More than 1,300 lawyers participated in the recent NOvA survey on strategy, innovation and digitization. The results will be published after the summer. The survey is part of a broader investigation into developments affecting the future of the legal profession in the Netherlands, which the NOvA is expected to complete by the end of this year. Changes…
New York City Bar Association E-Discovery Working Group publishes guide on cross-border e-Discovery
SUMMARY The New York City Bar Association’s E-Discovery Working Group issued a report examining the challenges of conducting discovery when the scope of discovery exceeds US borders. The Committee lays out the most common circumstances in which cross-border discovery would occur, including issues of personal jurisdiction over foreign parties as well as cases of US subsidiaries of…
Solicitors Regulation Authority takes steps to promote innovation
Following consultation last year, the SRA Innovate initiative will continue to encourage the development of new services while ensuring proper safeguards for the public are in place. Early indications from the pilots are that this type of facility is useful for small firms, larger providers and new entrants to the legal services market. The opportunity…
Singapore Academy of Law launches programme to create a vibrant ecosystem for legal tech
The Singapore Academy of Law has now formally launched its Future Law Innovation Programme (FLIP) and will work with the Singapore Management University (SMU), among others, to drive change. FLIP initially will run a two-year pilot programme to encourage the adoption of technology, drive innovation and ‘create a vibrant ecosystem for legal technology‘ in the important SE…
OECD: Protecting and promoting competition in response to ‘disruptive’ innovations in legal services
This document was prepared by the OECD Secretariat to serve as an issues paper at the 61th meeting of the OECD Working Party No. 2 on Competition and Regulation (13 June 2016). This paper introduces recent disruptive innovations in legal services markets, as well as the overarching trends giving rise to them. The role for…
The Shifting Frontiers of Law: Access to Justice and Underemployment in the Legal Profession
The article examines two interrelated issues attracting attention from the legal academy, the profession, and policy makers: i) the crisis of access to justice among ordinary Canadians, and ii) the increasing number of qualified and underemployed lawyers. This article sets out to understand the interrelated factors underlying these two trends, and explores long-term, accessible solutions to address the misalignment between the supply of underemployed law graduates and a demand for affordable legal services. In response to these twin problems, we examine how legislative reform,…
How Artificial Intelligence Will Affect the Practice of Law
Artificial intelligence is exerting an influence on all professions and industries. We have autonomous vehicles, instantaneous translation among the world’s leading languages, and search engines that rapidly locate information anywhere on the web in a way that is tailored to a user’s interests and past search history. Law is not immune from disruption by new technology. Software tools are beginning to affect various aspects of lawyers’ work, including those tasks…
Legal Profession of China in a Globalized World: Innovations and New Challenges
The legal profession is undergoing fundamental changes; and this is the case not just in those established legal markets. Based on a state-of-the-art sketch of China’s legal profession, this paper identifies and analyzes the latest innovation initiatives and alternative business models, which happen simultaneously at the levels of the law firms as incumbents, and the…
In Critique of RoboLaw: The Model of SmartLaw
This research consists of four parts. The first part presents the analysis of the standard regulation framework and its elements within the theoretical context of ontology of law and institutions. The second and third parts describe the methodology and illustrative research of the standard regulation framework’s failures. Having indicated the reasons of these failures, the fourth part is used…
Legal technology and regulation
The month of May saw two technology and legal regulation issues come to light in the US. Cyber security and client communications The changing technological landscape and rising incidence of “cyber intrusion” prompted the ABA’s ethics committee to update an 18-year-old opinion on whether lawyers must use encrypted e-mail when communicating with clients. Technologically, much…