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As fall associates settle into the reality of legal practice, I am taking the opportunity to share a variety of research “best practices.” These rules can be applied across all environments: law firm, corporate, public service and government. New associates are facing the messy reality of needing to harness legal and factual issues that need…

Today the American Association of Law Libraries announced the release of it’s 2nd State of the Profession Survey. The Survey was created and administered by a State of the Profession Special Committee which created three different versions of the survey for academic, firm/corporate and government legal information professionals. The report was designed to gather insights on the opportunities and challenges facing legal information professionals across a wide variety of roles in academic, law firm and government organizations. The members of AALL include law school professors, CKOs, Law  Library /KM Directors, researchers,
Continue Reading AALL Releases 2nd State of the Profession – Highlighting Tech Leadership and Resilience Through the Pandemic

Today Reynen Court – an innovative software company supported by a consortium of 20 global law firms announced that they had hired law librarian, legal technologist and innovation provocateur Sarah Glassmeyer  for the role of Legal Tech Curator. The press release describes this as ” a  lynchpin role in generating contact and strategy for the Solution Store which is at the heart of the Reynen Court Platform.”

Reyen Court allows participating law firms to test innovative, new, cloud based technologies. The platform is designed to speed up the historically, lengthy testing and evaluation time normally associated with the implementation of new technology. One of the hottest new
Continue Reading Law Librarian, Visionary, Provocateur Sarah Glassmeyer Joins Reynen Court in Strategic Legal Tech Curator Role

COVID exposed the stark boundaries of traditional legal publishing. Lexis and Westlaw built their reputations by developing robust libraries of  federal and state primary  law material ( cases, statutes and regulations). The issuances of individual state agencies e,g, health departments as well as the terra incognita of village, township, borough, and city law was not…

We were all blindsided as 2020 unfolded, yet the momentum of technological change and innovation assured a steady stream of new products. I have identified five trends, which I have divided into three categories: unforeseeable, continuing and surprising.

The trends I believe are worth noting — Unforeseeable: COVID-19 impacts; Predicable: state court analytics and innovative workflow tools; Surprising: legal news re-emerges as a competitive focus among major legal publishers and tech marketplaces emerge.

Unforeseeable: COVID-Related Trends

COVID alone triggered four subtrends:

  • The emergence of local law and ephemeral publications. Major legal vendors were no more prepared to track county level health department issuances and Governors’ executive orders than the average law firm. To make things worse these “documents” were issued in a myriad of social media formats, texts, tweets, Facebook pages … . What’s a law firm to do?
  • Librarians and KM professionals stepped into the vacuum and established protocols for locating and harnessing the untidy universe of COVID-19 ephemera.
  • Law firms became publishers of original COVID-19 resources (leveraging the local documents harnessed by librarians).
  • Legal publishers turned out an unprecedented number of free legal resources covering COVID-19 issues. I covered this trend in an earlier ATL post.

Continuing Trends: State Court Analytics And Workflow Tools

Workflow ToolsContinue Reading 5 (Unforeseeable, Predicable, And Surprising) Legal Tech Trends In 2020

Please mark your calendar for a Private Law Librarians and Information Professionals (PLLIP) Webinar from the Education and Professional Development Committee:

Feb 6, 2019 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM CST

Start It or Stop It? Jump Starting Initiatives and Innovation in 2019

Description:

Listen in on a lively conversation that will help you jump start

…

Fastcase Announces 2018 “Fastcase 50” Honorees

The Award Honors 50 Innovators, Visionaries, and Leaders in Law

 Washington, DC (July 9, 2018) – Legal publisher Fastcase today announced the company’s annual list of “Fastcase 50” honorees. Selected from online nominations, the award recognizes the year’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries, and leaders in the law. Many of the 2018 honorees are pioneers in the areas of access to justice, artificial intelligence, and visualization tools for legal data.

 View the 2018 winners at www.fastcase.com/fastcase50/2018

Since the inaugural awards in 2011, the Fastcase 50 has illuminated entrepreneurs and visionaries who are catapulting law and legal technology into a new era. The Fastcase 50 class of 2018 represents a diverse group of lawyers, legal technologists, policymakers, law librarians, bar association executives, and innovators from all walks of life.

“The Fastcase 50 Award season is exciting for us each year, as we get to honor a collection of smart, driven innovators with a passion to improve our profession,” said Fastcase CEO Ed Walters. “It’s fun for our team each year to draw inspiration from our heroes, many of whom are doing terrific, unsung work at the frontiers of law.”

This is the eighth class of Fastcase 50 honorees, and for the eighth consecutive year, the company received a record number of nominees. Fastcase is happy to introduce the Fastcase 50 Class of 2018. “This year’s class makes 400 honorees,” Walters said, “and if you’d like to see who has done some of the most important work in law, we have compiled all 400 biographies by year on our website. This group is a constant source of inspiration for us.” You can find a list of all past honorees at www.fastcase.com/fastcase50, and a Twitter list of posts by honorees at https://twitter.com/fastcase/lists/fastcase-50.

Congratulations to the 2018 Class of Fastcase 50 recipients:

Shruti Ajitsaria, Counsel and Head of Fuse, Allen & Overy

Kenton Brice, Director of Technology Innovation, The University of Oklahoma College of Law

John Browning, Shareholder, Passman & Jones; Adjunct Professor of Law, SMU Dedman School of Law; Adjunct Professor of Law, Texas Wesleyan University School of Law

Femi Cadmus, Director, J. Michael Goodson Law Library at Duke University School of LAw; Vice-President, American Association of Law Librarians
Continue Reading Fastcase Announces 2018 Fastcase 50 Winners Including AALL Executive Director, 3 CKO/Library Directors, Law Firm Partners and Tech Innovators