1. TLS0070 Introduction to
Legal Technology
Lecture 10
Legal technology and you
University of Turku Law School 2015-03-10
Anna Ronkainen @ronkaine
anna.ronkainen@onomatics.com

2. So, what should you do
about all this?

3. Pretend as if nothing has happened?
- maybe even get a dictaphone and a
secretary? become a power user of the fax
machine?
- unlikely to be successful as a strategy (except
maybe artisanal lawyers will be in demand in
Brooklyn or Portland...)

4. Start your own legal startup?
- my advice is: don’t – not right now, anyway
- in general, way too many startups target
problems which only exist in the founders’
minds (not a problem for legal – yet)
- instead, I’d suggest finding a more conventional
job in one’s preferred field of legal practice
(any, really) and doing it for a few years with an
open mind to really learn what the actual pain
points are and how to solve them
- also, assembling a solid team of founders can
(and should) take time

5. Learn how to program?
- not a bad idea at all
- even if the goal isn’t to become a hardcore full-
stack coder, it teaches you how to think
computationally, which helps you with
- how tech works in general
- bridging the gap between legal practice and
those who implement legal tech
- possible avenues:
- take a computer science minor here or at your
favourite university
- MOOCs

6. Take more courses in legal technology?
- not a bad idea either, except that you are on
the wrong continent for that...
- US law schools that do this the best:
http://www.americanbar.org/publications/law_practice_magazine/2014/
july-august/teaching-the-technology-of-practice-the-10-top-schools.html
- Law Without Walls (LWOW): a legal startup
simulation course with participants from all
over the world, also available as an all-
online version (LWOW X)

7. Get a job?
- well, duh
- still, with tech, NewLaw and everything,
you’ll have a lot more options for your legal
career
- the only constant is change, so don’t take
mine (or Susskind’s) words at face value, but
rather keep your eyes open and consider the
job market from your own perspective (skill
set, region etc.)

8. New types of legal
employers
(based on Susskind ch. 12)

9. Global accounting firms
- e.g. Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, EY
- have offered legal services supporting their
legal work in many European countries
- all now also registered as ABSs in the UK
- high volume in their specific niche (tax,
accounting, compliance etc.), allows for
investing into tools for greater efficiency

10. Major legal publishers
- Thomson Reuters, RELX (Reed Elsevier),
Wolters Kluwer, and their subsidiaries across
the world
- all have already major legal tech offerings
(e.g. Westlaw, LexisNexis, Corsearch)
- likely to keep expanding through both
buyouts and organic growth

11. Legal know-how providers
- e.g. Practical Law Company (UK)
- provide legal information in processed form
for law firms and in-house lawyers
- legal updates, research
- business intelligence
- checklists for recurring legal tasks
- prepared legal documents

12. Legal process outsourcers
- moving high-volume routine tasks outside
the firm (or in-house legal dept) proper
- especially common for US firms to outsource
bulk tasks to India or Philippines
- outsourcing abroad a realistic option only if
language and legal culture shared by a less
expensive country
- also, within the same jurisdiction, a region
with a lower cost of living can be attractive

13. High Street retail businesses
- e.g. Co-operative Legal Services (or HOK-
Elannon Hautauspalvelu in Finland)
- offer individual legal advice to consumers in
typical areas of law (family, estate, consumer,
employment etc.), often at a fixed price

14. Legal leasing agencies
- e.g. Axiom; can also be a unit within a law
firm
- basically a temp agency for lawyers, for
example for strengthening an in-house legal
team during a trial, merger etc.
- postings typically last for months or even
years

15. New-look law firms
- e.g. Clearspire, Riverview Law, Fondia
- provide legal services, often packaged and/
or under different pricing models
- can offer more flexibility etc. to the
employee, often better places to work than
traditional law firms
- usually different ownership structure, does
not offer the same path to $$$ as
partnership in traditional firms

16. Online legal service providers
- at the moment this basically means legal
startups (but many of them ought to mature
eventually)
- legal expertise can be needed in many different
forms
- normal manual lawyering when online is just a
front-end
- designing, building and testing legal AI (in
which case better make sure you can program)
- sales and other customer-facing tasks around
legal AI, especially when selling to lawyers
- still very early days for this sector as a whole

17. Legal management consultancies
- management consulting specifically for law
firms (either stand-alone or as a department
of a generalist consultancy)
- legal process analysis
- legal process management
- legal risk analysis
- additional (business and management) skills
needed here as well

18. Legal design consultancies
- e.g. Lexpert (in Helsinki; the only legal
design consultancy I’ve ever heard of)
- lawyers and graphic designers working
together to improve the clarity, precision
etc. of their clients’ legal documents
- usability and user experience consultancies
for legal tech ought to also start emerging at
some point as well

19. New jobs for lawyers
(based on Susskind ch. 11)

20. Expert trusted adviser
- basically a fancy name for traditional
lawyering
- still, with competition from new types of
services, there are new requirements for
those who still offer “bespoke” services
- must have very deep expertise in their field
to handle the most complicated legal issues
- must be able to offer integrated advice
considering the client’s situation beyond just
the legal issues

21. Enhanced practitioner
- junior lawyer, doing a better job thanks to
technology
- assists e.g. the expert trusted advisor in their
work
- probably leads to reduced demand in
comparison with the traditional associate
lawyer job market

22. Legal knowledge engineer
- someone with an in-depth knowledge of some
particular field of law (but limited tech skills)
- working on embedding that knowledge in legal
tech solutions in collaboration with software
engineers
- almost like conventional legal research except that
the same brief has to fit a wide range of cases
- in my opinion, this may be a viable alternative for
someone with already >10 years of experience from
traditional lawyering, but new graduates should
expect to need more tech (or other) skills

23. Legal technologist
- someone with in-depth knowledge in both
law and software development
- will be in great demand across the entire
(growing) legal tech sector
- typically acts as an intermediary between
the Jobs To Be Done and the
implementation team (usually with a tech-
only background)
- “translates” law into algorithms

24. Legal hybrid
- someone with deep expertise in both law and
some other field, for example:
- family lawyer with a psychology degree
- commercial lawyer as a strategy consultant
- corporate lawyer as a deal broker
- don’t think you can fake getting the non-law
expertise in a week or two (just as you can’t get
a law degree in two weeks)
- can be a challenge to find employment if jobs
for that particular combination of skills don’t
exist yet

25. Legal process analyst
- a production economy engineer with legal
specialization (or a lawyer with additional
studies in production economy)
- works on optimizing workflow and internal
processes at law firms, legal departments,
courts etc., more or less using standard
industry principles
- innovative Finnish research in this field, see
Petra Pekkanen’s 2011 LUT dissertation

26. Legal project manager
- analyzes major cases (e.g. complex litigation)
and/or the activities of an entire department
- breaks up that work into smaller subtasks
- plans, schedules and assigns those subtasks
- for this kind of work you’ll probably want
some litigation and/or management
experience plus some type of project
management certification

27. ODR practitioner
- negotiates, mediates or decides cases via an
online dispute resolution platform
- alternatively, gives legal advice to clients
who have a pending ODR case
- at least mediation training helpful in
addition to the basic law degree

28. Legal management consultant
- lawyers in management roles (e.g. partners
at law firms) typically have little prior
management experience or training (just like
professors...)
- legal work has some unique (but also many
less unique) management needs
- hence, a dedicated legal specialization is
likely to emerge also within the
management consulting profession

29. Legal risk manager
- general counsel consider risk management
to be their number one priority
- so far very limited offering in this field
- most lawyers work reactively, but risk
managers must work proactively
- anticipate legal needs, predict legal risks
- pre-empt legal problems before they arise
- when not feasible, try to contain legal
problems to limit the risk

30. Legal designer
- someone who works to optimize how legal
information is presented for maximal clarity,
efficiency etc.
- what information is presented
- in what order
- best format for different types of information
- different media: contracts, forms, UI/UX
- could work e.g. for a legal design consultancy
or a government agency
- the legal design work can be done with pencil
and paper

31. Legal product manager
- product-market fit doesn’t happen by itself, and
legal startups are no exception here
- mandatory for legal tech but also for less techy
packaged legal services
- someone with the market insight (research as
needed) to decide what should go into the
product and how it should be implemented
- and, often more importantly, what shouldn’t!
- http://vooza.com/videos/just-say-no/

32. Legal entrepreneur
- the “all of the above”
- someone who sees an unmet need on the legal
market and figures out what to to about it
- ideas are cheap, execution is what matters
- no support functions like in an established
company, has to be prepared to do everything
themself (at least in the beginning)
- big risks but potentially also big rewards
(lawyers are typically very risk-averse)

33. Questions?