Dennis Kennedy is an award-winning leader in applying the Internet and technology to law practice. A published...
Tom Mighell has been at the front lines of technology development since joining Cowles & Thompson, P.C....
Published: | December 9, 2016 |
Podcast: | Kennedy-Mighell Report |
Category: | Legal Technology |
Most internet savvy attorneys use search engines to supplement their law practice resources. In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, hosts Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell discuss how search engines have changed over time, semantic and voice search, and the impact mobile search has had on search engines in general.
In the second segment of the podcast, Dennis and Tom discuss their favorite gadgets to give as gifts this holiday season in their 2016 tech toy list. As always, stay tuned for Parting Shots, that one tip, website, or observation that you can use the second the podcast ends.
Special thanks to our sponsor, ServeNow.
The Kennedy-Mighell Report
The Evolution of The Search Engine
12/09/2016
[Music]
Intro: Web 2.0, Innovation, Trend, Collaboration, Software, Metadata… Got the world turning as fast as it can, hear how technology can help, legally speaking with two of the top legal technology experts, authors and lawyers, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Welcome to ‘The Kennedy-Mighell Report’ here on the Legal Talk Network.
Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to Episode 182 of ‘The Kennedy-Mighell Report’. I am Dennis Kennedy in St. Louis.
Tom Mighell: And I am Tom Mighell in Dallas.
Dennis Kennedy: In our last episode, we assessed the current state of search and search engines. It’s year-end and it’s time for our annual recap show. Long time listeners will know that the ESPN ‘Pardon the Interruption’ show, also known as PTI, with Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, was one of the inspirations for ‘The Kennedy-Mighell Report’. Our TKMR tradition is to use some of the elements of the PTI format for the format of this episode.
Since Tom has been talking for the last few months about owning houses in several states he will be taking on the Wilbon role this year.
Tom, what’s on our agenda for this episode?
Tom Mighell: Well, Dennis, in this edition of ‘The Kennedy-Mighell Report’, we will indeed be recapping the year in legal technology but in a ‘Pardon the Interruption’ format. I always saw you as Tony Kornheiser role because you fit that older demographic.
For those of you familiar with ‘PTI’, you’ll recognize some of your favorite segments. For those of you unfamiliar with ‘PTI’, let’s tell you about it real quick. We’re going to have three segments. First is Toss Up in which we purposely take opposite sides of the legal tech topic, What’s the Word in which we fill in the blank on a statement about a legal tech topic with a well-chosen word.
And Big Deal Little Deal or No Deal where we categorize a legal tech development as such.
And then we end with a Fast Response Big Finish to give you a sneak preview of the results just so you know I am going to win every segment. So let’s go ahead and get started with Toss Up.
Some listeners have told us and think of it, Dennis and I agree on entirely too much and that we need to mix it up a little bit more, so I look forward to toss up every year so we can at least pretend to disagree with each other and we’re required to take opposite sides on each topic. Each of us argues his position and at the end again I declare myself the winner. Dennis, are the rules clear, no agreeing?
Dennis Kennedy: First of all I disagree about the rules and the results, but here is the first Toss Up, iPhones versus Android phones.
Tom Mighell: So I think this is hard for a Toss Up because the right answer is, whatever phone works best for the way that you use technology. So that’s an unfair toss up but if I am forced to take a side I am of course going to choose Android for two reasons.
One, much more customizable than the iPhone; Google gives you so many options but some would argue too many options, but you can definitely customizable a whole lot more in the Android phone. The customization I like the most is just the general layout. I don’t need rows and rows of apps, but I can put a widget in with the weather forecaster, my current calendar or even a podcast app. It’s more like working with a computer and I like that.
The second reason really depends on your desire to share information with Google. The more stuff Google knows about you the more useful an Android phone can be for you and it can be a very useful for you. The Google Assistant is in my opinion a smarter digital assistant than Siri or just about any digital assistant out there, and Google has just figured out how to provide you with all kinds of information in a way that Apple really can’t do or hasn’t done yet, but given Apple’s position on privacy they may never do, so it’s Android for me.
Dennis Kennedy: So I am taking the iPhone side because I use an iPhone because I smirk like everyone else who uses an iPhone when you are on a flight and they tell the people with the Samsung phones as they can’t have them on the plane or they have to turn them off, take the battery out and dip them in a bucket of water for the plane to go.
I also was intrigued by the video I saw the other day, I don’t know whether it’s true or not but that doesn’t stop me from talking about it, CeeLo Green having his Samsung phone explode while he was talking on it. So there are definitely some problems in the Android world. I think it’s also way more security issues and I know, Tom, we talk about how great customization is, but I don’t really find that most people will use customization or the openness of the Android platform as compared to the more close down Apple platform. So I think that iPhone is a clear winner here.
Tom Mighell: We won’t go into what a shame I think that is. All right, next topic Dennis, Access to Justice as the main driver of legal technology innovation, for or against the proposition?
Dennis Kennedy: So I’m actually going to disagree with this. So I think that a lot of the heat around this topic that you have seen over the last year is saying that, hey, there is a lot of stuff going on Access to Justice. We’re really starting to see the innovation.
(00:05:00)
I’m going to disagree with that for this segment because I think it is potentially a driver but I think it’s sort of a small part of the world and there may be some things that will move from the Access to Justice area into the main part of practice technology, but I really think it’s the client-driven stuff, so what clients want and especially what the big paying clients want is going to be the big driver of legal tech innovation. I have said that for a long time but I think that’s really starting to happen, so I think that we may see some of the things that come up in the area of Access to Justice kind of fan out a little bit, but I really think it’s going be the client-driven stuff that’s going to drive. Interesting innovation and then that in combination with the competition from legal tech startups are also pushing the legal industry.
Tom Mighell: I think you’re just making this really easy for me. The first reason why the correct answer is that Access to Justice is the main driver of legal tech innovation is that that’s really how it started out. Legal tech innovation really started with Access to Justice and I think to a certain extent it hasn’t stopped.
True there have been other drivers like you discussed have appeared, but really, I think Access to Justice is going to continue to be the primary driver for the second reason because that underserved market out there, people who can’t afford legal services or who are more likely to seek out their own self-help legal services who all have a smartphone, they all have means of getting to some level of technology that can help them figure out their problem, so that they can get the legal help themselves as long as Access to Justice remains a huge legal issue, and I see no reason why it’s not. My Gosh! Every year that’s the major fundraiser here in Dallas for the Dallas Bar Association. It’s going to continue to be the main driver of legal tech innovation because the people who need these legal services the most are going to cheap or free technology instead of a lawyer.
Dennis Kennedy: Next topic, Artificial Intelligence eliminating lawyers?
Tom Mighell: All right. Well, the way that you phrase it, eliminating lawyers then the only answer is I think, of course not, it’s not. AI is not going to eliminate lawyers. If you had said, eliminates some lawyers, then I might need to jump over to your side of the argument here because I do believe that there are some legal functions that Artificial Intelligence can perform that would either replace lawyers doing it or doing a part of it at least.
But, I think your proposition eliminating lawyers I suppose there is a day sometime in the far, far future when a jury is going to watch a robot give a closing argument or cross-examine a witness but that day ain’t coming in any time soon. I think there are some legal activities that Artificial Intelligence simply can’t replace; those activities require empathy or good intuition, a good judge of human nature, good judge of character.
I think those intangible qualities that a lawyer has that at least right now they have not found a way to build that into Artificial Intelligence. So, all right, Dennis, make me weep for the future.
Dennis Kennedy: Well, Tom, Access to Justice here. I mean, like how — if we have that big underserved market, why shouldn’t Artificial Intelligence take that up because lawyers aren’t doing it. So I do think that today we properly understood and over some period of time it is going to eliminate definitely a number of lawyer functions, but I think jobs as well because it’s going to happen across the board and in different ways.
And I think that you can see many areas where lawyers are the friction in the transaction process where you have years of backups in courts and other things where you say, hey, there is this technology here that can give us good results and help move things forward, and the question is, really will it eliminate all lawyers?
I don’t really see that happening at least for another three or four years, that’s not likely, but I think really making tremendous inroads into the legal profession in the next say five to ten years, I think that’s pretty inevitable.
Tom Mighell: All right, and finally, Dennis hottest new technology of 2016?
Dennis Kennedy: Okay, so I’m going high-end again and I’m saying machine learning and I say that because it’s the most fascinating technology to me because I say that lawyers and lawyers’ clients are sitting on some really interesting datasets and they work with data in a lot of ways, and so the big thing in data is machine learning, and to say, okay, so we have this data, what patterns are in it? How can we use machine learning in a way to move us toward AI, to help simplify things, to recognize patterns, to help us move in good ways, and so I think that as law becomes more and more a data profession I think the machine learning to me is going to be hot.
(00:09:55)
We had a podcast episode where we talked about something called Tensor Flow which gives you a way to start working with data and machine learning. I think this has really become a hot technology.
Tom Mighell: All right, I will give you that machine learning is important, but yawn, boring, when you talk about the hottest new technology this year. It’s a technology that really wasn’t new this year, but I think it certainly got a lot hotter and it rose to the top and I think a lot faster, and that’s voice user interfaces. The Amazon Echo got us all started at the end of 2014. We really didn’t know we had 2015 and started to gain popularity and we have really started to see things pick up this year. Google has rolled out its Google Assistant, which I think really has the potential to ultimately overtake Alexa because it’s got so much search data associated with it, and it actually can – I sound like a broken record because on multiple podcasts I talk about how smart Google’s voice search is and that it understands the context of the things that you are asking for. I think Cortana is starting to beef up as well, and Cortana is actually going to bring voice search to the extent it’s not already to your laptop and you’re going have that available and you certainly do right now with Windows 10 but I think that that’s only going to get more.
I think the ability to get information by voice is really interesting concept for right now. Sometimes I really like it, like when I am in the car I need to navigate somewhere, it’s great to say, “Okay Google”, and it will automatically bring up Google Maps and take me where I need to go or when I’m busy in the kitchen or need to look up something and I can just ask the Echo or Google Home about the temperature or the time or anything and I don’t need to put things down to get to my computer to look at it, will I do that in public, in front of a lot of people, not yet, which is why I think Voice UI still has a way to go before it’s widely accepted.
So that’s it for Toss Up, that’s it for our first segment, and as predicted, I think I clearly won. You’re out of time to respond to that, Dennis, because we’ve got to move on to our “What’s The Word” segment. In this segment we’ve got a sentence about a legal tech topic with a blank in it, each of us has to come up with the best word to fill in the blank. Dennis, I want you to start with our first sentence.
Dennis Kennedy: First sentence is, the next killer app for the legal profession will be _______.
Tom Mighell: All right, I think you’re going to see my theme through all of these is boring words. My word here is “Familiar”, the next killer app will be familiar, and by that I mean familiar to the original killer app which was email. Email was the original app that really killed everything and I still think that communication tools are the killer app for lawyers, and as we’re going to talk about in a few minutes, email is less than a perfect communications tool these days. We’re seeing younger generations moving away from emails or actually not even moving away, they never really came to email as a communications tool. They are using more texting, they are using Instant Messaging, they are even snap chatting with each other, and I keep wondering whether these short forms of communication are going to be the future. I really think it’s awfully hard to replace some of the most beneficial features of email, but I also think there’s got to be something in between email and texting that makes it easier for lawyers to communicate with clients, with other lawyers, in a way that’s not so frustrating. Dennis.
Dennis Kennedy: I’m going go in a way that you are not going to expect and so I’m filling in the blank with LinkedIn. And the reason I say this is because I have been spending a lot of time on LinkedIn lately and I’ve been thinking a lot about Microsoft buying LinkedIn, and I’m just truly intrigued by the way you can connect with people and learn about them and how it updates in the idea of combining the LinkedIn database and making it work with my Outlook contacts is I think just an amazing thing because the practice of law is a lot about connection, it’s about collaboration, it’s about who do you work with, what do you have in common with people and how you can work better together, and I think that LinkedIn as a professional networking tool that allows you to map out those networks to be in touch with people to reach out to people and then combine that with potentially with Outlook and your contacts I think I am going to go out on a Lim and say that’s my guess of the next killer app.
Tom Mighell: All right, the next sentence, Dennis, is for lawyers technologies like the Internet of Things, Blockchain, smart contracting and machine learning are _______.
Dennis Kennedy: Differentiating, so this is a list of hot new technologies, again, sort of the high-end and I think this is where lawyers who keep up on technology and I think we will probably touch on the duty of technology competence, but I think it’s more than just sort of knowing a little bit about this.
I think if you can go into these areas as we look at what clients are looking forward and as clients move into new areas and you talk about really like Internet of Things, some of these things are potentially world-changing in the same way the original Internet was that if you are a lawyer who gets on top of these technologies I think you’re going to bring yourself to new clients, I think you are going to — in a certain extent future-proof yourself, but you’re going to differentiate yourself from the rest of the lawyers out there.
(00:15:19)
Tom Mighell: I feel like this is a toss up again, because I’m going to choose the word “far-out”, these technologies are far-out, is that one word? I am putting a hyphen in it. Although these are topics all lawyers need to know about, they are so far not part of most lawyers’ everyday practice, and I would argue that the smaller the firm the less likely you are to be exposed to this or in a position to where you can gain clients by using some of these things, but I think that we’re in an age where even if a technology is not something that we’re doing now, we really can’t afford to ignore it, we can’t or not learn about it to prepare for the time when we will need to either use it or advise our clients about it. I think for now though a lot of these are far-out possibilities for most lawyers.
Dennis Kennedy: Next up, let’s go ahead and ask it, email is ________.
Tom Mighell: This is not the first time we’ve done this, so I think I use the same word before — last time, but I still agree with it. Email is misunderstood, is email a communications tool? Is it means to transfer information? Is it both? The problem is that lawyers view email as both and so they make it their primary silo for all of their information; they are filing cabinet for so much stuff.
This is bad for two reasons. It’s hard to collaborate and share information with others from email and the more email we have the less productive we are. If lawyers were to understand where email really fits into the information lifecycle, it could become a much more efficient and effective tool for us to use, so I think it’s misunderstood.
Dennis Kennedy: Okay, so Tom, I know that you think I’m going to say, email is dead, but I’m going to say, email is triumphant, I mean, I just — email just never ends like though you can predict its death, you can predict it’s going to become less important, and for lawyers it’s just right out there, and I don’t know that there’s been any decrease in the amount of email I’ve gotten over the last year. So I think the email can kind of declare victory for now. I mean things may change over time, I really do think that between Twitter and so Instant Messaging and stuff that email is going to become much less important and much less the channel that people use to communicate, but I think it’s going to take more years than I ever thought possible. So congratulations email, you’ve won!
Tom Mighell: Ye. All right, here’s the last sentence, progress on making technology, understanding an element of competence as set out in the famous comment 8 to the Rules of Professional Conduct in the definition of Competence, is _______.
Dennis Kennedy: I’m saying iffy. So I think that there’s, you see more discussion of this topic, I think there’s interest in it, some developments, but I’m not sure that all that that much as is happening. I think that lawyers are more trying to say like what’s the minimum I need to know about technology rather than to say technology really is part of what I’m doing, and I think there are some exceptions, I think that in the eDiscovery world, Tom, in your world of records management, I think there are other areas where people are touching on technology, collaboration tools, those sorts of things where people are really starting to use it, I think that you are seeing more of that and people who have cases or transactions that involve unique technologies, you see more of it, but I still think that lawyers are super wary of technology and its role in what they do and the notion of saying that’s part of competence is a little scary for them, so I think progress is iffy.
Tom Mighell: I’m going to use another hyphen in it and my word will be “as-expected”. I think as with most changes to the way that lawyers are expected to practice, the duty of technological competence is really something that’s not going to happen overnight, and I think we’ve seen that, even four years after the comment was added to the rules, not even half the states have adopted the requirement. I think we’re at 23 states right now, and as we’re going to discuss in a few minutes only one state has bothered to go farther and require some actual accountability for technological competence, but I really don’t think we should be surprised by this. I think lawyers are slow to adopt everything. If we start to see a lot of ethics violations or malpractice claims due to the level of technological competence that lawyers have, then maybe that’s the action that would cause greater attention to be paid to the topic, but I think for now, and for the foreseeable future, progress is going to be gradual if not iffy, as you say.
All right, and that’s it, for What’s The Word, and guess what, I have racked up another Tomtastic victory. You made me say Tomtastic again.
Dennis Kennedy: What? Wait, wait, what?
Tom Mighell: Sorry, Dennis, we’ve got to go to a break.
(00:20:02)
Before we move on to our next segment, let’s take a quick break for a message from our sponsor.
[Music]
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[Music]
Tom Mighell: And now let’s get back to ‘The Kennedy-Mighell Report’. I am Tom Mighell.
Dennis Kennedy: And I am Dennis Kennedy. Hey, I am not real sure about the judging on the show. Do I get to throw a challenge flag?
Tom Mighell: No challenge flags here Dennis, it’s time for Big Deal, Little Deal, or No Deal.
Dennis Kennedy: And this is my new favorite PTI segment. So we will describe a 2016 legal tech development and then decide whether it’s a big deal, a little deal or no deal at all. Tom, do you want to deal out the first topic?
Tom Mighell: Absolutely. I teased it in the last segment, Dennis, Florida’s new mandatory technology CLE requirement, big deal, little deal, no deal?
Dennis Kennedy: I sort of think this is a little deal hoping to be a big deal, or more probably becoming no deal than a big deal. And so I think it’s great that Florida has kind of really changed the impression people had of being a technology backwater for the legal profession that it has had for, I don’t know, a good 20 years, and substantially changed what people think of that in the past year or so.
And they have a mandatory CLE requirement for technology CLE, and I think that’s a good thing, but I don’t see any other states, and I think if we do see a growing number of states, certainly say five to ten in the next year, then I think it’s potentially becoming a sort of big deal. But if nobody else picks it up, I don’t know that the Florida rule is going to stay in place all that long. So it would be interesting to see, but I put in the little deal, but kind of important as a first step.
Tom Mighell: I am going to say big deal for Florida, potentially big deal everywhere else. This is Florida telling lawyers that, not only do you have to have a duty of technological competence, but you actually have to take classes to get that competence. Just having an ethical requirement as the other 22 states have is really not enough if there’s no teeth. There’s got to be teeth to it. There’s got to be some method of accountability for it. Requiring CLE on technology content I think is a huge step forward.
I am hoping that it will gain traction in other areas, but I think that, as you mentioned, the fact that Florida was more of a technological backwater at the time, and the fact that they have come farther than most of the other states that are more forward-thinking on that, I think is a big deal.
Dennis Kennedy: Next up, class action suits against law firms for data breaches.
Tom Mighell: So I am going to say big deal, but for big firms. I think we have started to see how most big firms and a lot of smaller firms too, no question, have been the victims of data breaches, arguably due to lack of security and the class action firms are starting to take notice, they are starting to look at it, and they are starting to even file a few lawsuits out there against companies — against firms who aren’t managing their cybersecurity the way they should.
But I am going to speculate that class action lawyers really don’t care much if small firms are getting hacked, because there’s no money there. So I think there’s a money aspect to this whole prospect of the class action suits against law firms.
Now, individual client lawsuits against small firms due to data breaches may be a big deal, at some point, but I think the bigger firms are going to bear the brunt of most class actions, unless they get their act together real soon.
Dennis Kennedy: Well, and I think that — I have this as a little deal, because — partially for the reasons that you said Tom, that it makes sense to go after big firms with deep pockets, and we are seeing a little bit of that. And so I see the whole issue of protecting against data breaches as being very important, but it has been important for the last four or five years, since the FBI came to some of the most important firms in the country and said, there are issues on this.
So I think that it’s a little deal as part of what is a big deal, which is cybersecurity, and this is — if this is one more incentive, I think, to get people to do more on that, then I think it is important, but in the big scheme of things, sort of grand scheme of things, I see this as a little deal.
Tom Mighell: All right. Dennis, next topic, clients pushing lawyers to get better with technology, big deal, little deal, no deal?
Dennis Kennedy: I think this is a humongous deal. So this is a big deal to me, because I think that when you look at there and you say, what are the drivers, as I talked about earlier today, I think are going to be important on getting better with technology. So I think there’s a competition factor that’s coming from outside the traditional legal profession, the legal startups, some of the other things that are happening.
(00:25:12)
But I think it’s the clients pushing their lawyers to get better with technology, and so there have been efforts on technology competence or technology competence testing coming from the clients’ side. There are clients pushing people into tools like Serengeti for outside management, clients pushing law firms to be part of e-billing and other things, certainly the whole world of eDiscovery, Tom, your world of records management.
So I think that change comes from clients, and I will go back to the classic example where the legal profession was all WordPerfect and then the client said, you are not going to be WordPerfect anymore, we want our documents in Word, and in an extraordinarily short period of time everything flipped, we went from a WordPerfect world to a Microsoft Word world.
Tom Mighell: Okay, so I am going to take an opposite position here and I am going to say that this is a big deal, something that started out as a big deal and is becoming more of a little deal, and here’s why. Back a number of years ago when Hyundai came out with its law firm technology skills audit, the guy who did that, Casey Flaherty, leveraged it into something called the Legal Technology Assessment, and we all thought, now we are going to see clients pushing back against their attorneys, requiring them to actually know more about the technology that they are using.
But I think there is a difference there is that the clients are forcing them to actually use certain types of technology or actually to be knowledgeable about the technology that they use, because I would say that there is a distinction there, and if companies are saying, you need to use our billing systems or our management systems or the things that are consistent with the way we do business, that’s one thing, but just expecting a basic level of competence out of the lawyer, I don’t see that sort of thing coming from companies or from clients at all, the way that I would have hoped it would have after this audit came out.
I just don’t get the sense that it’s happening in the way that it needs to. No doubt, Dennis, you work for a company that probably demands a lot out of its attorneys, and no doubt some companies are still requiring their firms to satisfy that certain level of competence, but I just don’t think we are getting the broader push that I expected to see.
All right, Dennis, what do you think about the legal tech startup environment, big deal, little deal, no deal?
Dennis Kennedy: I think this is a big deal, because of the size of it, the size of the investment, the number of companies out there now, and all the different areas that they are pushing forward in. So it’s an interesting world, because I think a lot of these things probably won’t be successful, and I guess, Tom, I sometimes think if people came to you and me and asked us, we could probably point to some of those that probably won’t work.
But it is interesting to see how much is going on, how many different areas and what people are looking at. So I mean, to me, it’s odd to say things like what’s the next Uber or Airbnb or Facebook of the legal industry, but people are thinking in those terms, and I think it’s so interesting in how many different areas that you can find startups in, and with really cool technologies, with really cool ideas.
So I think it’s a big deal, because I don’t know that I have ever in the whole time I have been involved in legal technology, ever seen this sort of level of this, and especially the venture capital going into it as we see now. So I see it as a big deal, potentially getting bigger, but with some ups and downs, probably a shake out here or there
Tom Mighell: So I am going to go with little deal, but for a specific reason, I think obviously it’s very important for the legal industry to innovate. I think legal tech startups help to accomplish that. We see tons of hackathons all over the country these days. ABA TECHSHOW this year is going to have a Startup Alley, where new startups have competed to get places at the conference and prove themselves.
Bob Ambrogi is currently tracking, I think, just over 600 legal startups on his website, and I challenge you, Dennis, to name 10 of them out there. I can’t name 10, maybe that’s just me, but I challenge anybody to name more than just a few legal startups. And I think most of these companies are having trouble breaking out and differentiating themselves from other companies. They may appeal to a small audience, but they just don’t have that breakout potential that I would want to see from the startups that need to be really successful.
We haven’t seen, like you said, an Uber or a Facebook or an Evernote for the legal industry. We haven’t seen just this big very popular startup emerge out of all that. We have got a lot of small companies that are all competing for small pieces of the same space, and I suppose that I am hoping for something bigger.
All right, that does it for this segment, and this is just in, I win again, and that’s a big deal. So on to the Big Finish, it’s time to finish here and we are going to answer six questions in 60 seconds.
Dennis, here’s number one for you, best legal tech book to be published in 2017?
(00:30:03)
Dennis Kennedy: Tom, it’s ‘Collaboration Tools and Technologies’, the Second Edition, which you and I are busily at work of writing right now.
Tom, best choice for a lawyer today, a blog or a podcast?
Tom Mighell: I am going to have to say a podcast, blogging is still hot, but podcasting is hotter, and I think in some respects is a lot more interesting these days.
Dennis, what’s the best legal tech resource?
Dennis Kennedy: Well, it’s the ABA’s Legal Technology Resource Center, which both you and I are involved in, and is continuing to progress with lots of great new features and a terrific blog called Law Technology Today.
Tom, best app?
Tom Mighell: I am going to give another plug for the Google Assistant. You can try it out in Allo, which is an app for both iOS and Android. It’s a texting app to use with your friends. You can bring a Google Assistant into your conversations to make reservations or provide more information to you, recommend restaurants, provide help in a bunch of different ways, really the future of mobile assistance.
Dennis, what’s your best tech decision of 2016?
Dennis Kennedy: Two of them, one was reading Kevin Kelly’s new book ‘The Inevitable’; the other was buying my Bose noise cancelling headphones for airplane flights.
And finally, Tom, what tech topic do lawyers most need to pay attention to?
Tom Mighell: I am going to be a broken record again and say encryption, and two-factor authentication. As we go into 2017, security and privacy are more important than ever More people are trying to break into our email and other important information, and we need to do everything we can to protect that information.
Dennis Kennedy: That was 2016 and we are ready to move on to 2017 with a bunch of great new topics and ideas to share with you on the podcast, and quite probably, the first Kennedy-Mighell Report Live Show, some interviews, and a way for you to phone us with your questions for us to answer on the podcast. Happy New Year to all!
Tom Mighell: So that wraps it up for this edition of ‘The Kennedy-Mighell Report’. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. You can find Show Notes for this episode at HYPERLINK “mailto:[email protected]” tkmreport.com.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or on the Legal Talk Network site, where you can find archives of all of our previous podcasts as well.
If you would like to get in touch with us, please email us at HYPERLINK “mailto:[email protected]” [email protected], or send us a tweet. I am @TomMighell and Dennis is @denniskennedy. So until the next podcast, I am Tom Mighell.
Dennis Kennedy: And I am Dennis Kennedy, and you have been listening to ‘The Kennedy-Mighell Report’, a podcast on legal technology with an Internet focus. Help us out by telling a couple of your friends and colleagues about the podcast.
Outro Thanks for listening to ‘The Kennedy-Mighell Report’. Check out Dennis and Tom’s book, ‘The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together’ from ABA Books or Amazon, and join us every other week for another edition of ‘The Kennedy-Mighell Report’, only on the Legal Talk Network.
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Kennedy-Mighell Report |
Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell talk the latest technology to improve services, client interactions, and workflow.