Legal Tech Innovations Other Than AI 

Episode Notes

Transcript

Dennis Kennedy:

I think we start with what are the problems that we need to solve? And the more precise we get about that question in our answer to it, the better off we are and the happier we are with the technology.

Speaker 2:

Equal access to justice is a core American value. In each episode of Talk Justice, an An LSC Podcast, we’ll explore ways to expand access to justice and illustrate why it is important to the legal community, business government, and the general public. Talk Justice is sponsored by the Leaders Council of the Legal Services Corporation.

Cat Moon:

Hello and welcome to Talk Justice. This is Cat Moon, your host for this episode. And today we are going to be a little contrarian. We are going to be talking about the intersection of innovation, technology and creating access to legal services and legal help. But we’re not going to be talking about artificial intelligence. Nope, this is the not AI technology episode. And joining me for what I think is a very important conversation, our two folks who listeners are probably familiar with Jane Ribadeneyra from Legal Services Corporation. She is the Mastermind behind Innovations in Technology Conference coming up ITC, which is happening in early February in Charlotte. This year. Jane is joining us as well as Dennis Kennedy, and Dennis is a very well-known legal technology expert. He is a podcaster with the Kennedy Mighell Report and a law professor, and he just knows his stuff. So here we go. Dennis and Jane are going to join me in this contrarian conversation about not AI technology. Hello, Jane and Dennis, welcome to Talk Justice. Thanks so much for joining me today, and I want to jump right into this contrarian conversation we’re going to have. Are you guys ready?

Dennis Kennedy:

I love being a contrarian. I’m

Cat Moon:

Ready. Excellent, excellent. Alright, so ai, artificial intelligence specifically gen AI, is taking up most of the oxygen in the room these days and there are a lot of things we can do and are doing to better serve clients and scale access to justice and access to legal help that are not AI centric. So I’m curious from your perspectives, what are some things we should be paying attention to and in this intersection that are not AI and Dennis? I would love to start with you.

Dennis Kennedy:

This may be a surprise and if it’s a contrarian theme, but I think it’s the approach that we have to look at. And so my approach to technology this year, which I advise to other people is called small and simple. And when you think of ai, you think of other things. You say, what technology do I have to do? And I’m like, well, that’s kind of led us to where we are and why everybody is so confused. I think we start with what are the problems that we need to solve? And as Clayton Christensen said, phrased it in a way, I love what is the job to be done? And once we understand that, what are we hiring a specific technology to do for us and does it solve that job? And the more precise we get about that question in our answer to it, the better off we are and the happier we are with the technology.

Now having said that, I’ve been saying since, oh, let’s say March of 2020, that the main thing we want to do with technology is to make it easy for clients and others to work with you and you can adopt that approach. That’s what I think of. And so when I think about lawyers, I say, well, how do I make it just super easy for people to work with me? And so during the past four years, we’ve learned things that people don’t want to come to offices might not be possible to do that. So how do we make it easy to work with you? Big one for me is for lawyers is how do we make it easy for people to pay us and happily pay us? And if I can illustrate one story, Katt is, a couple of years ago I worked with a large law firm on a personal matter and they sent me a bill by mail.

They sent it by email to be fair to them, and I went to pay it online, which I was happy to do the same day I got it. And there was no way for me to pay online with a credit card. So I had to figure out where do I find a checkbook? Where do I find a stamp, where to find an envelope? And I thought about that, never got around to it. And so then I got the reminder thing and then I waited another week and I finally put it together and sent them a check. Now, I don’t think that’s a great way to do it. I worked at MasterCard as you know, and I just think you need to make it really easy for people to pay you. And so if you start to think along those lines and say, here’s the problem that I have. I have people don’t pay me fast enough, or they don’t pay me at all, how do I make it easy for them? Then you move to the technology and I think there are a lot of options.

Cat Moon:

Well, I’m in to making it easy and I teach a course in human-centered design as applied to legal services delivery. So I agree with you wholeheartedly that you always start with the problem first, go looking at the technology and work back from the problem. With that said, I do think that there are technologies that suggest solutions, and I will also comment, I don’t have a checkbook, so I don’t even know how I would get that accomplished. So I would be a terrible client if I couldn’t pay you online. Thank you, Dennis. Jane, I would love to shift to you and your perspective because you have a great opportunity to see what’s happening specifically in the legal aid world, to see what folks are doing to make legal services delivery better with technology, non-AI technology. Since that’s the topic of our conversation, what do you see happening out in the field, boots on the ground these days?

Jane Ribadeneyra :

Sure. Yeah. So at LSC we fund technology initiative grants and for about the last five years or so, we’ve been funding what we call technology improvement projects. And they’re small grants, but they’re to do things like a technology assessment, a business process improvement, and even assessing the skills of the lawyers within the legal aid office and their technology skills. So a lot of it kind of ties into what Dennis was saying too, is that what technologies do we have available? How can we best use those technologies, make it easy for our own staff to use the technology as well as the legal aid clients that are coming for assistance. And the same thing, business process improvement. So you might have a lot of technology, but you’re using it in a scattered way or there’s a lot of process involved that doesn’t make sense. So take a step back, have somebody come in, help you review all of the tools that you’re using, all of the steps that you’re taking, how can you improve your efficiency, your use of that technology, make sure everyone understands it and there’s some consistency and be able to know how to accomplish your delivery in the most efficient and effective way possible.

Cat Moon:

That really hearkens back to the foundational idea of people, process and then technology. And while things don’t necessarily go in this really clean, clear order, you really do need to start first with the people. Look at your process,

Jane Ribadeneyra :

Right? The change management as you’re introducing new things, you’ve got very sophisticated case management systems, even who’s using Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office to its full extent. So ensuring that people know those skills and are using it. Some of the other tools we’re starting to see people then take a look at are other things that can increase their efficiency. So going back to document assembly, that’s a tool that’s been around for over 20 years. Legal aid programs have used it to try and help clients create documents on their own for self-help, but we’re finally seeing some traction in organizations, building tools for their internal staff to use. How can you connect it to your case management system and make it easy for the attorneys to use the document assembly? There’s always been kind of that is it worth the effort to do it as opposed to taking a pleading that you’ve had and saved and then do find and replace, which is I think the more common kind of old school way of creating new pleadings versus a document assembly, which can be automated save time, and we’re starting to see the attorneys asking for these tools and making better use of those as well.

Cat Moon:

Jane, I have to tell you that I’ve been practicing law for more than 25 years now. For at least 15 of those years, I have been urging my fellow attorneys to please not create documents by opening up the last one that they drafted and doing a find and replace. And it truly, I am not exaggerating when I use the words mind boggling. It is mind boggling to me that we are sitting here in 2024 in the age of tools like Chachi BT and discussing the fact that attorneys still need to be brought along to use document assembly. So that point though in document assembly I think is a great example that there is technology that has been available for a number of years, I think document assembly, a good 15 years, and it’s gotten really good.

Dennis Kennedy:

Kat, if I can interrupt, I can talk your story because the first time I implemented document assembly at the law firm I was at was in 1990, which I’m willing to say was 34 years ago. And it worked really well. And one of my favorite points to make when people talk about using TGPT to generate new documents is that the document assembly tools are going to do it way better for you. And I think that’s an example of if we dive down into what the actual job we want to do, then document assembly starts to make sense for certain things and that AI and other things don’t make sense for things. And so I’ve spent more than 30 years trying to convince people, and Catherine Banford recently did a great post about why lawyers won’t go to document assembly, which is totally right, but it’s still a hard sell, but it makes so much sense.

And like I said, if you back down to the fundamental questions of how do I make it easy for clients to work with you, clients expect lawyers to push a button and generate their documents. So they don’t like the fact that we charge them for custom drafting and they compare to patient portals and the doctor’s world. Other things we do, those are the technologies and the user experiences that legal clients would like to see, and they’re fairly straightforward to do so. Those are the areas the technologies I would like to see lawyers focus on in the coming years. And those really have nothing to do at all with ai. They’re just

Cat Moon:

Straight

Dennis Kennedy:

User experience.

Cat Moon:

Exactly. And I think document assembly is also a great example of a technology that applies for client facing and consumer facing delivery as well as internal Jane. Your point, you’ve seen legal aid organizations using document assembly to empower clients to help themselves. And then the epiphany, oh, maybe we can use these tools too for our internal work. And so a lot of flexibility and applicability there, right? So I call it an OG legal technology, right Document assembly. So okay, the innovation in technology conference is coming up, Jane, and that’s really focusing fully on a wide range of technology and innovations that can move the needle in improving service, improving access. So what’s teed up at ITC 2024 that is not ai?

Jane Ribadeneyra :

Well, there’s a lot, actually, there’s only about four to six. We have over 55 sessions, breakout sessions at the conference coming up February 1st through the third and Charlotte, North Carolina. And I think AI will be woven into more of them, but a lot of the focus this year, we’re seeing a lot of sessions on using data, data analytics, how our taking all of this data that the legal aid program collect an enormous amount of data and how do they determine impact and outcomes. So there’s a number of sessions looking at the best ways of using data. There’s a lot of new programs around eviction and housing and data is tied into that as well as technology tools. How are some of the courts reorganizing and being able to help with some of the eviction courts? We’re also, there’s a whole group of sessions on legal design changing the underlying design, which is what we’ve been talking about, how regulatory reform is tying into some of the ability for some of those changes, looking at using non-lawyer advocates, frontline justice workers in helping to do more service delivery, the Utah sandbox, there’ll be a session, some folks from Utah.

And also what we’ve been talking about is just kind of the basic infrastructure and technology for advocates. How do you do knowledge management the best using SharePoint, setting up your system, and then of course cybersecurity, moving to the cloud, making sure organizations are as secure as possible and improving their security. So those are some of the main topics that we’re seeing. And like I said, there’s maybe AI woven into some of them, but a lot of them are just pure technology and best practices,

Cat Moon:

And that is a very impressive number of sessions that you have planned. I’m very much looking forward to that. Although I will be doing a small plug for the Talk Justice conversation. We are going to have, I think on Friday at ITC that will be about ai, sorry, it’s not going to be contrarian, but that full range of technologies and opportunities to dig into the use foundational technologies leads me to ask Dennis if you could share some thoughts on other resources folks could tap into who are interested, who might not be lucky enough to attend ITC this year, but folks who are interested in, let’s call them the foundational legal technologies, right? Can you recommend some places people can go to explore and learn more?

Dennis Kennedy:

Yeah, I mean I think there’s the sort of standard places. So there’s the ABA tech show, legal resource center, Nikki Shavers doing this totally cool thing called Legal tech hub. You can find a lot of things. Unfortunately, legal tech Twitter has kind of been destroyed by Elon, and so we’re waiting to see how that reforms, but I think in a lot of places you’re going to have to rebuild because the traditional places have, I’m not saying they’ve collapsed, but they’ve been under stress over the last four years. And then I think with the past year everybody wanted to jump on the AI bandwagon. It’s gotten to be super confusing. And so again, I think you’re looking for basic frameworks. And then as in all things, we’re trying to think critically learn who we can trust, what makes sense, what doesn’t. And so I look at the frameworks for me are, we do have this notion of the ethical duty of technology competence, which I like to stress to lawyers as we must consider the benefits and risks of relevant technologies.

And lawyers are great at risks, but they’re not so good at benefits. What I would say is you want to, your best resource is your consumers, your users, your clients. And what I find is they are just not in the conversations. And so you want to see what’s happening in the customer world, in the consumer technology space, what people are actually using. If you see everybody in the world on smartphones and you’re in a court system where a judge says no smartphones allowed in the courthouse period, that’s a big disconnect that we need to deal with because one thing we learned over the last four years is that remote appearances matter. They have a positive effect on the court system and on the people who use it. And it’s dramatic. And I think about that a lot as I see that we have a system that it forces people into this choice of saying, I need to appear in a court.

That’s intimidating to me. I don’t know exactly how long I’m going to be there. And as a matter of public health, it’s probably not safe for me to be there. I don’t know how long I’m going to be there and I have to take off work to go to this hearing that I don’t know what’s going to happen. If I take off work, I might get fired. And in the US if I lose my job, I lose my health insurance. And so my choice is do I take on those consequences or do I risk having some bench warrant issued for my arrest? And that’s a terrible place that we’ve put people when the solution, the technology solution to is pretty straightforward in allowing remote appearances in a lot of cases. So I think you’re looking at those frameworks. And then as was mentioned, I think the cybersecurity framework is another one.

It’s incredibly important as more and more private data goes across our systems and lawyers tend to be the weak links. And then Kat, I can’t have a conversation with you about contrarian things without using the phrase Byrne it down. But I think we need to Byrne down the silos between the legal profession and the consumers of what the legal profession provides to people. I notice this a lot in sort of miniature in the legal education space where I hear faculty, and this could be about ai, it could be about technology in general. There are a lot of discussions about what needs to be done about technology for students and the people who aren’t at the table are the students. And then most of the discussions about legal technology, and think about it, if you’re making decisions at a firm or an organization, and if you look around the table and there’s no customer there, no user of the service, you’re making a big mistake. And if you haven’t done the thing the people always recommend is that if you don’t come with fresh eyes to what you’re providing to people through technology and understand what their experience is, you’re really missing the opportunity to understand the really big improvements you can make simply and quickly.

Jane Ribadeneyra :

That’s a great point. Going back to some of the business process improvement things that legal aid organizations are doing, a lot of them revolve around intake and client intake process. And it’s that having the legal aid programs go through the client journey, looking at what steps do clients have to take and how much burden is it for them to be calling multiple organizations, retelling stories that they’re often under stress and trauma and the burden that it puts. And being able to look at that holistically. How can they make improvements in the system? How can organizations work together? We’re seeing more referral systems trying to help do those referrals and warm handoffs and lessening that burden on clients as well.

Dennis Kennedy:

And the other piece is I think that legal services does a great job in these areas, but the area they cover is fairly limited. And the real area concern I have and from talking and doing some work with judges recently is self-represented litigants, which the staff on that are just astonishing. How many people are self-represented in rural areas? You might be in a county where there’s one lawyer and there are technology solutions and we need to move quickly because people are having problems. And technology these days is bringing us face-to-face with some very fundamental issues. And I think the most fundamental for me is that we have lots of complex systems that are breaking down and dysfunctional and we’re trying to apply band-aids and point solutions, and I might be able to do some document assembly, but it’s not going to do that much to actually fix the entire problem. But for what I’m able to do, it may be a great solution.

Cat Moon:

Dennis, yes, I mean I think that individually we can focus on doing what we can where we are with what we have. We absolutely can have agency and take individual action. And that might be spearheading introduction of document assembly for example. And that might feel like a bandaid because the macro, the big is the fact that what you just described is that we are operating within, we’re trying to keep and prop up systems that were designed to serve a society in the second industrial revolution, which ended more than a hundred years ago. So as we are now in the fourth industrial revolution, probably barreling into what someone is going to call the fifth industrial revolution very quickly, we are literally light years ahead of where we were when these systems were created. And clearly technology is part of the reason why things are breaking down and it has to be part of our solution.

So it’s a unique opportunity here in time. And so much of it, I think both the individual actions that we can take, do what we can with what we have, where we are, and the actions, we can come together and take collaboratively to perhaps make systems change, which we all know is a lot harder and takes longer, but I think the prime for the pump, what can get us there across both the micro and the macro have a lot to do with our mindsets. So you both have been describing the mindsets of human-centered design. So Dennis, you said fresh eyes bringing a beginner’s mind. That’s one reason why I love working with law students because frankly they’re not jaded the way we are having tried to make a difference for decades and seeing frankly, seemingly very little forward motion, bringing fresh eyes, the beginner’s mind.

Yeah, they’re key. And both of you have hit on this, and I don’t know that anyone’s used the word empathy, but it really is, we have to find a way to both create with the people who we’re problem solving for clients, but not just clients because Dennis, you mentioned self-represented litigants. These folks aren’t our clients, but as a profession, we have decided that we are the only people who can help other people with their legal problems, yet we do not have to help anyone we can decide to help, but we don’t have to. And so I think that frankly puts an ethical obligation on us to help figure out how we can help the people who aren’t technically our clients. And technology clearly offers tremendous opportunity there. And Jane, you referred to legal aid organizations who have been working for years to automate document creation so that self-represented litigants can access and understand processes and documents and help themselves.

So this idea of empathy, getting folks who are having experience in the legal problems around the table and also it’s our own mindset instead of coming at a problem solely from the lawyerly perspective, how can we come at a problem with a client’s perspective? We can never fully understand what they’re experiencing, but we can work a lot harder to put ourselves in their shoes. And the most exquisite piece of technology, if it doesn’t do the job that the client needs doing is useless, absolutely useless regardless of the technology it’s based upon. Whether it’s a simple document assembly program or a very sophisticated generative AI platform, you’ve got to start with the job to be done and make sure that it meets those particular needs. I’m curious, since we’re talking about mindsets, if any others spring to your mind, any advice you would give to folks out there who are really eager to adopt the right mindset so that at the very least they can have their own individual agency and make a small dent in the universe with innovation and technology?

Dennis Kennedy:

Well, I tell my students that one of the things I like about the legal profession is the creative at its best. It’s a creative profession and that it turns you into a lifelong learner. And I think that if you accept that and kind of revel in that, that’s a great thing. The other thing is I think we really need to look at what’s happening outside the profession. So at the very beginning of the pandemic, the medical profession, one of the things they did was they allowed doctors to practice across state lines in recognition of what the issues were. Legal profession we’re really dug in on state regulation in an internet world. So I think one is important to see what’s going on in the adjacent professions. And then I think it’s really important to look at what used to be called the mega trends, but sort of what’s actually happening in the world.

We know that in the legal system, language and literacy are problems. We know that there is one set of justice for people who have money and one set of justice for people who don’t. We know the population is aging, we know there’s migration for climate and other reasons. This stuff is calming and it raises issues in rural areas. I don’t know. As I get older, I just see all the legal issues that face the elderly, especially as they decline the amount of fraud that happens against the elderly. And I don’t know what we’re able to do about that. And it’s not a great solution as we’ve kind of done as a profession to say, if we can kind of push that over to somebody else. Okay. So when I looked at self-represented litigant, again, having worked with judges, I say what we’ve done as a profession is we’ve successfully pushed off this issue onto judges and court personnel. And so they’re dealing with the consequences of this every day. And the statistics which I invite people to look at, are just shocking in some cases, like how many really significant family law and other matters that people are self-represented, who they’re not allowed to even have a trusted friend or family member with them. It’s a really difficult situation that we put people in. And the number of the percentage of people who, and again, estimates here who probably have mental issues, who are self-represented is going to blow your mind when you see it.

Cat Moon:

I think you’ve identified a really important and troubling issue, Dennis with self-represented litigants and how many folks just don’t have, we know statistically from research that Legal Services Corporation has conducted that the vast majority of people, especially with limited means, get no meaningful assistance from a licensed lawyer. And yet we don’t in most places, let anyone else help. And I just want to point out, you mentioned folks can’t rely on a friend or really get any support in that moment. This is another area in which we could look at adjacent jurisdictions, for example, could look up to Canada, the CRT Civil Resolutions Tribunal that has been created, which specifically authorizes folks to collaborate with non-lawyers to help them get through certain kinds of civil legal matters, all kinds of examples. And I think I want to jump back to ITC really quickly, Jane, because I think another mindset that comes to mind for me is experimentation.

And I think that’s one of the most powerful things about this conference is that many of the sessions are conducted by people who are trying things, right? They are trying to create better service, create access through experiments, whether it’s with process or technology, and they are there to share about essentially their experiments so that others can learn. And so I’m hoping that that experimental mindset can be something that catches much like a virus. Maybe we all get the virus of the experimental mindset, but that definitely comes to mind as, and you do a tremendous job. I think designing the sessions in a way that really gives people an opportunity to be exposed to the infectiousness of those experimental mindsets.

Jane Ribadeneyra :

Yeah, thank you. And I throw it back to it’s the community who’s doing these things and letting us wanting to share and being collaborative. The other thing I would throw out in there as we go to experimenting is the importance of partnerships and partnerships with technology companies. And we are starting to see a growth in the justice technology field of companies that are coming up and being focused on both technology and access to justice, the justice technology, Association every day. I’m hearing about new companies and new startups that are joining that, and we have a number of them who are participating at the conference as well. And being able to have those partnerships across legal aid, across the private sector with pro bono, how can technology be used? And I think that’s a opportunity as well to collaborate with the tech experts.

Cat Moon:

That is another human-centered design mindset, radical collaboration. Absolutely.

Dennis Kennedy:

Can I jump in and say something that I think a lot of the focus these days is what the billion dollar legal tech companies are doing, frankly, and that in the justice tech space, in the immigration space, there are some really cool technology developments that people should be paying attention to. And so I would say instead of figuring out what the issues might be with using AI for legal research, you take a look at what Greg Siskin is doing in immigration law. You look at what Natalie and Thornton is doing, you look at some of these other things that are happening in the technology space, some of the experiments that judges are doing in rural areas. Take a look at that and learn the lessons from that, both successes and failures and stop following the big money. Let them learn their own lessons.

Cat Moon:

Amen. I think that’s a good note to end on. Any parting words of inspiration, neither of you care to offer.

Jane Ribadeneyra :

We will be live streaming two sessions across the board throughout the conference throughout Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So go to the LSCs social media pages or Facebook page and find links to those live streams for anyone who can’t be there in person.

Dennis Kennedy:

Yeah, I wouldn’t agree. I also encourage all conferences to do way more live streaming, but there’s so much information out there live streamed and don’t just stick in the legal space. And I told Cat, I be contrarian on this, but spend the $20 a month for Chad GPT-4 and use it in this very fundamental way to say, what are my clients and what are my consumer’s concerns? What are the problems they face and keep working with it. I like to think of as conversational AI as opposed to generative ai. It’s really good at coming up with ideas and just ask it to give you ideas for what you might do with technology to help them. Some of ’em are going to be good, some are going to be bad. Just keep kind of working on it. And you’re going to come up with a nice list of three ideas that you can do earlier this year and then that will tell you, it will give you a project plan for putting those together with metrics and stuff. And you’re off to a start and it’s easy. Let the AI do the work for you.

Cat Moon:

You just couldn’t help yourself, could you? Dennis

Dennis Kennedy:

Never can.

Cat Moon:

So I happen to agree completely. I actually think if folks would stop thinking about using generative AI for legal research and think instead about using it to help them address these very human-centered problems, then they might actually get a lot out of it. So I second that recommendation. Well, I’m looking forward to, I don’t know if our conversation for Talk Justice midday on Friday of ITC is going to be live streamed, but it will be published on Legal Talk Network so folks can catch that conversation, which will be about AI after the conference. But thank you both so very much for joining me today for this contrarian conversation. It has been so much fun, very enlightening. I hope listeners have learned a few things as well, and I really appreciate it, guys. I look forward to having another conversation again very soon.

Dennis Kennedy:

Thanks so much. And if I can’t say, tell your listeners, keep an eye on what we’re doing at Michigan State University Center for Law, technology and Innovation, I think you’re going to see some cool things happening there.

Cat Moon:

We’re all watching Dennis and Jane, I will see you in less than a month at ITC.

Jane Ribadeneyra :

Absolutely. Looking forward to it. Thank you, Kat.

Cat Moon:

I am grateful to Jane and Dennis for joining me for this contrarian conversation about not AI in legal technology. And to highlight a couple of things from our conversation. First, LSCs Innovations and Technology Conference is happening February 1st through February 3rd in Charlotte. If you can’t make it to the conference in person, as Jane said, you can follow along with live streams of sessions. Check out LSC dot gov for information on how to do that. Also, listen to Dennis Kennedy’s podcast. If you are interested in legal technology, the Kennedy Mighell Report is a fantastic resource. It’s also on the Legal Talk Network. Highly recommend it. And thanks to you for listening to this episode. Talk Justice is brought to you by Legal Services Corporation and Legal Talk Network. If you like what you heard today, please be sure to rate and review the show and subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

Speaker 2:

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