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The Business of Law and Roland Vogl1
Technology
Executive Director, Stanford
Program in Law, Science &
Technology/CodeX
More than ever before, lawyers in the U.S. and other parts of the world pay attention to
legal innovation. Many firms have hired chief innovation officers and/or put a partner in charge of
tracking innovation pertaining to the firm’s particular area of business. They are also hiring more
and more legal project managers who are tasked with making sure that a firm’s expertise is
packaged and made available to the clients in the most cost- and time-efficient way possible. At
the same time, corporate legal departments are
hiring legal operations professionals who
specialize in the many ways that technology can
make legal processes more efficient. In recent
years, we have also witnessed an explosion of
legal tech startups that provide a broad range of
services to law firm or in-house customers.
Generally speaking, we see innovation in legal
research technologies, in big data analytics, in
legal expert systems, in legal infrastructure
(such as practice management and lawyer-client
match-making marketplaces), and in online
dispute resolution. At times, law firms and corporate legal department find themselves
overwhelmed with the sheer number of new offerings in the legal tech space, sometimes resulting
in a reluctance to try out new solutions.
CodeX — the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics — is focused on researching and
developing technologies in the realm of computational law. Computational law is the branch of
legal informatics concerned with the automation and mechanization of legal analysis. To that end,
it leverages rule-based as well as statistical AI-based techniques (e.g., machine learning and
Natural Language Processing). The former rule-based techniques are used to create new
“TurboTax”-like solutions for specific areas of the law or for computable self-executing contracts.
The latter statistical AI techniques are used to conduct analytics in legal settings, including so-
called “predictive analytics.” In essence, predictive analytics is the use of data, statistical
algorithms, and machine learning techniques to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based
on historical data. The CodeX LegalTech Index, an open source database that at this point counts
more than 730 legal tech companies, currently includes more than 38 companies in the analytics
space. Those companies are innovating in search, eDiscovery, judicial/litigation analytics, contract
analysis, IP analytics, legislative prediction, predictive policing, and lawsuit financing. The use of
1 Roland Vogl is the executive director and lecturer in law for the Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology, and the co-founder and
executive director of CodeX – The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics.
84
Technology
Executive Director, Stanford
Program in Law, Science &
Technology/CodeX
More than ever before, lawyers in the U.S. and other parts of the world pay attention to
legal innovation. Many firms have hired chief innovation officers and/or put a partner in charge of
tracking innovation pertaining to the firm’s particular area of business. They are also hiring more
and more legal project managers who are tasked with making sure that a firm’s expertise is
packaged and made available to the clients in the most cost- and time-efficient way possible. At
the same time, corporate legal departments are
hiring legal operations professionals who
specialize in the many ways that technology can
make legal processes more efficient. In recent
years, we have also witnessed an explosion of
legal tech startups that provide a broad range of
services to law firm or in-house customers.
Generally speaking, we see innovation in legal
research technologies, in big data analytics, in
legal expert systems, in legal infrastructure
(such as practice management and lawyer-client
match-making marketplaces), and in online
dispute resolution. At times, law firms and corporate legal department find themselves
overwhelmed with the sheer number of new offerings in the legal tech space, sometimes resulting
in a reluctance to try out new solutions.
CodeX — the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics — is focused on researching and
developing technologies in the realm of computational law. Computational law is the branch of
legal informatics concerned with the automation and mechanization of legal analysis. To that end,
it leverages rule-based as well as statistical AI-based techniques (e.g., machine learning and
Natural Language Processing). The former rule-based techniques are used to create new
“TurboTax”-like solutions for specific areas of the law or for computable self-executing contracts.
The latter statistical AI techniques are used to conduct analytics in legal settings, including so-
called “predictive analytics.” In essence, predictive analytics is the use of data, statistical
algorithms, and machine learning techniques to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based
on historical data. The CodeX LegalTech Index, an open source database that at this point counts
more than 730 legal tech companies, currently includes more than 38 companies in the analytics
space. Those companies are innovating in search, eDiscovery, judicial/litigation analytics, contract
analysis, IP analytics, legislative prediction, predictive policing, and lawsuit financing. The use of
1 Roland Vogl is the executive director and lecturer in law for the Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology, and the co-founder and
executive director of CodeX – The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics.
84
