The College of Law Practice Management Futures Conference: Cybersecurity

Episode Notes

Transcript

The Kennedy-Mighell Report

The College of Law Practice Management Futures Conference: Cybersecurity

10/31/2018

[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.

[Music]

Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to Episode #224 of The Kennedy-Mighell Report. I am Dennis Kennedy in Ann Arbor.

Tom Mighell: And I am Tom Mighell in Dallas. Before we get started, we would like to thank our sponsors.

Dennis Kennedy: Thanks first to TextExpander for sponsoring our show. Communicate Smarter with TextExpander. Gather, Perfect, and Share Your Knowledge. Recall your best words instantly and repeatedly. Learn more at textexpander.com/podcast.

Tom Mighell: And we would also like to thank ServeNow, a nationwide network of trusted, prescreened process servers. Work with the most professional process servers who have experience with high-volume serves, embrace technology, and understand the litigation process. Visit serve-now.com to learn more.

Dennis Kennedy: In our last episode we talked about how difficult it has become these days to make general technology recommendations as tech becomes more personalized. Tom and I were both at the College of Law Practice Management Futures Conference last week and we thought we would share our thoughts about the conference, which I think is an important one in the grand scheme of things. It’s focused on cybersecurity and our own presentation on cybersecurity for collaboration tools.

Tom, what’s all in our agenda for this episode?

Tom Mighell: Well Dennis, in this edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report we will indeed be discussing the College of Law Practice Management Futures Conference, cybersecurity and Dennis’ apparent obsession with protecting the herd. We will talk more about that.

In the second segment we will talk about social media etiquette in the legal tech world and as usual we will finish up with our parting shots, that one tip, website, or observation that you can start to use the second that this podcast is over.

But first up, the College of Law Practice Management Futures Conference and its focus this year on cybersecurity, The College of Law Practice Management was formed in 1994 to honor and recognize distinguished law practice management professionals to sort of adopt best practices for law practice management and to fund and assist several projects that enhance, as they put it, the highest quality of law practice management.

Every year the Futures Conference addresses some hot topics and this year I think was really not any exception, cybersecurity is definitely a hot topic. The people who attend, the people who are members of the college are really I think the rock stars of law practice management, whether they are at law firms, whether they are legal services providers, it is I think truly humbling to be around most of these people, not most of them, all of these people, what am I talking about?

Dennis, the Futures Conference for you, good time, bad time or no time?

Dennis Kennedy: Well, conferences are always a good time for me, but I think this one I would put in a category of not enough time. So I think they are such a great group of people to be part of and it’s one of those things where it truly is a conference where you learn more out in the hallways, in between sessions in many ways than you do in the actual sessions.

They are great people. People I haven’t seen for a long time. People I really value their opinions. So I would say generally not enough time because there are too many scheduled things and I would rather just hang out with people. How about you?

Tom Mighell: Well, you generally feel that way about every single conference Dennis, so not really a surprise there. What I missed about — I think in general I enjoyed the conference. I liked being around the people that were there. I think the content was good content. What I miss about it and what I am hoping we see more of in the next couple of years is a little bit more interaction.

This was more about people talking to the audience and Dennis and I will talk about kind of how we did our own version of that for our session, where one of the things that I think sets the college apart and makes it interesting are the years where you are spending time in interactive breakout groups and you are really getting things done and talking and brainstorming and putting something together and actually doing things rather than just listening. And so I look forward to maybe doing that again at upcoming years.

That said though, I think the content was good. It’s not necessarily a topic that lends itself to a ton of interactivity, there is some — we had some that went on and it was good, but I think cybersecurity is a good and important topic and it was worthy of being discussed and so I am glad that we did it.

(00:05:02)

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. I am always reminded of how much these days I love going to conferences where I get put to work. You are part of some group. You come up with something, either like a legal design thing or some idea going forward. I think you could do that actually with security, especially with some of the new developments out there. So we did get the chance to do that. So it’s more sort of talking.

And then I would say one of the things I enjoyed Tom was that I don’t know how long it’s been, but this is a rare in-person appearance for the two of us speaking on a topic, and I don’t know, what has it been, it feels like it’s been like four or five years since —

Tom Mighell: In a while.

Dennis Kennedy: Since we have gotten to do that, which is a good chance to remind our listeners that you and I are always available to do presentations at events.

But this is fun and I think it’s worth talking about our presentation, because we did decide to try to come up with the ways to be more interactive, and I don’t think we did anything novel. We had John Mitchell, who is a great moderator, who really wanted to work with us to kind of put those ideas in place.

But we started with the simple idea of asking the audience what they wanted to get out of the session and people kind of were slowly saying and volunteering what they might want to learn about, but then they really started to come up with suggestions and that helped us take the presentation in the way that we wanted to go and that we just encouraged questions all throughout.

Tom Mighell: Yeah, I think it was a good way to get the juices flowing. I thought that they had lots of — in fact, they sort of guessed the sort of things we were going to talk about. They were very intuitive into the types of topics we were going to cover, although we didn’t really cover everything that they had questions about, I think that they got most of the things that we wanted to try and cover. And what that tells me is I think they got it. I think they understood the importance of it.

Now, whether they represent a microcosm of the legal profession and I would argue the microcosm or the part of legal profession that actually has a better chance of getting it and advancing in security, this was a group that could do that. And I don’t know how you feel after coming away from this conference, whether you feel like lawyers have advanced at all in terms of cybersecurity, we tend to still be in the same place that we have been all along, or is it just a very slow process?

Dennis Kennedy: Oh boy, Tom, I have got to tell you, I look back at the presentations I have done on security over the years and I almost feel I could give the same ones I gave from the beginning and still have people madly taking down notes, so I do have some concern about how far lawyers have advanced on security.

I mean I had a lot of interesting conversations Tom about — and you got the questions during this session about the password managers and how to spell LastPass and stuff like that, so that’s I think a little discouraging.

On the other hand, I think there is a general awareness of the importance of security, if not a good awareness of some of the procedures and some of the newer developments and it’s good to see that with a group that’s focused on law practice management and managing firms and leadership that there is that awareness and willing to do something about it. But in terms of giving me confidence that lawyers and law firms have really stepped it up on security, not so much.

Tom Mighell: Well, I think I agree. What was interesting about the group was that I think that, like you say, that awareness was there, lots of people talking about what big firms are doing. I think that big firms are starting to get a handle on security. We will talk in a minute whether that’s because of their clients or because they have gotten it on their own, but when it comes to the lawyers themselves, I would argue that — I would agree with you that not much has changed.

Now, they didn’t have trouble spelling LastPass, it was actually Authy, the two-factor authentication tool that they wanted to know how to spell, and that’s fair, I will give that to them. But when we asked them the question how many of you are using password managers, how many of you are using multifactor authentication, I would say that less than half of the room or maybe even only a quarter of the room were actually doing that. And so even though there is awareness out there, whether they are putting some of that awareness to work in their personal lives or in their professional computing lives, I think there is still a lot of work to do.

(00:09:56)

Dennis Kennedy: Well, I think the whole question is it’s pretty easy to talk the talk, but then when it comes to walking the walk, it is more difficult. And so that does give me concern. And in some ways Tom it’s what’s happening at the big firm level that gives me more concern, because I think there can be more things at risk, and given my former role at Mastercard, sometimes when I hear what big firms are doing, it’s a little bit scary given what information they tend to have. But I think generally, like you said, I think there is an improved awareness, but the actual follow-through gives me some concern.

Tom Mighell: Well, in a rare moment of disagreeing with you, and I am only going to disagree with you partly, I would say that big firms are positioned the best to have their security under control, they hire the right people, who have the right ideas, that’s my argument anyway, they have got the money to be able to do that, I think the bigger firms should be getting it right, whether they are doing it right or not is the question.

I still worry more about the smaller firms. We are seeing — I am seeing lots of big work going to small boutiques and the smaller the firm, the less ability they have, the less knowledge they have, the less resources that are available to take care of their own security. I frankly think that the small firms have the bigger security problems. They may have less information worth taking, maybe I should say less information worth a hacker or a thief’s time, but I would argue that the security is not any better, if not worse.

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. I don’t know there. There is something to be said on both of those points. I guess where I had expected to see more progress was on the bigger firm size, I am just not sure that we are seeing that at this point.

Tom, in the presentation though you got to make my usual point about the herd and protecting the herd and how that enters in the notion of collaboration tools in cybersecurity. You want to run down that notion of the herd?

Tom Mighell: Well, I think it follows along with the discussions that people have these days about vaccinations that you shouldn’t be getting vaccinations for yourself because you are going to protect yourself; you are getting a vaccination because you are going to be protecting other people.

And so as you like to mention, it’s herd immunity, and when your security is lacking, when you are allowing bad things to get in, then you are hurting the rest of the herd, you are hurting your collaborators when that happens.

So if you are working with — if you are in a law firm and you are working with people who are either with your client or with other law firms or anywhere outside of your firewall, if for some reason you let a security flaw get in because of your poor security awareness, then you put everybody else at risk. And I think this is something that a lot of people don’t pay attention to, because security tends to be, at least when it comes to collaboration or when it comes to using their own computing, I think security still tends to be a very selfish issue and people really only think about what they are doing themselves and sometimes they are not thinking about that.

And when it comes to collaboration you really need to think about how your actions are going to affect other people.

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. I mean to me the notion is you have the herd of antelope or the herd of zebra and the lions are out there and as long as everybody in the herd is working together, paying attention then as a herd we are much safer than if we were on our own. But when people don’t pull their weight for the herd, then all of a sudden the lions have an entry point.

So I think that sometimes Tom, you and I, I think we do a good job on security compared to the norm especially, but it seems like if I am doing all this work and then I am interacting with people who just do a terrible job on security; reuse passwords, don’t use multifactor, any of the basics, then I just feel that they are putting me at way more risk because they don’t want to be bothered, and so that’s why I say think of the herd.

Tom Mighell: Well, so let’s maybe take that in a different direction and say what can we do about that? So how do we get our partners to our level of security, and when I say our, that could mean that we are the client and we are getting the lawyers to our level of security, or we are the lawyers and we are getting our clients or our collaborators to that level of security? Dennis, I guess the question is who drives who?

(00:14:56)

Dennis Kennedy: Well, I think there is a couple of things and this is the point that came up and it’s one of those things that in a sense has no definitive answer, but I think internally I am a big believer in driving security from the top-down and I think that anytime you grant a pass to your higher level people and managing partners where you don’t let passwords, policies apply to them or they don’t have to change their passwords or you accept them from certain things, that’s going to filter down to the rest of the firm and it’s going to cause problems.

So I think there is, you set the message at the top, you put a priority on security, you have an awareness of what the clients need, so especially if you have regulated areas, and then use that as the point. And then pick where you have problems, are you doing some monitoring.

And these days it’s phishing that’s a big problem, so these emails that are designed to get you to give up information or to click on things and there is training you can do, there is testing that you can do on that. And then basic training on social engineering will help, as well as doing — I mean there is a checklist these days of things that you would do on the security side.

And then I think that probably one of the most controversial things I said and certainly from the reaction I got is if people don’t follow security policies and they cause problems, they need to be punished for that and that includes being fired.

Tom Mighell: Do you think that also applies to law firms? If a law firm doesn’t follow a client’s security policy, that law firm should be fired too? I mean we talked about it. I am assuming you are talking about it on an individual employee level; does that apply to the firm too?

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, I think it totally applies to the outside firm. So if I am using an outside firm, and there was an example of — people used the DLA example in almost every presentation that we were part of, and somebody made the point that after they had the security issues they had, they had a very profitable year. And I was like wait, they paid no economic penalty for that? And I just think that if you have the outside firms, especially if you have sensitive data and there is some kind of breach that you can’t just go on as business as usual and I would definitely look to replace that firm immediately.

But I think I am way in the minority on that among most clients of big law firms, but I just don’t see how you can — given what’s at stake for a lot of people and a lot of clients, why you would be willing to tolerate that.

Tom Mighell: Well, I think that one of the comments that was raised during the session was that for many the benefits of collaboration outweigh the risks. And I am not sure I totally am in line with that; I think it really depends on the situation. But what all of this does raise to me and I do think there need to be consequences. I don’t know absolutely that firing a firm is the only right consequence for that, but I know there’s got to be consequences for having bad security hygiene.

But here is something that I posed during the conference and I still don’t know that there is a good answer to this which is, what’s a law firm’s responsibility in dealing with the security of collaboration tools? Is the law firm under a duty to be driven by what the client wants to use and that the client comes and says we are going to use this tool, Tool A for collaboration and you need to learn how to use it and learn how to be secure on using it.

And then when client B comes in they are going to say we want you to use collaboration Tool B and before you know it they have 60 different collaboration tools that the law firm is responsible for not only knowing how to use, but also using it securely. Why not can there be some sort of model where the law firm develops one or two or maybe three different collaboration tools and says to the client, hey, here are the different ways that we collaborate, which one makes the most sense for you? We have guaranteed the security of these tools by, and then describe how you have guaranteed that security. But that I think reduces the burden on the law firm while still reaching the goal of providing a secure collaboration tool for their client. I think the first option, which is more the norm right now I just think it’s unworkable.

Dennis Kennedy: I think the problem is that we have always advocated the approach that you have talked about in our book and elsewhere and this is a question I always ask that I always feel that the law firms and lawyers should take a leadership role, thought leadership and otherwise and security is a natural place for lawyers. Confidentiality is so important and we can take the lead in that.

(00:20:02)

And I think you’re right. If you’re having conversations with clients about what they want, they’re willing to look to you if you take a leadership role, and so, if you say, we’ve looked at these collaboration tools, here’s what makes sense to us, here are some platforms that we think will work well. We want to understand how you communicate with us and how that will work.

And if they don’t, here are some ways that we can trade information between things or maybe there are some common ground that we can do that. I think you can go along ways as a law firm or a lawyer in kind of leading the discussion around that, and then also taking into account what the client needs.

Now, having been what I would say more on the client side and the large client side for the last good number of years, I tend to have the perspective that the law firm needs to accommodate what I want or there were other law firms that may do that. So that is out there but I think taking that thought leadership role and conversation and communication with the clients and figuring out what will work best or how different platforms can interoperate, it will become really important.

Tom Mighell: So one of the questions that got raised during the conference and that we tried to answer during our session which is, is the idea of how to get users in a frame of mind to be security conscious? How to create a culture of security and I think we had between the two of us, I thought we had some pretty good responses to that.

Dennis, what’s your take on developing a security culture?

Dennis Kennedy: Well, I’d refer to some of it. I think heavy emphasis on training and especially on the basics. I think there’s also a lack of understanding about what I’ll call a hacker, its goal is in the path, they take into a system and what they’re trying to do at each point and how your security practices can have an impact on those standard form of attacks and then identifying where things are likely to come and the basic?

I mean, I think to me, there’s kind of a half dozen or so standard steps that it seems that most people feel are too inconvenient to bother with, but they cause a huge amount of the problems.

So I think there’s that showing, it does come down to leadership you need to set an example from the top of the organization and don’t allow exceptions because it’s inconvenient for the managing partners because they don’t want to be bothered to change passwords and that sort of thing. So, if you can do that and then follow it up I think with some kind of metrics so the testing on the phishing and let people know how they’re doing consequences definitely, and then use Microsoft Secure Score as a way to measure how you’re doing on security and to give you a baseline and some targets in a way to measure that.

I think you combine all of those things and then have a sensitivity client data. I think you’re going to be way ahead of most people these days.

Tom Mighell: Yeah — no, I think the Secure Score is a great way and just so you — for those of you who aren’t aware about it, you can go in if you’re an Office 365 user and you can find out what your security score is in using Office 365. And it’s I think a really sobering look at how we apply security in our area. And I would really like to see this being used more often in the other software tools we use.

I think that real-quick just to mention some of the areas where I would talk about creating that security culture. I think training is important but I think that it needs to be training that lets people know that security belongs to everyone that it’s not just information security’s role or that there are the security people. We’re all security people and we need to bake that into whatever types of communication or awareness training.

The awareness training also needs to be honest. If people make mistakes and things happen that are bad, you need to be able to share that with the people to say, hey, look, we’re all human but here are some of the things that are happening, that I think can go a long way in letting people know here’s what we need to avoid.

In addition to consequences, there also need to be rewards. If people do the right thing, if they change their password regularly or if they get a password manager or are using multi-factor authentication, there ought to be some sort of prizes or awards for that to help encourage that behavior.

(00:24:55)

And then, I think you mentioned phishing challenges and things like that. I think making security fun, making it interesting, having the competition to see who can spot the fake email that’s trying to steal all of your information, I think is valuable. I think that making it fun so that it’s something people enjoy doing will help make — increase that awareness and let people realize that it belongs to everyone.

So maybe to take ourselves out of this segment, what would be your major takeaways from our session, maybe from the conference itself, what do you have?

Dennis Kennedy: I think that for me I just see that security remains a big challenge even at the most basic level, and we’re not even to the point where people are looking at Internet of Things and other things that will be out there that are really going to ramp up security issues in a lot of different ways.

So, I think that’s an important thing of keeping up with what’s going on there and then at the small firm level, I think we’re probably going to see a move over time to either outsourced or cloud-based security just because it’s way too much for any small organization to do, to get the talent and the tools in place to handle security. So that’s an area that I would look for managed outsource or cloud security services.

Tom Mighell: And the one takeaway that I’m going to give is actually a chance to raise the point that I raised several podcasts ago, where I made the offer on this podcast to help people out learning how to use a password manager, and I am ashamed to say that I got zero response to that.

And I know that not all the listeners here either use a password manager and if you do, I know that not all of you are using it the way that it needs to be used. I’ve just convinced that there are some of you who could use some help, getting control of your password. So I’m going to say as your action item from this podcast, drop me a line, contact me, let’s get started in our password manager today, you will not regret it.

Let’s take a break for a message from our sponsors before we head on to the next segment.

[Music]

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[Music]

Tom Mighell: And now let’s get back to The Kennedy-Mighell Report. I’m Tom Mighell.

Dennis Kennedy: And I am Dennis Kennedy. This is sort of the pet peeves segment, I think at least for me. So I’ve had a couple of conversations lately about the people who use social media to say something like this.

Many speakers on AI, Blockchain or other legal tech topics at conferences don’t have a clue about what they are talking about. However, I am too polite to name their names. To paraphrase the famous movie line “Are you talking about me?” I think these comments Tom go back to the early days of blogging and social media and I don’t know how they really help things.

I get that the people who make these comments thinks it helps them market themselves as speakers who know what they are talking about, but I don’t see how it advances the discussion of legal tech issues or education about legal tech at all. I mean, I think that we should have ways to say, here’s what our specific concerns are, here’s what we think people are not talking about or not addressing clearly.

But this approach I’ve seen it really upset people because it paints with such a broader brush. It makes everyone feel that they’re being accused of being incompetent.

Am I overreacting, Tom?

(00:30:00)

Tom Mighell: So there’s a lot to unpack here. You started out by saying, people who use social media to say this, that’s what you said first, and so let’s be honest, people who use social media say, crazy, dumb, wrong, useless things on social media; and so, I think you have to always take those types of comments with a massive grain of salt.

But that said and maybe you disagree with me here, I do think there are a lot of people out there who don’t know enough about Blockchain or AI or other complicated topics, but guess what, they’re getting asked to speak on conferences on these topics.

I think that’s always been the case with legal technology. There are those who really don’t know quite enough on the subject, but frankly, even when you know a little bit on a tech subject, you probably know more than most of the lawyers in the average conference audience.

Now, do we want the commenters to name these people who don’t know this stuff? I think that seems kind of mean, so just saying, I’m too polite to name names, I really think that this is a useless statement to make. I think it doesn’t help to move forward any type of legal technology. I think that there’s a grain of truth in it. I think that there is a little bit there that there are people out there who probably don’t know enough about the topic, but social media does not prevent them from spouting off about it.

You and I have had the conversation about people who we think that that we — based on what they say we’re not sure how educated or how well-off they are. There’s a lot of things that I don’t talk about on social media because I know I don’t know enough about it, but I will say there are not as people with the same kind of impulse control that I may have when they get on social media.

So, I think that was kind of the dumb comment to make and I wouldn’t — you generally put that out there in public, but there may be a point there.

Dennis Kennedy: Well, I think that what I got thinking about in some of the conversations I had is how could we — if you perceive this is an issue then how you’d be productive about that? Can you address the people individually, because most people are actually willing to be helped on things if you have something to say or can we kind of say if we’re talking about some of these topics, here are some things that would be good to cover, or that sort of thing?

So I think there’s helpful constructive ways to do this. I think it’s just such an odd thing to do, because Tom, we are just talking about cybersecurity and collaboration tools, you saw something where we said people talking about cybersecurity on collaboration tools, really don’t know what they’re talking about, but I won’t name any names, then I’m going to go like, oh, why don’t you say something to me personally, and kind of help out the whole? Not to go back to the herd again but kind of help out the whole ecosystem and the herd by saying, let’s kind of see if we can get more on the same page and kind of more accurate in what we do.

So it could be a pet peeve but like before you start to say, all people speaking about this don’t know what they’re talking about, you might want to kind of either explain why you’re saying that or do a little more research on the people who are actually talking about it.

Tom Mighell: So I’ll ask a question real quick. So is that an opportunity for you to reach out to the people who say that and ask that question too? I mean, I think that’s an opportunity. Is it something that belongs on social media or do you reach out back channel?

Dennis Kennedy: I think a lot of this stuff is back channel and it’s like one of the things where I really — where you see the limitations of social media and Twitter in particular. So back in the days when the main way people communicated was blogs that you would say, oh, I have a concern about this and here are some examples and here are some things I could see it could be done better and then somebody might respond with a thoughtful blog post.

Now, you just — people are just throwing out these really short angry or super-judgmental short tweets with no explanation and I think it just causes a lot of bad feelings and it’s really impossible to make that kind of damning judgment of somebody and explain it in 140 characters. So, that’s a concern.

I always prefer the back channel thing, but that’s me, because then if you have the back channel thing and you come to some meeting of the minds you can actually work together with that person on an article that maybe puts some constructive points out.

So, now it’s time for that parting shots, that one-tip website or observation you can use the second this podcast ends. Tom, take it away.

(00:34:56)

Tom Mighell: So it is time for me to make another gadget recommendation or at least talk about a new gadget. This is sort of the season of new gadgets and I’ve got new phones and new laptops and one of the ones that I got that I didn’t really expect to like as much as I do, is another Google Home device and it’s from Google. Google has introduced the Google Home Hub, which is a display that carries the Google Assistant in it.

Now what I don’t like about it is that it’s small, it’s only — the screen is only slightly bigger than my phone, it’s about a seven inch screen, so it’s fairly small for a frame. But I will tell you it’s one of the best digital frames I think I’ve ever owned. The quality is very good. What’s nice about it is that it claims to be smart. So you connect it up to your Google Photos, you’ve got to have Google Photos to do it, you connect it up to Google Photos and it will only show you the best pictures from Google Photos, and I got to tell you, the pictures that I’ve seen so far have really — I’ve got a lot of bad pictures in Google Photos and I haven’t seen any yet come up here, and so I think it’s curating them in some interesting way.

So in addition to the photos it also is a full-fledged Google Assistant, so you can talk to it, you can ask it about the time or the weather, it will show you YouTube videos. It will show you a great way to cook recipes. It has a great way of displaying recipes so you can cook in the kitchen. I think it’s a great — and I think frankly for all of these assistant devices the best part is the price, it’s only $150, and so it’s pretty reasonably priced for one of these tools; it’s the Google Home Hub.

Dennis Kennedy: Tom, I have Google IV which actually allows you to plug a needle right into yourself in and Google can just draw all the information out of you, so that could extend your list.

Tom Mighell: I need that, yes.

Dennis Kennedy: You obviously need that. So, I have one that’s called QnA Markup, so I had this conversation at the College of Law Practice Management Induction dinner with Dave Tannenbaum at Suffolk University and Daniel Linna at Northwestern, who both teach in the area of legal tech and applying technology to law.

And one of the tools they use with their students is a website that allows you to do simple programming, it’s called QnA Markup and qnamarkup.org, and it’s a real ssimple kind of question-and-answer decision tree tool that allows you to create a little app-like structure.

And they convinced me I need to try this so I’m going to try this and I’m going to recommend it to other people as well, but it looks like you can — a really simple way to do decision tree type approaches, and one of the points that they made is that if — they like using it with their law students because if you’re looking at an area of law and you just want to program it into like a Q&A approach with decision trees, if yes, then these questions, if no, then these questions, then you have to have a really strong fundamental understanding of that legal process, and that was attractive to me and then also having a simple way to do decision trees and a little bit of coding on some other processes that I might be doing, make this an especially interesting tool.

So, whether this will give you the answer to the question and should lawyers learn to code? I don’t know. Whether it will, I doubt that it will. I don’t know how relevant that question ultimately is, but if you want to experiment with the tool, you can join me in experimenting with QnA Markup.

Tom Mighell: And 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 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.

If you like to get in touch with us, reach out to us on LinkedIn, or leave us a voicemail at (720)441-6820. We would love to use your question for our B segment.

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.

If you like what you heard today, please rate us in Apple Podcasts and we will see you next time for another episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report on the Legal Talk Network.

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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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