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
LawFestNZ's Free Product Demos: I feel like more people would get excited about legal tech if there were more short, simple, inviting demos available for them to see what the tools actually do. Well, the New Zealand outfit, LegalTechNZ, is providing a demo day with a whole bunch of exactly that (and it's not just for New Zealanders - the tools are those available all over). It's free to sign up and available on demand.
Legal Tech Funding WAYYYYY Down: Steve Lerner of Law360 reported this week that first quarter legal tech funding dropped from $1.8 billion in 2021 to $789.8 million in 2022. Whether this is a blip, a symptom of a far weaker economy vs last year, or something altogether different (and keeping in mind 2021 was a by-far all-time record), I don't know...but something to keep an eye on.
What Other Industries Can Teach Us: the new issue of Legal Business World is out and, as always, it's chock-full of worthwhile reads. My favorite piece is Nonopa Vanda's article (pdf - go to p. 6) on what law can learn from other industries. From Design Sprints to the fundamental of FinTech, there's lots to borrow.
National Group of Professional Responsibility Lawyers Calls on ABA to Eliminate Geographic Restrictions on Law Practice: as reported on Law Sites Blog, the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers is urging the ABA to adopt a new version of Model Rule 5.5 that would eliminate the traditional state-based limitation on law practice, by which lawyers can practice only in the states in which they are admitted. I don't know what chances this has of succeeding - my gut tells me not very good ones - but it's a positive move to see experts encouraging the ABA to embrace reforms to the profession.
TurnSignl App's CEO, Jazz Hampton, Interviewed on ABA Legal Rebels Podcast: this tool, available in three states (for now), essentially puts an attorney in a car with someone who has been pulled over, by getting them real-time help and records the interaction with police. It won the ABA Techshow Startup Alley competition, so seems to be going places. This interview with TurnSignl's CEO, Jazz Hampton, who is a computer scientist and lawyer, is worth listening to.
"Old Enough" on Netflix: the premise of this Japanese show is simple. Very young children are asked to do errands that seem challenging for someone of their age. Then, the camera follows them as they try to accomplish it. I just watched a 2 year old walk 1 kilometer to a store, select the 3 items his mother asked him to get, buy it, get change, and walk home, including across some busy streets. Amazing. Here is CNET's review.
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