ABA Techshow 2018 Surfaces Age-Old Conundrums

In addition to its new venue (the Chicago Hyatt Regency), this year’s ABA Techshow brought up a number of hot new topics — like applications of artificial intelligence and blockchain — over the course of its three days and 70 sessions.

But it also brought up certain long-standing problems in legal practice. A couple that I saw come up repeatedly during the conference were adoption of legal technology and gender diversity.

A trend I observed in a number of the sessions I attended was the tension between “home-grown” technologies — those developed in-house to answer a specific problem a firm is having — and technologies with broader applications market-wide. In one session, someone brought up the fact that his particular area of practice has problems that others don’t, leading him to wonder whether it was worth the time and resources to try to come up with his own solution, or if it would be better to use a solution available in the market even though it may not be a perfect fit.

This is a technology adoption dilemma that has been around for decades: whether to build a customized platform or adopt technology that has already been built, even though it may not be exactly what you or your firm needs. This is an especially difficult problem for solo and small law firms, which are struggling in more ways than just competing effectively; they are also struggling operationally. They are cautious about making technology decisions — and don’t have time to make mistakes.

So here’s another idea: instead of settling, or spending money on something that doesn’t perfectly meet your needs, partner with a legal technology company that takes into consideration users’ (and potential users’) precise objectives. This might just be the perfect solution for small and solo practitioners looking to compete with Big Law. One of the benefits of being a legal tech startup is being able to improve our services at breakneck speed, updating the platform daily, often based on user feedback.

Another key takeaway from ABA Techshow — which is reflective of the broader legal tech industry — was the lack of female and minority representation in legal tech. One of my (female) Casetext colleagues asked a fairly straightforward, non-controversial question about diversity in a panel and literally got a round of applause. This is clearly a pain point for the industry, and hopefully one that we are all willing to work on. As my colleague Anne noted, we still have a long way to go:

Casetext is somewhat unique in the sense that, contrary to most companies in the space, our staff makeup is quite diverse (half of our team are women, one third of our engineers are women, and there are a number of women in leadership roles across the company). As I’ve written about previously, I believe that as a legal tech company, it is our responsibility as innovators in the legal community to take a lead role in advancing diversity and inclusion.