By Gabe Teninbaum
My name is Gabe Teninbaum (on Twitter at @GTeninbaum). I'm a professor, as well as the Assistant Dean for Innovation, Strategic Initiatives, & Distance Education, at Suffolk Law in Boston. I'm also a Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project. My work focuses on legal innovation, technology, and the changing business of law. Every day, I digest tons of content on these topics. The goal of this newsletter is to curate the most interesting, valuable, and thought-provoking of these ideas and share them with you.
If you like reading it, please subscribe. You're also invited to forward this to others who you think would benefit. Likewise, please email me with feedback, ideas, and tips so I can deliver what's most valuable to you.
The Appetizer: Sponsors
SpacedRepetition.com is a tool to help law students & bar preppers learn more using cutting-edge science. Called the single most effective technique to learn by the American Psychological Association. More than 17,000 users spread across every law school in the U.S.
The Main Course: 5 Things That Made Me Think This Week
Legal Tech-to-English Dictionary: this is a clever little, free, eBook that defines lots of terms that people who are new to legal tech might have heard, but might not fully understand. The author, Jared Correia of Red Cave Legal, is a seasoned legal techie who does a nice job of making complex ideas simple. It's a free (though one must provide contact info to download) through the Above the Law site.
LawNext Directory: one of the most trusted journalists writing on the legal industry (with a specific expertise in legal innovation/tech), Bob Ambrogi, has launched a new directory for legal tech. It's an MVP (see Legal Tech-to-English Dictionary, above), but the goal is to continue to develop this into a comprehensive directory of products, reviews, learning resources, and more, where buyers can find trusted information to guide their purchases, and where vendors can help their products be discovered and distinguished.
Reuters Legal News is Now Free/Customizable: Reuters, the news/media division of Thomson Reuters, has been increasing its footprint in law in recent year. With the latest round of updates, a reader can browse recent stories, see the latest from Reuters’ legal columnists, view video stories, read analysis contributed by outside attorneys, check out the latest “industry buzz,” and more. They can also drill down into four subcategories: Government, Legal Industry, Litigation and Transactional. Once the reader has set preferences, they can return and access the content they want through their custom widget. Neat.
What if Lawyers Had a Duty to Be Efficient? Richard Tromans of the Artificial Lawyer ponders that impact that specifically requiring efficiency would have for lawyers adopting technology. The analysis is framed in the context of the ethical codes binding UK lawyers, but it's fundamentally the same challenge in the US, where most states have adopted an ethical rule requiring attorneys to be aware of relevant technologies, but don't explicitly require efficiency. My own take: Presumably, an attorney's fiduciary duty to do what's in a client's best interest applies to require efficiency...but why not say it?!
Legal Tech Fiction Competition: The American Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division and the Access to Justice Tech Fellows are hosting the second annual Legal Tech Fictional Writing Competition for law students. The goal is to get students to think critically about how technology will impact the future practice of law, and access to justice in a fun engaging way. I can't wait to see what this year's entries look like. If you want a taste, here are some of last year's.
Traffic Simulation: as a native of Massachusetts, I'm no stranger to aggressive driving or heavy traffic. One thing I've always marveled at is how a single accident or break-down, even well after cleared, can snarl traffic for miles. If you want to understand how, and why that happens, check out this traffic simulator. You can adjust the sliders for politeness of drivers, lane shifting behavior, speed, and more. I spent more time than I care to admit messing with it.
Now Booking
I'm booking a limited number of speaking engagements for 2022 (I speak to groups, as you might imagine, about law/innovation and creating organizational changes to embrace it). If you'd like me to come talk to your firm, department, or organization, please reach out and we can see if there's a fit.
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