Confronting the Legal Tech Justice Gap

Episode Notes

Transcript

Bob Ambrogi:

We can’t ever fully address or solve the justice gap without technology being a big part of that equation. And I think the entire legal industry needs to be thinking about that and thinking about how we can do that better, not just the parts of the legal industry that tend to focus on low income clients or consumer facing clients.

Speaker 2:

Equal access to justice is a core American value. In each episode of Talk Justice and 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.

Ron Flagg:

Hello and welcome to Talk Justice. I’m Ron Flagg, president of the Legal Services Corporation and your host for this episode. LSC recently held our annual innovations in Technology conference ITC in Charlotte. It was the largest in-person ITC we’ve ever had, making it the largest event dedicated to legal tech for access to justice by low income Americans. Over 700 people from 49 states DC four US territories and Canada attended the conference. ITC is a gathering place for tech innovators and legal aid providers to share what they’ve learned about legal needs and the roles technology can play to meet those needs. The power of the event comes from the ingenuity and enthusiasm of the legal tech community and their desire to collaborate to expand legal services for low income Americans. One of our guests today, Bob Ambrogi, wrote a thought provoking article about his observations attending ITC after attending the big law tech conference legal week just a few days earlier.

That conference focused on, among other things, technology innovations that help more upscale organizations such as large private firms and corporate law departments. In the legal aid world, we talk frequently about the justice gap, legal needs of people living in poverty and the resources available to meet those needs. But in attending Legal Week and the Innovations in Technology Conference, Bob observed an adjacent gap, the gap in resources for legal tech that addresses problems facing low income Americans and the resources for legal tech innovations for large law firms in corporate legal departments. So our conversation today is really a tale of two conferences and a tale of really two technology ecosystems that are occurring simultaneously but serving very different audiences up till now. Let me introduce our guest before we dig in. Bob Ambrogi is a lawyer and award-winning legal tech journalist whose work you’ve seen on lawyer sites, blog, Above, the Law and his podcast law Next among others, and our other guest is no stranger to this podcast.

My Talk Justice co-host Cat Moon is joining us and Cat is Director of Innovation Design for the Program on Law and Innovation at Vanderbilt Law School. Cat, it’s great to finally collaborate with you on an episode. I’m a big fan of your episodes. It’s much easier lifting for me to be a listener than a moderator. You attended ITC and hosted a session as well. From your perspective, what was the vibe like among the guests and presenters at this year’s conference and what were your thoughts about the people who attended ITC and their concerns and what excited them?

Cat Moon:

Ron first, it is great to be here as your guest on Talk Justice, so thanks for inviting me for this conversation with respect to ITC. So there was a lot going on. As you notice, there were a lot of people there and there are always so many sessions it’s hard to pick and choose and decide which track to follow and moving in between sessions because you don’t want to miss anything. Of course, I was there in large part to soak in all the conversation and learnings about artificial intelligence. I did host a live Talk Justice recording on Friday, and part of our objective there was to bring together some of the things we had learned from other sessions leading up to our conversation on Friday. So my focus was somewhat narrow. However, even when I was sitting in sessions not related specifically to ai, the topic came up.

So I would say clearly top of mind as it is really probably with everyone right now, and I sensed a palpable excitement. I mean, I think there is clearly a lot of uncertainty. There’s a lot of ambiguity because the technology in its current form is still so nascent and it’s really not very clear exactly what the impact is going to be or what the highest and best use is going to be. But everybody’s really curious and interested. Folks ask great questions in the sessions I attended, which really showed they were thinking very intentionally and thoughtfully. The other important observation I gleaned folks were very interested in understanding how this new technology was going to play with all the technology that they’ve been working on up until now. So ITC is a gathering of people who’ve been doing a lot of exploring and experimenting thanks to TIG grants they’ve received from LSC and really their collective motivation to figure out how to leverage technology to serve more people.

So there were lots of conversations around how this is going to integrate into the things that have already been done, and I think that’s a really important point. It was raised in our conversation on Friday, I think it was Connor Malloy who pointed out that he’s building a generative AI application on top of other things that have already been done using different technologies. So I think exploring how all of this fits together was a really big theme. But my overall takeaway was excitement, curiosity, a little bit of managed fear, but I think that’s just kind of the world we live in right now. So yeah, those were my big takeaways.

Ron Flagg:

One perspective I have on all of this is, again, if you start with a justice gap where 92% of the problems of low-income Americans are met with no assistance or inadequate assistance, any major innovations such as ai, even if it has risks associated with it, we don’t just have a risk of a justice gap. It exists. So the status quo is not sustainable and the fact that a technology may have some attendant risk, obviously you have to pay attention to them.

Cat Moon:

I have a quick thought to add or an observation that kind of builds on your point. Ron, I also was involved in many conversations and observed that folks are very curious and concerned about what that kind of constraints and blocks are going to be to really effectively leverage this technology in a way that’s going to be meaningful for the people who you just identified who currently get absolutely no help. And so really trying to assess that, balancing the fact that all these people get no help with a technology that possibly is not perfect, but the idea that don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good was definitely a theme. And also just thinking about the constraints that exist in the system that might make it hard to truly leverage this technology to scale access. That was a big topic for conversation,

Bob Ambrogi:

Something that really jumped out at me about the ITC conference and I go to a lot of legal tech conferences and I know Cat, you do as well is that I think you said there’s 700 people there. Most of the people there are actual users, people in the trenches, people dealing with clients and cases and matters, whereas other legal tech conferences you go to these days, it tends to be a lot of industry people of people working for legal tech vendors or consultants in the legal tech space. You don’t see as many kind of practicing lawyers or legal professionals at these other legal tech conferences anymore. So it’s really kind of invigorating to go to a conference where people are trying to figure out how to do what they do better and more efficiently and how technology fits into that. So that’s a real standout for me about that conference.

Ron Flagg:

Well Bob, that’s a perfect segue into the comparison to what you saw at Legal Week just a few days earlier, which really provided the premise for your recent law sites piece, which I highly commend to our listeners. What can you tell us about your observations at Legal Week?

Bob Ambrogi:

Well was for me it was just a stark contrast. I was at Legal Week in New York, which is one of the biggest legal tech conferences in the world and one of the longest lasting, it’s been around for years. It used to be called Legal Tech, but it’s been going on for years. From there, I left mid conference, hopped on a plane and flew down to Charlotte for the IDC conference. I felt like I was walking from one world into another world in a sense, even though they were both legal tech conferences. Really what struck me, and I think we’re all aware of this in some way, but we don’t talk enough about it, is the difference in allocation of resources between these two worlds. And legal tech is sort of defined by technology being developed for big law firms, big corporate legal departments, a lot of technology around major e-discovery cases or contract lifecycle management in large corporations. There’s a lot of money being put into that sector right now. We all talk about all the money going into the legal tech sector, but so much of it is going into that sector to develop high-end products. And you just see it, you just feel when you’re at Legal week, you kind of feel the effects of this. I mean big glitzy booths and vendors throwing parties at the swankiest places in Manhattan.

It’s just all about, it just feels like it’s all about the money. And then you go to ITC and there are people who are just as enthusiastic, just as innovative in terms of developing tech, but serving a very different audience and not having the financial resources in the same way to be able to develop technology products. And the VCs that are putting money into tech for big law are not putting money into tech for even small law or access to justice or legal services. There’s just this gap in funding sources. I mean, I think it’s still the case that the, one of the biggest sources of funding for tech, for legal services is the legal services corporations. TIG grants, the technology initiative grants, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the budget for that is still about $5 million total for all the grants with an average grant of about $40,000.

Again, in the big tech space, $5 million might be a seed money for a new company or for one single new company, let alone a whole bunch of grants. So we think about the justice gap in terms of the services that are not being provided to low income people. But I think there’s also kind of this parallel gap or really a subset of that gap that’s the lack of ability to really kind of invest in technology for that sector. The worst part about it is when you think about it, all of that huge investment going into the big law sector ultimately ends up serving clients who more or less represent the 1% of our society. I mean, it’s being a little bit fast and loose with the numbers there, whereas the folks at ITC are trying to serve vast numbers of people who are not being well-served by the system. So there’s such an imbalance in funding and in tech development that I think it’s a real concern and I think it inhibits our ability to close the justice gap in this country.

Ron Flagg:

So obviously the billion dollar or more question is how to bridge that gap, how to either incent tech companies that are not in the access to justice space to enter that space or how to incorporate innovations that are already serving big law into the access to justice space. So what are some of the things that you’d like to see happen, both of you to change that gulf that Bob has described between the two worlds of legal tech? And let me, does ai, is that a possible vehicle for raising all boats in both sectors, or are the rich just going to get richer and the poor going to fall farther behind?

Cat Moon:

I think one barrier to incenting is the regulatory structure. So there are genuine concerns by people who would invest money in building something, especially if it were consumer facing. And this is an interesting point too. So the big law world that Bob is describing that for the most part, well, it’s lawyer facing, right? It’s either law firm facing or client facing. But in terms of serving legal departments, it all serves lawyers for the most part. Whereas technology in the legal aid world and the nonprofit world both serves lawyers, it’s internal facing, but solutions that are consumer facing are also really I think the biggest opportunity that’s being identified and some of the most interesting things people are building. So there’s a difference there that I think is important in terms of who the audience is to be served and how someone goes about getting paid, getting some kind of financial incentive to build something for an audience that isn’t necessarily able to pay a lot for a service or a product.

So that’s one point. And if we’re going to be serving legal consumers, then we have the unauthorized practice of law issue. So there are things happening, sandboxes and loosening of restrictions. I’m thinking of Arizona and Utah specifically that do incentivize people to come in and spend money developing products that are consumer facing and that could potentially make a difference in the problems, the access to justice problems. And that is very slow to take hold. I think there are more and more conversations, but that’s a very significant barrier to moving things forward in my observation. I think another point is Ron, you mentioned how can we actually think about using technology that’s been developed or being developed to serve big law firms to serve corporate legal departments? I think that’s a really interesting area to look into. And I think specifically with generative ai, I think there is a lot of potential and opportunity and how do we incent that behavior?

I mean, it’s one thing to suggest to law firms, you are doing well. So can you do also good and create some opportunity for legal aid organizations to leverage technology you’ve created? I think there are things to explore there. One obvious thing that occurs to me, and this is maybe more on the individual level, but I think it’s cultural, is how we actually conceive of pro bono, right? So the main way lawyers think about how they give back and how they help people who can’t otherwise afford their help is through pro bono. And that model is essentially one-to-one delivery of legal services. So for example, an attorney in a big law firm can get pro bono credit with their firm and with their board of professional responsibility. However that is tracked if they go to a legal clinic and volunteer their time that perhaps legal aid has sponsored.

However, if that same attorney works with a legal aid organization to develop a platform that serves many people, odds are that the firm’s not going to recognize that as pro bono service, their regulatory board’s not going to recognize it as pro bono service. We have this culture that is so focused on one-to-one service delivery. So I think part of it is how do we reset the culture so that individual lawyers and firms and law firms and legal departments realize that they actually are doing an incredible pro bono service by contributing to technology projects. We have to orient our understanding of what this means differently. And that’s a cultural change. And maybe that has nothing to do with the financial aspect, but I think it’s part of the larger picture that we need to be talking about.

Ron Flagg:

Well, and realistically what we’re talking about in many cases is not engaging the law firm’s lawyers, but they’re technologists. They’re in-house IT people who have been thinking about some of these questions with the lawyers to be sure. So the definition of pro bono contributions could include these in kind contributions of time from the technology people in law firms. Bob, what’s your take on bridging the Gulf? How do we do it?

Bob Ambrogi:

Well, I hereby endorse everything Cat just said. I mean, I agree with every point she just made. And the point about regulatory reform is a particularly important one, and I think we’re all aware of that. I think we were seeing the evidence, particularly in Utah, that experiments with changing the regulation of the practice of law can reap benefits in terms of enhancing access to justice. So I think that’s critical. So on top of all of that, I mean I do think the part of the problem is that the system, the industry is obviously weighted toward big money. I mean, I kind of almost jokingly said in my article, the famous bank robber, Willie Sutton, when asked why he robs banks, says that’s where the money is. And in legal tech world where the money is is in big law and big corporate legal departments, I’m starting to believe there’s an obligation even among those bigger legal tech companies, among those larger law firms, among those corporate legal to be doing more to maybe divert or share some of these resources in ways that can help address the access to justice problem.

We all talk about lawyers pro bono obligations, but maybe some of these larger companies in this sector have some obligations to be doing more in this sector. I mean, maybe starting even with the investors, VCs and private equity, I know it sounds counterintuitive, but maybe they should in fact be more intentionally allocating some money to access to justice causes. It doesn’t have to be a lot out of all the money they’re putting into legal tech. If they took just a fraction of that and put it toward access to justice tech, it could make a big difference. And there is money to be made that sector, it’s not like everything being done in that sector has to be nonprofit. The justice technology, Association represents a number of companies that are focused on the justice tech sector, and they’re all for-profit companies that are making money at it.

There’s huge examples like Legal Zoom and Rocket Lawyer that are serving to some extent this sector, although more kind of middle class, the middle class sector perhaps. But something else, and I know we’ve talked about it in other contexts, but the idea that some of these big legal tech companies that are developing technology, why not share some of that technology with legal services offices and make it available? Some of them do that already, and maybe there needs to be a call across the industry for more of these companies to in some way donate some of their technology and make it available to legal services, to access to justice causes, to law schools and other ways. One of the interesting things after I wrote that article, I got a lot of people who reach out to me to say, I’ve never really thought about that sector, the sort of the legal services sector or the access to justice sector. People in legal tech who just don’t think about it, they’re tuned out to it. And so I might also put in a plug for those people to go to IDC next year and learn more about what’s happening in that world and what kinds of issues they’re working on. I mean, it is fascinating to see the level of innovation, a level of talk about innovation that’s going on in that sector.

Cat Moon:

Well, Bob, you’re describing this lack of awareness. So folks who are building legal tech for large law firms in-house legal departments are simply unaware of the civil justice crisis and what’s happening. There are a lot of lawyers who are unaware, and in fact, I have undertaken somewhat of a campaign to just share on a regular basis data about the civil justice gap across the country because I think as a profession, we have an obligation to understand where there is market failure. And I think it’s fair to identify this as market failure, and it’s not simply folks who qualify for federal legal aid, but it’s the large middle of our society as well who can’t afford access to legal help. And I think there’s an opportunity to make legal tech companies aware and to invite them into these conversations, to invite them in actively into ITC.

And I think they would be so impressed and energized and inspired by the scrappiness of the folks in legal aid organizations around the country who the lawyers who work with their tech people to build things. These people are getting their hands dirty with this, and it’s really amazing. And Ron, you mentioned that the pro bono in this respect might look more like IT teams or innovation teams going to help. I also think there are a lot of lawyers who if you said there’s this project and we’re going to go build something, they would jump in because it is so much fun and it’s really meaningful work and to contribute to something that can scale access to help instead of just spending two hours helping three people, which is awesome. I’m not saying that’s bad, but there’s so much opportunity and I think we don’t know what people would jump into because we’re not offering the opportunities.

So I think that’s a really important point to understand. So there’s a big gap in understanding and knowledge here, which I think that we can endeavor to cross, and I think that that would make a big difference. I think the other thing to keep in mind here is that the folks in big law technology are primarily building things that face lawyers, whereas a big opportunity in legal aid is building technology that could be consumer facing to really scale. So there are some differences there that might make some of the constraints a little bit tougher, but again, it’s a really fascinating opportunity. So I think making people aware of the challenges to be solved and inviting them in to create solutions, we need to create those opportunities because I have a sense people would really jump in.

Ron Flagg:

I’m also wondering, I’m sort of doubling down on what I said before. If large law firms and corporate law departments could really take a lead in that they’re the customers, they’re the ones ultimately that are spending hundreds of millions, billions of dollars on this technology, I would think that their partners that are the vendors that are providing them the services, the software, the hardware, if one of their big customers or a whole bunch of their big customers said, look, this is something that we as the legal community and we as Americans need to work on and we want you to help us work on that, that’s going to get probably more attention than if I go shout at the top of my lungs to the tech world and say, we really need your help. Come follow me.

Bob Ambrogi:

I agree very much. And I was thinking kind of a parallel to that thought that a lot of the large law firms have people working in them full-time who are pro bono coordinators. They also have people working in them full-time who are innovation developers, coordinators, whatever they call them. And maybe those folks should be coming together and thinking about how can we as a law firm, how can we as a community be combining our innovation efforts and our pro bono efforts to better serve the justice gap at large.

Ron Flagg:

Cat, as you were talking about the lack of knowledge about the justice gap throughout the country, including among lawyers, sort of begs the questions, how do law schools fit into this conversation both about educating about the justice gap, but also in the use of technology to help bridge the justice gap?

Cat Moon:

I think that law schools have an incredible opportunity and an obligation. So we certainly should be making sure that our graduates understand as much as possible the breadth and depth of the access to civil justice, access to criminal justice gap that exists in this country. They are entering a profession which theoretically at least has an obligation to be addressing this gap in meaningful ways and understanding the problem must happen before solutions can be created. And so I think there’s an incredible opportunity and obligation, and I certainly do that in all of the courses I teach at Vanderbilt, and it’s not a clearly defined point within the traditional legal ed curriculum. So I think there’s work to be done there. The opportunity as well is to give our students opportunities in law school to experience working on these kinds of projects because if they are inculturated into the idea that this is part of how we operate as lawyers, this is part of how we help bridge that gap, close the gap, then they’re going to go out into the practice and they’re going to be equipped and empowered to really lead what I think is a pretty significant cultural change that needs to happen for this to really work all the things we’ve been talking about for it to really work because law students are, they’re blank slates.

They are not yet jaded. They have not yet really been enculturated into the legal profession. And so there is an opportunity really to give them tools and mindsets that will allow them to lead in this transformation. And I see more and more schools really meaningfully grappling with that opportunity and that obligation and doing things about it. But as with all other aspects of the challenges we face in legal profession, there’s still a long way to go. But I’m an internal optimist, and so I am very hopeful about what we in legal education can do to contribute to moving this forward.

Ron Flagg:

I always love to end on positive notes, but I’d like to give both of you a chance to share one last big point you’d like the listeners to take away today. And also, if you dare, if we’re having this conversation five years from now, what are we going to be talking about? Bob?

Bob Ambrogi:

Yeah, Ron. Well, first of all, thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. It’s been an honor to be on here, especially with Cat as my other guest. But I think back to, I know that the Legal Services corporation has begun a process of revisiting the summit report it did a decade ago when it brought together a bunch of thinkers and practitioners to talk about how can technology be used to address the justice gap and put out a report then. And I know that process has started a new, and a new report will eventually come out, but one of the key points, one of probably the overarching point of that report is it was essentially that technology has to be a key part, plays a vital role, is what it said in the report in transforming service delivery so that we can address the justice gap.

We can’t forget that we can’t ever fully address or solve the justice gap without technology being a big part of that equation. And I think the entire legal industry needs to be thinking about that and thinking about how we can do that better, not just the parts of the legal industry that tend to focus on low income clients or consumer facing clients. We all have a responsibility, I think, to think about that if we’re ever going to change the legal system. So I think that’s kind of my takeaway. And in five years from now, I don’t know, I’m not ever the optimist. I mean, I thought when that report came out 10 years ago, it set out a fantastic blueprint for things we could do to enhance access to justice. And unfortunately, 10 years later, we’re still talking about some of those things. I do think part of what Cat said in terms of the law, schools taking more responsibility around this, and I think we are raising awareness to a greater extent now about this than we ever have before. But I keep my fingers crossed that we’ll have made some progress in five years.

Ron Flagg:

Cat, we need your optimism. We’re going to give you the final word. That’s my

Bob Ambrogi:

Bright point,

Ron Flagg:

The final word

Cat Moon:

Here. So the only way I can show up every day and keep doing what I’m doing nearly 30 years into this is to be optimistic. And I think, Bob, you’re probably more optimistic than you’re willing to admit because you’ve been doing this for a while as well. With that, I’m going to end with predicting what our conversation is in five years. So my hope is that our conversation in five years around this very topic is that starting in 2024, there was a convening and a dynamic decision amongst those who have the power and means to make a difference, to come together and cross silos, cross disciplines, and meaningfully, radically collaborate to do all the things which we know are possible. They are possible, and they are a choice. So I predict in five years we’ve had that convening, folks have made different better choices and instead of wondering what if what can be, we are actually talking about the things that have been done that are having an incredibly meaningful impact. That is my prediction.

Ron Flagg:

Well, that is a wonderful vision, and I’ll just say amen to that. And I’ll say Bob and Cat or Bobcat Cat as they’re going to from here on be known, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your insights about technology and access to justice. And I want to thank our listeners for tuning into this episode of Talk Justice. Please subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. You’ll get to hear Cat’s episodes, which are the best. Thanks everyone. Stay well.

Speaker 2:

Podcast guest speakers views, thoughts and opinions are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the legal services corporation’s views, thoughts, or opinions. The information and guidance discussed in this podcast are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as legal advice. You should not make decision based on this podcast content without seeking legal or other professional advice.