LawTech Camp London 2012: In Tweets

In my last post I reviewed LawTech Camp London 2012. I finished that post with a promise to do a follow up post highlighting tweets from the Conference. I find tweeting at conferences a good way to record salient points for future reference and often it results in widening the debate amongst others who are unable to attend but are interested in the subject matter and thus the Twitter Stream.

This was one of the most Twitter friendly conferences I have attended (you were told at Lex2012 to switch your smart phones off to prevent audio interference!) with two large screens displaying live tweets. However, as has already been mentioned in my review, a shorter hashtag than #LawTechCampLondon should be considered for next year’s conference.

Ann Priestley’s graphs of tweeters and tweet volume at the Conference show that I managed to produce 5.5% of the tweets. Joint Champion Twegals are Paul Bernal and Chrissie Lightfoot both with 9.5% each of the tweets:-

Well here goes… a selection of Tweets from LawTech Camp London 2012:-

#LawTechCampLondon just got underway with a statement that “law schools should have laboratories”. I wonder what that means to #Lawyers

Ajaz Ahmed from Legal365 immediately points out the elephant in the room: customers hate lawyers!

Analysis of what’s wrong with the profession – cost, fee structure, service, accessibility. Ouch!

Need to wake up to the fact that customers (not “clients”) hate lawyers

Other than Riverview Law not a lot being done by lawyers to change how they do things

legal market too big to ignore by entrepeneurs – Ajaz Ahmed

Law firms are changing the window dressing with websites etc, but the industry requires fundamental change

legal356 founder not beating around the bush. Imperative to change biz model

Innovators will come from outside the industry. Won’t be lawyers who innovate

Entrepreneurs have the ability to put themselves in the customers shoes and have empathy for them – Ajaz Ahmed

Interesting. Ahmed attacks investors for focusing on ‘imaginary spreadsheets’ and not good ideas

#lawyers – client loyalty will be tested – new entrants can take market share. Put yourselves in client’s shoes

Customers opinion shouldn’t shape your proposition

Don’t sell law. Sell solutions to customers’ problems

Not about the brand (eg QualitySolicitors) but about disruptive change

Apparently lawyers are hated less than Lana Del Rey!

Feeling that lawyers had it too good for too long

#lawyers need to innovate – “a bit of a shake” keeps this going

Clients want lawyers to be enabled by tech, not replaced

Three businesses to any law firm: Rocket Science, Relationship and Routine

I want a lawyer who understands me / my business = RELATIONSHIP

Technology need to systemize the routine tasks, still needs work here

We tend to over-estimate short term effects and under-estimate the long term effects

Don’t let short term disappointment convince you to take your eye off long term effects

The end of lawyers? K Doolan from @eversheds says no (worst is over)

Absolutely right to suggest more joint ventures between client and lawyer

Huge demand for greater cost transparency, firm & client need to be in the same game

Prediction: Growth happening and we are now ready to take a big step forward.

What are lawyers for? asks @StephenMayson Answer: to protect and promote the public interest

Stephen Mayson – new tech, social media etc summed up by the word ‘difference’, not ‘replacement’, ‘annihilation’ etc

It is a profession in the context of a commercial venture.

Law can be a business within the context of a profession, not either or.

Lawyers: stop doing things you have done before either because you can’t make money or because you are not good at them

Cherish ethical and integrity in the profession and embrace competition – Stephen Mayson says

Two key messages: cherish professional integrity and embrace competition

Law historically began as a business not a profession but now has to rediscover business roots

Price for value not cost/time

Train lawyers for the future market not the past market

Strategise for difference

A lot of entrepenaurial commercial guys would love to shape up a law firm bit mostly blocked by intimidated partners

Public sector is institutionally routed in the past and resistant to change

Kent CC provides legal services to 330 other public sector organisations

legal services in Kent County Council now net income generator

Well if all public sector lawyers adopted Geoff Wild’s approach, the rest of us – lawyers and tax payers – be better off!

“The species that survive are those most adaptable to change” Darwin

Want to manage something? Measure it.

A quarter of a million dollars on conference calls. 30K on photocopying Not uncommon. Still crazy.

Gruner shows how lawyers must take VALUE seriously not just costs.

You cannot measure the value attorneys provide – Ron Gruner disagrees – underutilized information

SkyAnalytics will scare pants off most #lawyers I reck! Comparison value analytics in hands of #Entrepreneur clients OMG

Need to understand how law works so that tech can be applied to it

Lawyers are ‘proud to be archaic’

We are lawyers second and people first!

Some real bombshells coming out of #LawTechCampLondon – innovate, be clear on costs, apply technology, understand clients…? #revolutionary

Wake up or if you are the choir sing

Something tells me #lawtechcamplondon just disrupted the way we do “futurist” conferences. Take note. Do it different and bring change.

Analogy between publishing industry & legal profession – how will #lawyers react to disruption?

c15 years in legal profession, and I don’t think I’ve been at an event with so much energy and challenging thinking #LawTechCampLondon

Something accountants & lawyers don’t get: many clients don’t want to meet you in person. Skype, phone, email fine

Need to radically rethink legal ed. Little tech & little interactive tech

Unmet need for legal services is overwhelming

The greatest problem faced by the legal profession: law firms work for big companies, not real people

If speakers so far at #lawtechcamplondon are right, we’ve seen nothing yet. People here embrace it but rest of legal world miles behind

Technology making the law more efficient, but are we innovating to address the real issue?

Brilliant – do law firms want to be Kodak or Instagram?

Difference between Kodak and Instagram is culture – Renee points to as difference between winners and losers

6.5m pages on UK govt legislation website

Challenge for govt is keeping legislation database up to date with small editorial team

Expert Participation being launched by The National Archives to open source the legislation database

Should govt really be asking us to keep legislation website up to date? Surely that’s their job

Reckon Govt will spend more time/money reviewing third party legislation updates than they would if did it themselves

Wikipedia employs fewer than 80 staff yet 3rd biggest site on I’net. UK Govt might get more bang per buck.

Is secret to being a legal guru great hair? cf @richardsusskind @StephenMayson @JohnAFlood #countsmeout

@richardsusskind opening: “disconcerted the people here are even more evangelical than I am!”

Challenges: 1. more for less 2. Liberalisation 3. Technology

Richard Susskind doesn’t think the worst is over… very much the opposite!

Susskind hearing from in-house counsel that legal spend is going to come down further – worst not over for law firms

Susskind: procurement-driven 30-50% reduction in corporate legal spend expected in next few years

Key point is that law must be broken down and must ask what is most efficient way to deliver each one

Why don’t we redefine what lawyers are going to do?

“Lawyers may be relegated to sub-contractors on big disputes”: Navigant pitched this approach years ago

Questioning the acceptance by law firms of the change that IS happening in the market

LSA brought entrepreneurial spirit susskind says market will change – take 10 years

Liberalization will generate processes and techniques will be adopted around the world

Most lawyers and clients wish it was 2006 again

You rarely hear law firms say “let’s work differently”

Susskind ‘hinting’ law firms need to start accepting lower profit margins….. 😉

Is Susskind skirting around issue of what lawyers are for? Taken for granted? More analysis needed here.

Reading the #LawTechCampLondon tweets interesting.. Is Nostradamus speaking?

All roads (in law) lead to technology – we live in a document intensive environment

Susskind: Alternative fee arrangements in most cases simply re-packaging of the same thing, without impacting on profit

To think that IT won’t be transformational in the legal market is absurd

There is no finishing line in IT

By 2050 average desktop machine will have more processing power than the whole of mankind put together

Why are so few #lawyers on twitter – are they waiting for it to take off?!

Yammer – why don’t more law firms use it?

Reluctance to use technology Richards calls it “irrational rejectionism” – lawyers want demo to not work

Susskind: amazing lawyers say Twitter doesn’t work for me, when they’ve never seen it

Accountants embrace new technology better than lawyers

As a former accountant, I fear Susskind overestimates how forward-looking accountants are!

More people in the world have mobile phones than toothbrushes.

Lawyers are not using big data – richard susskind – completely agree, the use will transform the market

If you want data, start a law firm on Facebook. 1bn members who need help when change relationship after holidays. DATA!

Now @richardsussking destroying relevance of legal education at #LawTechCampLondon massive disparity between training and skills needed

Legal knowledge engineering is the career for new lawyers: Susskind

The future of law is not Rumpole

You need to go where the law’s going to be, not where it was

Future jobs in law. Hybrid professionals dual qualified law WITH knowledge / tech/ management.

Susskind quotes Wayne Gretzky: skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is now

Legal services should be sold in an Apple Store on iPads not in WH Smith

Most lawyers use technology (dictation, time recording) but not INTELLIGENT technology

20% of US cases filed handled by litigants without lawyers!

New services lawyers could offer expand market into untapped areas. Eg: legal check-ups: r u legally ‘healthy’?

Surprising that speakers talk about tech innovation whilst using 20-yr old PowerPoint technology. #prezzi way better.

Holmes’ Path of Law is such a great read. Every lawyer should read it!

Fantasy Supreme Court: 13,000 players who participate on how the Supreme Court will decide. Crowd is 80% accurate

View the law as data

Lawers need to be techy and collabarative in order to be innovative

Legal profession not techie or collaborative. This is the death nail

Client asked for skype call and word tracked document. Offered bad spiderphone and handwritten notes and double charged!

New word: Exaptation –  a feature having a function for which it was not originally adapted or selected.

Seeing nice interface on case progress through Harlan.co

Need a virtual third place in legal market place. Discussion by video online with participation.

Imagine a legal app that worked like siri

The future is having technology assist in decisions

Law can take a lot of new tech and apply it to law, but can it innovate tech from law and give it to the world?

Average lawyer not using technology to help consumers

Is there a lawyer out there who’ll draft my will w/o expecting me to schlep to her office? She’ll win my business if so.

Methinks #LawTechCampLondon 2 should focus on the application of all these marvellous ideas. Many audience members with knowledge to share.

Epoq doesnt dig for the.gold, they offer online document to other legal service providers, amazing technology

Document composes itself! Client just provides basic info.

Will in London costs £750 by lawyer! Epoq wd be much less.

All businesses are relationship driven – Same as law and social media

Law blogging is here to stay

Contrast between Prezi (yay) and PowerPoint (yawn) is pretty clear from the presentations today

Law firms can’t manage or manage change

Don’t make money…make the future!

Hoped to learn about big data, but instead it’s how WestLaw search works – clever, I’m sure, but not same thing?

10417 Users online for Burger King case. Perhaps most were searching for a Burger 😉

Advertising sales opportunity for Thomson Reuters? Promoted Cases like Promoted Tweets? 😉

There appears to be some confusion in #legalit between #bigdata analytics + intelligent search

Self-driving car – if we can driveless car cannot we build a computer lawyer?

Predictive algorithms did cause a stock market crash and no one knows how it happened, what impact on law?

If we get a scientific predictor of judicial outcomes, it cd lead to rise in ethical (truthful) law firms

FB recommends friends, Pandora recommends music, *something* will recommend similar cases

We need disruptive players in the market so that legal services are delivered in a better and meaningful way

Will innovation run away from the lawyers?

How do you communicate with a lawyer? Confounding question

Don’t get tech out when selling it to lawyers. If you do they will shut down. Use pad and pen.

We don’t need to design better cameras, we need to learn how to use our cameras better

Challenge not innovation and technology but communication and implementation

Few people need to innovate, lawyers need to communicate

Partners in law firms fight one another. War zone… Of course sole practitioners don’t have that problem 🙂 … and an ABS may not have that problem either

What Jon is referring to is that law firms are composed of interlocking competing network structures.

Law firms are Montesquieu structures. See E. Lazega, The Collegial Phenomenon.

Innovation is like agriculture, you have to create environment to allow seeds to grow you cannot build it as a mechanism

Learn to plant seeds and water, and then understand crop rotation

Innovation will come from positive deviancy – legal culture doesn’t cultivate this, actively discouraged

Not all lawyers are technology averse or inept.. Proof is there are a whole bunch of them at #lawtechcamplondon

have you seen this? http://t.co/2XX74irG The Lawyerbot – directly relevant to #LawTechCampLondon

I have to say #LawTechCampLondon has been exceptionally good. Congratulations to all involved!