Page 94 - Legal Leaders 2018 Master Copy - 9
P. 94
Chapter 4 – The Business of
Law and Technology
Roland Vogl1
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,
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.
80
Law and Technology
Roland Vogl1
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,
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.
80
