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 20,000 users spread across every law school in the U.S.
The Main Course: 5 Things That Made Me Think This Week
..But How Does One Actually Become Tech Competent?!: the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct mandate that lawyers maintain technological competence, but beyond the rather broad language of the comments section of the Model Rules, what exactly does that mean, and how should lawyers comply with it? WordRake has an answer. They just put out a free eBook (requires readers to provide name/email) written by Ivy Grey that explains what the rule means and gives guidance for being in compliance with it. It's good, it's useful, and it's short enough that I don't feel like this preempts me from writing a 40,000 word law review article on it at some point in the future, so it's a win for me too.
Virtual Law Clinic Provides Platform for Managing Pro Bono Matters: This soon-to-launch product will make it easier for firms/legal orgs to manage their pro bono matters. It allows for things like assigning lawyers, monitoring case status, and documenting outcomes. Plus, it offers training materials and forms. Really neat. Plus, it's cool to see Theory and Principle, the legal technology design and development company release this - its second product - when they more typically develops products for others (Source: Law Sites Blog).
NY Times Reports Clio is a Fun Place to Work: The New York Times ran a piece this week on how tech companies are doing their darndest to make it attractive for workers to loose the sweatpants come back to the office. Their formula: make it more fun to be there. It's a worthwhile article to read, in general, but what sealed it for me was that one of the cited workplaces was legal tech juggernaut, Clio. Not surprising that they'd be doing some innovative there, given their product, but nice to see them cited along with monoliths like Apple!
Mary O'Carroll Interview on Artificial Lawyer: when Mary O’Carroll says something, I pay attention. She's the Chief Community Officer at Ironclad, and, before that, helped to create and lead CLOC. During much of her time at CLOC – which ended last year, she was Director of Operations, Technology and Strategy – at Google. Needless to say, she's been very successful and has fascinating ideas. I thought her comment was about teamwork styles for lawyers was the most interesting, especially because she linked it back to law school training.
Why are most law firm marketing professionals “ho-hum” on the productization of legal services? It's not always easy to get people to try productization. I even wrote a book to try to help! In a new Legal Evolution column, United Lex's Anusia Gillespie lays out some of the specific barriers - which seem about right to me - and shares actionable recommendations to overcome them.
Interviews with NYC Chess Hustlers: these are some fascinating folks! (hat tip Kottke.org).
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