LegalTech Lever

Leveraging legal innovation and technology to improve legal services.

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By: Northwestern University, Pritzker School of Law

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Daniel W. Linna Jr.

Latest from LegalTech Lever

This last fall, I began updating the Legal Services Innovation Index, focusing first on the Catalog of Law Firm Innovations. I have had the help of three research assistants, Northwestern second-year law students Lauren Diner, Douglas Lavey, and Yoon Hoo Lee. We’ve added 112 entries to Version 1.02 of the Law Firm Innovation Catalog, for a total of 334 entries. I previously described the methodology employed to curate the list of innovations on the…
Last year’s launch of the Legal Services Innovation Index attracted much more attention than I anticipated. I knew that some would find the information useful, having been in the position of trying to gather data about innovation both as a lawyer in a law firm and a professor in a law school. But I underestimated the demand. To date, there have been over 29,600 views of the three Tableau visualizations that make up the Index:…
algorithm
Algorithms have a substantial impact on everything happening around us. Most everyone would agree that the impact of algorithms, computational technologies, and artificial intelligence on everyday life, institutions, and society will only grow, and rapidly. Yet most law students and lawyers lack the foundational knowledge to generally explain how these technologies work, much less assess them. One way to address this is to teach law students about artificial intelligence and computational technologies. I’m teaching several …
institute for the future of law practice
How can we better train law students and lawyers for the future? Indiana University Law Professor Bill Henderson has been working on this problem for a long time. In 2017, Bill joined forces with Bill Mooz, an experienced lawyer and former general counsel who in 2014 established and led the Tech Lawyer Accelerator (TLA) program at the University of Colorado Law School. In November 2017 at a Forum on Legal Evolution event hosted by…
In July I had the honor of teaching for the inaugural Legal Technology and Operations summer program at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany. The program attracted 33 students from all over the globe: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Estonia, Egypt, Germany, Honduras, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and Ukraine. About 75% of the students were professionals taking leave to participate in the program, including two judges and…
Northwestern-Pritzker-School-of-Law
I am thrilled to share that I’ve joined Northwestern Pritzker School of Law as a Visiting Professor of Law for the 2018-19 academic year. I’m very excited to have this opportunity to contribute to Northwestern Law’s many initiatives to continuously improve the value of the education delivered to its students and prepare its students to have an impact in our society. Northwestern Law’s Strategic Plan, “Leading Law,” recognizes that law schools are “educating lawyers for…
Why do so many of today’s problems remain unsolved? Often, we have no shortage of viable solutions. Additionally, in many cases we have a critical mass of people committed to solving the problem. Yet despite abundant ideas, energy, and action, the problems persist. How can we improve? Start by making scientific thinking a habit and using a Mission (or Business-Model) canvas. Scientific thinking is embedded in lean thinking, as illustrated in Toyota Kata. Many…
Figure 1: Average hits for innovation Google searches across law firm websites. For context, review overview and methodology at LegalTechIndex.com.
Figure 1: Average hits for innovation Google searches across law firm websites. For context, review overview and methodology at LegalTechIndex.com.
Legal industry leaders and analysts seem to suggest that United Kingdom law firms are out in front when it comes to legal innovation and technology adoption. The data my research team and I have assembled for the Legal Services Innovation Index lend some support to this. Having just launched this project, I wanted to share a few Tableau Vizzes that summarize the LSII data on this topic. As discussed on the LSII website, it’s important to…
Legal Services Innovation Index
I’m thrilled to launch the Legal Services Innovation Index, Phase 1, Version 1.0: LegalTechInnovation.com My student research team and I are looking forward to input and discussion, receiving submissions of law firm innovations, and working to improve this resource. So far, we’ve received a great response: This is fantastic. It's maybe the best resource I've ever seen emerge in the legal innovation space. Huge kudos to @DanLinna and @LegalRnD. https://t.co/v7IrEiF58k — Jordan Furlong (@jordan_law21)…
In his May 2016 keynote at FutureLaw 2016 at Stanford Law School, Jim Sandman, Legal Services Corporation president, suggested that we rank and assess law firms on their use of technology. He argued that this could accelerate the adoption of technology in law firms and might stimulate investment in the development of new technology that could benefit all who need legal services. This was just one of ten excellent suggestions Jim provided for accelerating technology adoption…