  • “Global legal services business, Herbert Smith Freehills, has successfully completed the first stage of their development partnership with English law litigation prediction system, Solomonic, and have agreed a deal to roll out its analytics platform across their UK disputes team.” Post.

 

  • Back to The Foundations of Deal Tech With Merrill Corporation. Post.

 

 

  • What The Nordics Think About AI, Automation + Legal Tech in 2019. Post.

 

  • “You may have heard that global legal services business, Linklaters, has its very own legal AI platform, Nakhoda. But what is it doing? The answer is: they are trying to reinvent contracting. Why? Because they believe AI, as we have it today, doesn’t work as the legal sector wants it to.” Post.

 

  • Monax Smart Contract Co. Opens Up Public Beta. Post.

 

  • “A survey of 30 professionals from predominantly Fortune 1,000 companies by legal AI company Seal Software found that about a third of them are using legal AI technology and several of them are now using it for a growing number of use cases.” Post. (Note: These are the responses of 30 people and should not be considered necessarily representative of any larger group.)

 

  • AI Pre-Screening Technology: A New Era for Contracts? – ThoughtRiver. Post.

 

  • Gridlogics Announces Launch of ReleSense™ – An AI-driven NLP Engine Built for Patent and Scientific Literature. Release.

 

  • Empowering the Team With A Contract ‘Front Door’ – ContractPodAi. Post.

 

  • “Just when you thought legal blockchain tech developments may have peaked, a new company arrives with an interesting use case: Letters of Credit, primarily for international trade, using smart contracts. The new company is LC LITE.” Post.

 

Vendor-related or Generated:

  • From Bob Ambrogi and LawSites: “Making its official launch today is Infinnium, a software company that aims to redefine how law firms, corporations and other organizations interact with data in order to improve information management, information governance, regulatory and privacy compliance, and e-discovery.” Post. More coverage here.

 

  • Atrium, Justin Kan’s legal tech startup, launches a fintech and blockchain division. Post.

 

  • Sysero: 3 Steps to Automating the Legal Contract Lifecycle. Post.

 

  • This, from ContractWorks: Small Legal Teams Can Benefit from Contract Management Software.

 

 

  • Slaughters-backed AI platform Luminance wins Big Four client: Post. (Spoiler alert: it’s EY.)

 

  • Intapp Expands Its Professional Services and Legal Customer Base. Release.

 

Other Blockchain:

  • This is an old (2016) academic piece, but may be of interest to some: The Commercial Law of Bitcoin and Blockchain Transactions.

 

  • ICO No-No: On 2nd Look, Judge Grants SEC Injunction in Blockvest Case. “U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel granted a renewed injunction bid finding that Blockvest’s promotional materials constituted an offer of unregistered securities containing materially false statements.” Attorneys from several Big Law firms are quoted in the story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Lawyers Are Drowning in Data. What Can They Do About It? “The ‘Why Lawyers Are Adopting AI Faster Than You’ panel at this year’s Legalweek will examine at how firms can use AI to find the needle in some pretty big data haystacks.” Link.

 

 

 

  • Briefing: China looks to build ‘smart courts’ with AI. “A Shanghai court has adopted an artificial intelligence-enabled assistant to help improve courtroom efficiency and accuracy.” Post.

 

  • This software thinks like a lawyer—so you don’t have to pay one. “A Chicago law firm (Actuate Law) is rolling out a subsidiary that offers clients software designed to mimic their lawyer’s thinking—at a fraction of the price.” “….(I)ntelligent software that walks them through whether they have a legal obligation to report a data breach.” “Although Quointec has no outside funding so far, the partners created the new venture to allow for such investment in the future without violating professional regulations.” Post.

 

  • LawNext Episode 26: Mark Cohen’s Strategies for the Global Legal Marketplace. “On this (hour-long) episode of LawNext, Cohen joins host Bob Ambrogi to talk about a range of topics. They discuss Clearspire and the lessons Cohen learned from that. They also talk about what Cohen sees as the “skills gap” in law and why it is that law schools and law firms are failing to address it. In the fact of a rapidly changing global legal economy, Cohen offers insights on how law firms should adapt.” Post.

 

  • From The Law Society Gazette: Accountants winning in ‘rapidly expanding’ alternative legal services market. “So-called alternative legal service providers – including the Big Four accountants – are growing more quickly than previously predicted and moving up the value chain, research on both sides of the Atlantic reveals today. The new entrants, offering such services as litigation support, legal research and document review with the help of new technology now make up a $10bn (£7.6bn) a year market, the Thomson Reuters study found.”

 

  • Also from The Law Society Gazette: How legaltech can help you compete against larger firms. “Continuing the discussion on the evolution of the legaltech sector and how it could revolutionise the legal industry, Law Society partner and equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs explains how the rise of legaltech is closing the gap between large and small legal firms.” Post.

 

  • I thought the 2019 forecasts were behind us, but here’s an interesting report from CBInsights: Artificial Intelligence Trends. Lots of infographics.

 

  • This lawyer got a gig in Silicon Valley by promising to automate a lot of legal grunt work — now he’s got his own company. “Wouldn’t it be great if you could have associates who could code and automate their own jobs and would make the firm more efficient?” Post.

 

From Artificial Lawyer:

  • New York Bulletin: Data is Not the New Oil + LSBs Are Splitsville. Story here.

 

  • Pew: How Stanford + Suffolk Law Schools Are Improving NLP for A2J. Story here.

 

  • TR: ALSP Market Now $10 Billion-Plus, Law Firms Major Customers. Story here.

 

  • New York Bulletin – AI Workshop + Do We Need an FDA for Algorithms? Story here.

 

  • Australia Launches ALTACon Legal Tech Conference. Story here.

 

  • Legal AI – Its Definition and Its Value to the Legal World. Story here.

 

  • Global Insurer Allianz Launches Injury Claim Automation Tool. Story here.

 

  • ALM – Legal Market Will Split In Two + ALSPs Will Grow – NY Bulletin Extra. Story here.

 

Posts by Law Firms:

  • Alston & Bird: … Teams Up with Georgia State University on Data Analytics. “Alston & Bird and Georgia State University have announced a joint effort to develop broad-based competency among the firm’s attorneys in leveraging data science and analytics to help drive new levels of client service and satisfaction.” Post.

 

  • Andrea Perronace: Techniques for Patenting Blockchain in Europe, the United States, China and Japan. Post.

 

  • Baker Donelson: 90-minute CLE video post: Analyzing the Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Legal. (5 ‘Micro-Presentations’.) Post. (Poor audio.)

 

 

 

 

 

  • Baker McKenzie: The Year Ahead – Innovation: A new generation of legal analysis tools is emerging. Post.

 

 

  • Dentons: Chloe A. Snider: Smart Contract Series – Legal Implications For Consideration, Part 1: Definition And Enforceability. Post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Press Releases, Posts and Articles by Vendors:

 

  • Clio releases new client management platform to ‘help lawyers ensure the future success of their business’. Post.

 

  • Allianz to use Artificial Intelligence to deliver a true end-to-end automated solution for Stage 3 injury claims. Post. — and — “Allianz Insurance has launched a new digital platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to enable its injury claims handlers to process Ministry of Justice Stage 3 claims at a single click of a button.” Story here.

 

  • Thomson Reuters: Introducing Litigation Analytics. “Unlock data-driven insights on judges, courts, attorneys, law firms, and case types to better develop case strategy and manage client expectations.” Post.

 

  • Relativity Brings Reduced Data Fees, Unlimited Analytics, and a More Flexible Licensing Model to RelativityOne Customers. Post.

 

  • Emerging from Harvard Law/MIT, Evisort AI Tech Company Posted Tremendous Growth in 2018, Announces Upcoming New Product Launch. Post.

 

  • Zero Now Helps Lawyers Bill More Time in Bellefield, Intapp, Carpe Diem and Other Time Entry Tools. Post. — and — Ryan Steadman of Zero: Business as Usual: 5 Law Firm Activities AI will Seamlessly Transform. Post.
  • Legalweek (formerly Legaltech) is just a few days away, so here’s: A Beginner’s Guide To The Biggest Week In Legal Technology.

 

  • “Data & Analytics: Transforming Law Firms” has just been published by ALM Intelligence and LexisNexis. Here’s an executive summary and link to the report.

 

  • Here’s a fresh essay about law firm innovation from  of Thomson Reuters Legal Managed Services: Greasing The Gears Of Legal Commerce — Automatic, Systematic, Hydromatic (alt.legal) Innovation. “CLOs indicated that nearly 25 percent of outside counsel fees are “price-insensitive.”

 

  • The Big 4 continue their relentless march into legal. I skip most of these posts, but this one specifically mentions AI: KPMG expands Asia Pacific legal services. “It will also offer technology enabled legal services, using robotics, artificial intelligence and other technologies developed globally and in China through the KPMG digital ignition centre.”

 

  • This is an interesting post by Charles P. Edwards of Barnes & Thornburg: The Noisy Business of the Law and Insurance Claims. “…(T)he idea we humans are needed for most decisions is an ‘illusion.'”

 

  • Here’s a good example of a law firm (Amsterdam’s De Brauw) using tech as a differentiating marketing strategy. Hop on board and experience the value of legal tech and project management.

 

  • Bob Ambrogi posted this 47-minute podcast: LawNext Episode 25: Using AI to Enhance Virtual Receptionists, with Smith.ai.

 

  • From Arup Das of Alphaserve Technologies, here’s an interesting discussion of the age-old build vs. buy conundrum: How to Approach Legal Innovation: Options for Every Firm.

 

  • This is a thought-provoking post: Can Deepfakes Pose a Cybersecurity Threat to Legal? ““Deepfakes are real and emerging as an issue but they, like certain types of technology, could emerge very quickly; we talk about this today and it could be a very big deal in six months or it could be nothing,” Reed Smith’s Stegmaier cautioned. “We simply don’t know.””

 

  • This hour-long podcast is from the Lawyerist: “In this episode with Natalie Worsfold, we talk about her law firm’s approach to law practice, and why more firms aren’t following suit. We start by asking Natalie what problem Counter Tax was trying to solve, then explore how they solved it, what their solution does now, and the plans they have to evolve and grow their solution.”

 

  • This is an idea I have been kicking around for a while. Nick Hilborne gives it the thought I believe it’s due: “Reproduction of the legal profession” at risk from automation. “If junior associates are ‘gradually culled’ from law firms as a result of automation, the entire reproduction of the legal profession could be jeopardised….'” And here’s a US write up of the same issue: Junior Lawyers Are Going Extinct And Nobody Knows What To Do About It.

 

  • AI Goes to Court: A Conversation With Lex Machina and Dorsey & Whitney. Post here.

 

From Artificial Lawyer:

  • The Benefits of the LexisNexis LegalTech Accelerator. Post here.
  • EY and Artificial Lawyer Hold Legal Ops + Technology Event.  Post here.
  • Slaughter and May Names 3rd Fast Forward Cohort, Inc. Blockchain Co. Post here.
  • Meet ATJ Bot – The World’s First Legal Aid Voice Assistant. Post here.
  • How to Build Your Business Case For Contract Management – The Juro Guide. Post here.
  • Oz + NZ Professional Services Startup of the Year Award Launched. Post here.
  • Legal AI Co. CourtQuant Predicts Hard Brexit Impact on British Law. Post here.
  • Christian Lang + Former TR Boss, Tom Glocer, Join Reynen Court. Post here.
  • GCs Keen To Embrace Tech Tools + Legal Ops Skills – Survey. Post here. (Note: This story is based on a survey where n=80. Assuming no other methodological problems [big assumption!], this means that in all of the findings each number is well within the margin of sampling error of the statistics above and below it on the graphs.)
  • Meet Fincap Law: A New Tech-Driven Firm For the New Legal Era. Post here.

 

Posts by Law Firms:

 

 

 

 

 

  • Eric A. Klein and Aytan Dahukey of Sheppard Mullin posted: Day 2 Notes From The 2019 JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. “We are seeing a lot of healthcare entities starting to focus on precision medicine – artificial intelligence suggesting which oncology drug works best for your specific genetic condition and cancer – but that essentially is a transactional function. And the market really wants a partnering function ” Post here.

 

 

 

  • From Reed Smith: Draft ethics guidelines for trustworthy artificial intelligence published by the European Commission. Post here.

 

 

  • Akin Gump posted: Policymakers Focused on Artificial Intelligence, Write Akin Gump Lawyers in The Journal of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & Law.

 

  • Hogan Lovells posted: Litigating intellectual property issues: The impact of AI and machine learning.

 

Press Releases and sponsored posts:

  • Here’s a thorough explanation of Gavelytics: Want Better Litigation Outcomes? Know Your Judges. “…(W)ith Gavelytics, you finally get the quantifiable and reliable judge information you need to customize your litigation strategy and increase your chances of winning.”

 

 

  • Gibson Dunn launches AI and automated systems group. Post here.

 

  • The world’s first virtual lawyer, built for Amazon’s Alexa, tests whether lawyers will be replaced by robots. “Australian legal-technology company Smarter Drafter have announced a prototype virtual lawyer, built on Amazon’s Alexa, that creates legal.” documents instantly, just like a real human lawyer. Here’s the Smart Drafter release. Hype much?? And then there’s this: “No date has been set for the release of the first working Alexa integration.”

 

  • HaystackID Acquires eDiscovery Managed Services Provider eTERA, Release here.

 

  • Legal IT Newswire New Product News… Alphaserve Technologies launch Execution as a Service. Post here.

 

  • I’m including this because I used to work there! Am Law 200 Firm Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie Selects Litera Desktop, Litera Microsystems Full Document Drafting Suite.

 

Blockchain

 

 

 

 

  • From the Baker & Hostetler Energy Blog: New Blockchain Products, an FBI Raid, the $11 Billion Bitcoin Case, Hackers Strike With a 51 Percent Attack and Crypto Tax Analysis. Post here.

 

  • Mark A. Cohen posted this at Forbes: What Does It Say When A Legal Blockchain eBook Has 1.7M Views?

 

  • Here’s a deep dive into the legal services offered by Oath Protocol: The Lay of the Land in Blockchain Dispute Resolution and Governance Designs.
  • In this post, Jordan Furlong discusses the future of law librarians as impacted by technologies such as AI and as roles evolve into more focus on Competitive Intelligence (here, called Market Intelligence). This article by Jordan is referenced.

 

  • Press release: Gridlogics Launches PatSeer 360™ – IP Strategy Takes a Quantum Leap with Introduction of This Disruptive New IP Intelligence Platform. “PatSeer 360™ correlates patent data with business and legal data points to give you insights for refining your IP protection, management and commercialization strategies. The solution combines Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and immersive visualizations in a versatile and easy to use platform that requires minimum learning curve.”

 

  • From Canadian Underwriter: Managing your client’s M&A risk with A.I. “Lawyers are using machine learning – a type of artificial intelligence in which computer software does something without being explicitly programmed to do so – to identify potential liabilities in contracts. AI lets computer programs learn from experience and identify patterns, Strategy Meets Action notes.”

 

  • From Canadian Lawyer: Critical topics facing the legal community. “The topic of technology continues to dominate the minds of leadership in the legal community. Whether it’s artificial intelligence, whether it’s how you manage the overall data research client information, I think technology is overwhelming for a lot of firms.”

 

  • Richard Burnham, solicitor and co-founder of Eallium CMS, posted: The ethics of lawtech. “For now, lawtech is simply a wide-ranging label that describes technology created with a view to reducing law firm overheads and/or increasing the availability of access to justice. You typically see it deployed within case management systems, document analysis algorithms, case outcome predictors, and chat bots designed to provide interim legal advice to consumers. The ethical conundrums of lawtech are many, sprouting mostly from its complexity.”

 

  • In this podcast, Bob Ambrogi interviews Rick Merrill of Gavelytics to discuss “the product one year after its launch, how lawyers use analytics for strategic and competitive purposes, and how analytics and AI are being used more broadly in law.” LawNext Episode 12: Judging Judges – How Gavelytics’ Judicial Analytics are Reshaping Litigation.

 

  • In Japan, artificial intelligence enters the legal field. “Artificial intelligence has moved into the world of corporate legal matters: A Tokyo-based start-up founded by young lawyers is using AI to check for omissions and mistakes in contracts, sometimes taking only one second.” “LegalForce Inc. was established in April last year, and is led by 31-year-old lawyer Nozomu Tsunoda, who quit a leading law firm to go into business for himself. Even with only seven employees, LegalForce checks contract documents such as a confidentiality agreement between companies.” Coverage here.

 

  • Here’s an interesting article discussing the legal rights of self-aware entities. Apes, dolphins, AI??

 

  • Two posts from Kemp IT Law in as many days! Here‘s a video titled What does the future hold for AI and product liability? “Liability will see extensive AI-influenced legal developments, especially in the areas of autonomous vehicles, robots and other ‘mobile’ autonomous systems.”

 

  • From Osborne Clarke, Have your say | How should competition law apply to the digital economy? “…(O)ther questions look at challenges which are specific to digital markets or new technology, such as: the impact on competition of ownership of big data by a small number of big firms; the impact on competition and cartel enforcement of artificial intelligence and machine learning; and how to deal with mergers and takeovers in digital markets.”

 

  • “Burford Capital Ltd. raised $250 million this week by selling new shares on the London Stock Exchange, the publicly traded litigation finance company announced Tuesday.” “The London-based litigation financier, which had a market cap of $5.4 billion as of Monday, said a debt issue and a private fund raise would follow “shortly.”” Coverage here.

 

  • From Artificial Lawyer:

– UK Takes Another Step Toward Blockchain Property Register with R3. Story here.

– The Launch of the Manchester LegalTech Consortium – (…which Is Now to Be Called the ‘Manchester Law & Technology Initiative’.). Story here.

– Legal AI Platformisation Continues with Diligen/QRX Data Partnership. Story here.

– Legal AI Co. Luminance Goes After The eDiscovery Market. Story here.

– Declare Your Legal Bot! New California Law Demands Bot Transparency. Story here.

 

Blockchain

  • Bullish on Blockchain, Young Phila. Lawyer Launches Boutique. Bull Blockchain Law. “His client base includes various technology industry players with some connection to blockchain technology, he said. They’re using the technology for matters in real estate, data storage, supply chain management, and even gaming. Smart contracts are the most popular business application of blockchain technology, he said. Bull said he’s already in talks with other attorneys about joining the firm, with the goal of ultimately organizing the firm into various departments for different industries.” Industry focus; smart!! Details here.

 

  • This post (Bill Clinton: ‘Permutations and Possibilities of Blockchain are Staggeringly Great’) summarizes an interview with Clinton following his keynote address at Ripple’s annual Swell conference in San Francisco on October 1. “While Clinton acknowledged the potential of disruptive technologies like blockchain, the former president urged that economic and social policy ‘work better as positive sum games.'”

 

  • From Dentons: Practical application of distributed ledger technology: Maintaining corporate records on the blockchain. “…(B)usinesses may want to explore implementing DLT (Distributed ledger technology)-based platforms; we believe they can increase efficiency, accuracy, transparency and security in record management and finance while minimizing cost, providing significant competitive advantages to companies that adopt this technology.”

 

  • From Shearman & Sterling: “Shearman & Sterling today launched “the FinTech Foundry,” a program dedicated to supporting the FinTech-related activities of their clients and the wider global FinTech ecosystem that consists of financial institutions, FinTech start-ups, accelerators and incubators, venture capital and private equity investors, and policymakers. Blockchain, crypto assets, big data and artificial intelligence are just a few of the FinTech activities Shearman & Sterling advises on.”

 

  • White and Case published this in-depth report: Digitalising the mining & metals global supply chain: Rise of blockchain and the smart contract.

 

  • From Dentons, this very large post: Big data in the energy sector: GDPR reminder for energy companies.

 

  • From Legal Insider: “Herbert Smith Freehills has launched a pilot to test how data extracted from judgments and smart analytics might help prepare clients facing litigation.The firm has partnered with Solomonic, a data and analytics platform, to provide its lawyers with hard data and analytics on all the sitting judges in the Commercial Court – as well as the most recent eight retirees – going back more than five years.

 

  • Gide announces the creation of Gide 255, a new team dedicated to digital transformation, headed by Franck Guiader. “Gide 255 covers in particular the growing stakes of blockchain, ICOs, artificial intelligence, automation and various aspects of data processing.”

 

  • This is an interview with Kate Hutchinson, Director of Marketing at CDS during which she explains why eDiscovery vendors are getting into smart contracts. (It’s all about the data.)

 

  • In this post, Nichole Black of MyCase reviews a recent book by Michele DeStefano, (Professor of Law at the University of Miami): Legal Upheaval: A Guide to Creativity, Collaboration, and Innovation in the Law.“(The author) explains why the legal industry is in the middle of an unavoidable transformation, and why lawyers are so resistant to accepting this indisputable fact. Then she suggests that lawyers must learn to innovate in order to succeed in the new world order, and provides a framework for legal institutions to use in order to create a culture of creativity, collaboration, and innovation.” The review is an interesting read in itself.

 

  • In this Legal Talk Network podcast, “Abby Rosenbloom talks to Peter Geovanes, Dera Nevin, and Andrew Sprogis about their innovative roles and how to set a precedent when you’re the first one in their position. For law firms looking to add new roles, they offer their advice from establishing strategic goals to firm leadership providing resources and support.”

 

  • From Legal IT Newswire: “ZentLaw, an alternative law firm founded by Monica Zent, has introduced ZentLaw Labs, an innovation lab which aims to bring tech acumen and startup thinking to law. Among the lab’s first projects being announced today are two artificial intelligence (AI)-powered bots. One bot is built for enterprise clients to help them solve their legal resourcing needs by taking them through a series of questions to assess their specific requirements. The other bot is aimed at startups and is calibrated to serve their routine requests. The latter aims to disrupt the way legal services are delivered to startups by providing practical and actionable guidance through the bot to common issues that startups raise.”

 

  • From Bob Ambrogi: “The international legal research platform vLex today introduced the beta version of Vincent, an AI-powered legal research assistant that analyzes legal documents you upload and finds relevant research results. Vincent is in the same vein as CARA from Casetext, Clerk from Judicata, and EVA from ROSS Intelligence in that you upload a brief, legal document or court opinion, and it finds and it analyzes the document and uses the document’s language and citations to find related cases, statutes, books, journal articles, contract models, and more.” Details here.

 

  • From Artificial Lawyer

– “Global law firm Clyde & Co has today announced that it will be providing legal services to new global banking and energy blockchain platform, Komgo SA.” Details here.

– “LexisNexis has announced the six new participants for its third Silicon Valley Legal Tech Accelerator programme.” They’re listed here.

  • This article talks a bit about AI possibly threatening the jobs of in-house patent folks. According to the author, RoboReview by TurboPatent Corp. may provide some help now in comparing claims to past applications to predict eligibility but it won’t be a real threat for a while — if ever.

 

  • It looks like iManage will be all over ILTACON17 next week with their email and document management tools.

 

  • AI in the judiciary? This article presents an interesting discussion of the concept–pros and cons of AI in various roles. (You can skip the first four of five paragraphs that introduce AI.)

 

  • Here’s a story about a law school student in Singapore who put his studies on hold to explore AI. (Singapore sure “punches above its weight” when it comes to AI activity.)