Predictions for a post-disruption world
Conrad Karageorge sees a future filled with promise – for lawyers and entrepreneurs who act now to recognise and capitalise on areas ripe for technological disruption. Conrad heads up Jurimetrics, a data analytics platform intended to allow law firms, financial institutions and corporations to understand and price legal risk posed by regulatory changes. Think of it as an on-call team of junior lawyers and paralegals, ready to analyse any area of law, collecting court and tribunal data to assess decision making patterns and litigation success rates. Such relatively mundane work was long the bane of new lawyers, regarded as the proving ground early career lawyers were required to traverse to obtain more strategic, interesting work. Jurimetrics, which is launching in October 2017, has already assisted McDonalds' in-house team. Among its myriad of applications, the platform can assess unfair dismissal cases in the Fair Work Commission to determine whether outcomes favour employers or employees.
“Data analytics in the law has not recently been practiced by lawyers,” observed Conrad. “The sudden interest and passion for legal information from law firms and other legal professionals has made start-ups like ours possible. The idea of legal innovation is why we exist.”
“I think innovation in law provides us with the opportunity to actually take a step back and consider the role of the lawyer as a whole. What services or values are intrinsic to the profession? What tasks do lawyers do because they are required to achieve some main goal? Endless contract reviews and discovery were never any of our dreams whilst in law school.”
As for the future of law, Conrad predicts a spike in the size of in-house teams, at the cost of major commercial law firms.
“The main benefit of the commercial law firm was that it could provide a large number of legal professionals that could be called into action to handle the management of a substantial claim or legal issue. However, technology will significantly decrease the value provided by having more lawyers working on a project. The result is that more work can be efficiently undertaken in house with few lawyers and smart technology doing the work previously undertaken by a large number of legal professionals at a commercial firm. This means a big hit to commercial practice, in particular at the top tier and mid-tier level. Either law firms redefine their value proposition or become uneconomic.”
In order to support legal professionals in this age of technological transition, Conrad recommends a shift in perspective.
“We need to be able to convince law firms that their problem is a product problem, not an efficiency problem. Making law firms efficient just makes current law firms bloated in size – with more lawyers doing less work. The more important solutions are working out what lawyers should be doing with the additional capacity they will have in a post-disruption world. The answer, I think, lies in the role of the lawyer as a consultant.”
“Many decision-makers in law firms are not ‘digital natives’ – that is, they have not grown up with new technology and as such are less likely to be able to adapt to it or identify where it can be of benefit. For the first time in the legal profession graduates coming into the industry have more knowledge on a subject than the seasoned experts. Technology represents a significant opportunity for young lawyers to make a name for themselves in organisations, to become an asset that can be utilised to build the firm. My advice to young lawyers: immerse themselves in new technology and bring new ideas or technology to senior practitioners.”
Conrad praises the role of the Centre for Legal Innovation in a legal profession increasingly disrupted by technology.
“I think that a clear dialogue between legal professionals and legal technology providers is essential for innovation. We need to know and understand all the everyday problems that the profession is facing so that we can appropriately identify whether there is a way in which technology can provide a useful solution. I believe the Centre for Legal Innovation is doing a wonderful job undertaking this function.”
If you would like to chat with Conrad about the post-disruption world and engage in lots more AI related compelling and thought provoking discussions, don’t miss our AI in Legal Practice Summit in Sydney on October 20.