How many people are going to be put out of work by this.
Four Areas of Legal Ripe for Disruption by Smart Startups
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Re: Four Areas of Legal Ripe for Disruption by Smart Startups
#22PlainSite (http://www.plainsite.org), which I run, is tackling the research end of things.
Re: Four Areas of Legal Ripe for Disruption by Smart Startups
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't look like it. Perhaps you'd like to fill us in on it? If my guess of what it sounds like is anything what it actually is, then I'd be really curious about knowing more.
You can use a bitcoin-like system to build an agent that holds money in escrow and then automatically delivers it when a condition is met[1]. This is the simplest form of a "Smart Contract." Most contracts are credible because their terms can be enforced by sanctioned violence. "Smart Contracts" are credible because they are enforced by distributed verifiable cryptographically-secure automation. [1] For example, when…
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Re: Four Areas of Legal Ripe for Disruption by Smart Startups
#24The article mentions some interesting things, but I have a few quibbles: > But even with today’s modern communication tools, both customer experience and lawyer workflow have remained stagnant. At a large firm, legal practice is unrecognizable compared to even 10-15 years ago. Everything is electronic: filing and docketing, document collection/scanning/OCR, legal research, document management (DMS + version control).…
One lawyer I talk to says that every single filing he makes at court has to be paper. He bought a wheely suitcase to carry all this documentation around to court. If everything is electronic, his firm and the judges they deal with didn't get the message...
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Re: Four Areas of Legal Ripe for Disruption by Smart Startups
#25The article mentions some interesting things, but I have a few quibbles: > But even with today’s modern communication tools, both customer experience and lawyer workflow have remained stagnant. At a large firm, legal practice is unrecognizable compared to even 10-15 years ago. Everything is electronic: filing and docketing, document collection/scanning/OCR, legal research, document management (DMS + version control).…
> And computers still don't really understand either what issue you're looking for or what issue a case is about. So ancient technology (search for this word near that word) still rules the day.
I think this is the key. The big revolution in legal research that I'm waiting for is the ability for the computer to understand something like: all cases where a) Claim X was brought as a counterclaim and not as the original claim; b) counter-claimant made Y argument citing to case Z but not case W; d) requested relief was R; and e) court made its decision based on Factor F. Until then, "search for this word near that word (and boolean operators)" is extremely powerful and can get me most of the way pretty quickly.
Re: Four Areas of Legal Ripe for Disruption by Smart Startups
#26It's hard to get excited about software for lawyers, and I think that's why Disco has flown under the radar a bit, but I think these guys are going to be huge. They've made exponential improvements in e-discovery software.
I suppose you could say made exponential improvements if you take a very small exponent. What they have done is to make a nice interface and apparently fast search.
One concern that I have is this "Secure Infrastructure--no installation required". This suggests the cloud. The other is "Upload your data by FTP".
Think about e-discovery for a moment. The toxic material stored is pretty much a superset of all known toxic material--PCI, PII, HIPA, and so on. Many customers require physical control of where this information goes. Zero installation means that it is not a server under your control.
There are many pieces to the EDRM process (http://www.edrm.net/resources/edrm-stages-explained) and it is not clear that DISCO covers all of them. 'tucros3141 in a parallel comment mentions some of them.
Re: Four Areas of Legal Ripe for Disruption by Smart Startups
#27The article mentions some interesting things, but I have a few quibbles: > But even with today’s modern communication tools, both customer experience and lawyer workflow have remained stagnant. At a large firm, legal practice is unrecognizable compared to even 10-15 years ago. Everything is electronic: filing and docketing, document collection/scanning/OCR, legal research, document management (DMS + version control).…
One lawyer I talk to says that every single filing he makes at court has to be paper. He bought a wheely suitcase to carry all this documentation around to court. If everything is electronic, his firm and the judges they deal with didn't get the message...
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Re: Four Areas of Legal Ripe for Disruption by Smart Startups
#28The article mentions some interesting things, but I have a few quibbles: > But even with today’s modern communication tools, both customer experience and lawyer workflow have remained stagnant. At a large firm, legal practice is unrecognizable compared to even 10-15 years ago. Everything is electronic: filing and docketing, document collection/scanning/OCR, legal research, document management (DMS + version control).…
Or, software is maybe too good, but law firms that bill by the hour are not interested in efficiency improvements because more hours means more money for them. Fortunately, with fixed fees becoming more popular this is changing.
Re: Four Areas of Legal Ripe for Disruption by Smart Startups
#29The article mentions some interesting things, but I have a few quibbles: > But even with today’s modern communication tools, both customer experience and lawyer workflow have remained stagnant. At a large firm, legal practice is unrecognizable compared to even 10-15 years ago. Everything is electronic: filing and docketing, document collection/scanning/OCR, legal research, document management (DMS + version control).…
One lawyer I talk to says that every single filing he makes at court has to be paper. He bought a wheely suitcase to carry all this documentation around to court. If everything is electronic, his firm and the judges they deal with didn't get the message...
This really is jurisdiction dependent. At larger law firms that have to deal with paper courts still have runners that handle the docket and other details of filing (assuming the court allows it). At small firms this is the lawyer's responsibility.
Re: Four Areas of Legal Ripe for Disruption by Smart Startups
#30The article mentions some interesting things, but I have a few quibbles: > But even with today’s modern communication tools, both customer experience and lawyer workflow have remained stagnant. At a large firm, legal practice is unrecognizable compared to even 10-15 years ago. Everything is electronic: filing and docketing, document collection/scanning/OCR, legal research, document management (DMS + version control).…
One lawyer I talk to says that every single filing he makes at court has to be paper. He bought a wheely suitcase to carry all this documentation around to court. If everything is electronic, his firm and the judges they deal with didn't get the message...
While it is very common to bring printed docs to court, it was probably the last step of the process where he printed everything. Everything before that was probably electronic and even if he received printed docs, those would be scanned and OCR'ed.