LegalOps highlight: news, trends & legal technology vol. 7
The LegalOps Highlight is a bi-weekly blog series that features relevant news, market trends and legal technology updates from the legal ecosystem. The content is curated from legal and business trade publications, consulting and analyst firms, and Onit | SimpleLegal partners, customers and subject matter experts. Be sure to subscribe to our blog and follow SimpleLegal and #LegalOpsHighlight on LinkedIn and Twitter for updates!
Highlights
The Global Legal Post: Law firms Still ‘Don’t Get’ Legal Operations
Since we’ve started the Highlight Blog series we’ve been talking about how important we think having dedicated legal operations staff is, and we’re happy we have another opportunity to beat that drum. At CLOC London, most of day two was spent bringing this point home with legal ops professionals and GCs running an open dialogue. CLOC London attendees now have a better understanding about what makes the most effective legal operations partnerships and are now more equipped than ever to move their organizations toward the future. We would expect to see legal operations become ever more important in Europe as more discussions like these happen. Spoiler alert…Onit and our partner Duff & Phelps might even host a few! Stay tuned.
Asian Legal Business: Alibaba Legal Tech Summit 2019: 5 Key Takeaways
Lawyers have been hearing the same line over and over for the last few years: legal technology will make your operations more efficient so you can deliver better service for clients. Speakers at the Alibaba Legal Tech Summit also conveyed how deep legal technology runs as it affects many business units outside of legal that are still integral to service delivery. The main point being driven home was how technology enhances lawyers’ abilities to tackle complex matters and how they should be looking at these technologies as a revitalizer rather than a replacer. This idea of incorporating business units outside of just legal in order to make all legal processes more efficient is foundational to Onit’s approach to our customers’ challenges.
Law.com: The New Legal Tech Leaders: 8 Big Industry Moves From 2019
2019 was a big year for technology, and an especially big year for the legal tech sector. The eight people listed in this article made colossal waves during a year crammed full of M&As and tectonic technology shifts. These industry shifts were in the news throughout 2019, but this summary shows some of the biggest news in one of the biggest legal tech sectors – eDiscovery.
Law.com: As Legal Tech Incubators Multiply, Past Entrants Reveal What Makes a Successful Engagement
It’s well known at this juncture that the process of creating and selling new legal tech products has about as many similarities to starting up a regular tech company as it does differences, and one of those differences shows through the incubator experience. Victoria Hudgens from Legaltech News shares this difference that mostly comes from Big Four and Biglaw organizations running the incubators as well as how the experience can differ once companies have been accepted. Respondents share that while incubators that provide support in a wide range of business areas are the most helpful, accelerators and incubators for legal tech often don’t have as much investment experience as the companies being incubated have much less effect on their bottom line. These insights are especially interesting to us since Onit started in a “regular tech” incubator. My how far we’ve come!
Above the Law: The 2019 Legal Department Operations Survey Report
In case you missed it, the LDO Survey Report is back. The 12th edition of this report, produced in association with Morae Global and sponsored by Onit, comes to us on the heels of another year of impressive growth, but even the mightiest can still fall. This year’s report covers professional assessments of legal project management, contract lifecycle management, formal metrics programs, AI and other emerging technologies.
Editor-in-Chief Positions at the 16 Most Elite Law Reviews
We’ve heard a lot about workplace equity and diversity for the last couple years now, but one lesser talked about cornerstone of legal culture among professionals is literature. Among the top 16 law schools’ law review publications, all 16 of them have women as editor in chief for the first time in their history. This is part of an upward trend over the last decade with women only making up 29% of the editors at these top institutions in 2012. This milestone is a strong victory for lawyers and institutions trying to cultivate a more hospitable environment for women, people of color, and first-generation law students.