Data
Hickory Dickory Dock, It’s Time To Learn About CLOC
June 9, 2018
Christy Burke, writing for Legal IT Professionals, said that the CLOC Institute was “fresh, relevant, and accessible” with a “universally positive” atmosphere. I completely agree with Christy – there was a palpable excitement everywhere in the Bellagio hotel and it wasn’t just because of the blackjack tables. Institute attendees came prepared with serious inquiries, curious about what others were doing in their organizations, and looking for significant solutions to the issues they...
June 9, 2018
Christy Burke, writing for Legal IT Professionals, said that the CLOC Institute was “fresh, relevant, and accessible” with a “universally positive” atmosphere. I completely agree with Christy – there was a palpable excitement everywhere in the Bellagio hotel and it wasn’t just because of the blackjack tables. Institute attendees came prepared with serious inquiries, curious about what others were doing in their organizations, and looking for significant solutions to the issues they...
Malleable Lies: Communication and Cooperation in a High Stakes TV Game Show
June 7, 2018
We investigate the credibility of non-binding pre-play statements about cooperative behavior, using data from a high-stakes TV game show in which contestants play a variant on the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma. We depart from the conventional binary approach of classifying statements as promises or not, and propose a more fine-grained two-by-two typology inspired by the idea that lying aversion leads defectors to prefer statements that are malleable to ex-post interpretation as truths. Our empirical...
June 7, 2018
We investigate the credibility of non-binding pre-play statements about cooperative behavior, using data from a high-stakes TV game show in which contestants play a variant on the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma. We depart from the conventional binary approach of classifying statements as promises or not, and propose a more fine-grained two-by-two typology inspired by the idea that lying aversion leads defectors to prefer statements that are malleable to ex-post interpretation as truths. Our empirical...
Medicare Secondary Payer and Settlement Delay
June 6, 2018
The Medicare Secondary Payer Act of 1980 and its subsequent amendments require that insurers and self‐insured companies report settlements, awards, and judgments that involve a Medicare beneficiary to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The parties then may be required to compensate CMS for its conditional payments. In a simple settlement model, this makes settlement less likely. Also, the reporting delays and uncertainty regarding the size of these conditional payments are likely to further...
June 6, 2018
The Medicare Secondary Payer Act of 1980 and its subsequent amendments require that insurers and self‐insured companies report settlements, awards, and judgments that involve a Medicare beneficiary to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The parties then may be required to compensate CMS for its conditional payments. In a simple settlement model, this makes settlement less likely. Also, the reporting delays and uncertainty regarding the size of these conditional payments are likely to further...
Can Non-Lawyers Bring More Benefit to the Legal Profession Than Lawyers?
June 3, 2018
Penn also emphasized the importance of process in the context of improving the workflows of her lawyers. She showed a pyramid where the wide base of Process Improvement held up everything else, including the smallest tip at the top where law and legal strategy came into play. She illustrated this by sharing a picture of a whiteboard with colored Post-It notes neatly arranged mapping out a process during a meeting with one of her firm partners. After they completed that mapping exercise, the partner...
June 3, 2018
Penn also emphasized the importance of process in the context of improving the workflows of her lawyers. She showed a pyramid where the wide base of Process Improvement held up everything else, including the smallest tip at the top where law and legal strategy came into play. She illustrated this by sharing a picture of a whiteboard with colored Post-It notes neatly arranged mapping out a process during a meeting with one of her firm partners. After they completed that mapping exercise, the partner...
Number of AI Companies in Legal Grows 65% In Last Year
June 2, 2018
The number of artificial intelligence companies catering to the legal field has grown by 65 percent in the last year, from 40 to 66. This finding is from the In-House Counsel’s LegalTech Buyer’s Guide 2018, published today by the contract review automation company LawGeex. The increase in AI companies includes a number of “agile and well-funded startups,” says the guide, but also a number of established players that are joining the field, such as LexisNexis with its Lexis Answers...
June 2, 2018
The number of artificial intelligence companies catering to the legal field has grown by 65 percent in the last year, from 40 to 66. This finding is from the In-House Counsel’s LegalTech Buyer’s Guide 2018, published today by the contract review automation company LawGeex. The increase in AI companies includes a number of “agile and well-funded startups,” says the guide, but also a number of established players that are joining the field, such as LexisNexis with its Lexis Answers...
Myths About Abraham Maslow and Self-Actualisation
May 31, 2018
Maslow’s most penetrating idea is that we have a hierarchy of needs, proceeding from physiological needs like water or warmth, through safety, love, esteem and then self-actualisation. He argued that lower needs occupy our attention when they are unmet and make it more difficult to fulfil the higher ones – including self-actualisation, which is about becoming the self you always had the potential to be. Compton first deals with the charge that this work is ascientific. He finds there is a lack...
May 31, 2018
Maslow’s most penetrating idea is that we have a hierarchy of needs, proceeding from physiological needs like water or warmth, through safety, love, esteem and then self-actualisation. He argued that lower needs occupy our attention when they are unmet and make it more difficult to fulfil the higher ones – including self-actualisation, which is about becoming the self you always had the potential to be. Compton first deals with the charge that this work is ascientific. He finds there is a lack...
On Preferring A to B, While Also Preferring B to A
May 29, 2018
In important contexts, people prefer option A to option B when they evaluate the two separately, but prefer option B to option A when they evaluate the two jointly. In consumer behavior, politics, and law, such preference reversals present serious puzzles about rationality and behavioral biases. They are often a product of the pervasive problem of "evaluability." Some important characteristics of options are difficult or impossible to assess in separate evaluation, and hence choosers disregard or downplay...
May 29, 2018
In important contexts, people prefer option A to option B when they evaluate the two separately, but prefer option B to option A when they evaluate the two jointly. In consumer behavior, politics, and law, such preference reversals present serious puzzles about rationality and behavioral biases. They are often a product of the pervasive problem of "evaluability." Some important characteristics of options are difficult or impossible to assess in separate evaluation, and hence choosers disregard or downplay...
Feasibility of a Health‐Utility Approach to Quantifying Noneconomic Losses from Personal Injury
May 27, 2018
There is wide agreement that existing approaches to valuing noneconomic losses from personal injury lack coherence. “Health‐utility” measurement—an approach developed in health economics for valuing health outcomes in public health and medicine—holds considerable promise for bringing greater rationality and consistency to assessments of injury‐related noneconomic loss. However, the feasibility of creating utility measures that are suitable for use in personal injury compensation has not been...
May 27, 2018
There is wide agreement that existing approaches to valuing noneconomic losses from personal injury lack coherence. “Health‐utility” measurement—an approach developed in health economics for valuing health outcomes in public health and medicine—holds considerable promise for bringing greater rationality and consistency to assessments of injury‐related noneconomic loss. However, the feasibility of creating utility measures that are suitable for use in personal injury compensation has not been...
New Survey Paints Picture of Innovation and Technology at Law Firms
May 27, 2018
When firms were asked whether they had specifically tasked anyone with responsibility for innovation, 29.7 percent answered yes. Large law firms of 500 or more lawyers were more than twice as likely to have such a person, with 55.9 percent answering yes. Whether firms have tasked anyone with innovation, by size. Firms were also asked about which technologies had the greatest impact on efficiency. The top five technologies that firms said had either a moderate or high impact on efficiency...
May 27, 2018
When firms were asked whether they had specifically tasked anyone with responsibility for innovation, 29.7 percent answered yes. Large law firms of 500 or more lawyers were more than twice as likely to have such a person, with 55.9 percent answering yes. Whether firms have tasked anyone with innovation, by size. Firms were also asked about which technologies had the greatest impact on efficiency. The top five technologies that firms said had either a moderate or high impact on efficiency...
Do Checklists Make a Difference? A Natural Experiment from Food Safety Enforcement
May 26, 2018
Inspired by Atul Gawande's bestselling Checklist Manifesto, many commentators have called for checklists to solve complex problems in law and public policy. We study a unique natural experiment to provide the first systematic evidence of checklists in law. In 2005, the Public Health Department of Seattle and King County revised its health code, subjecting half of inspection items to a checklist, with others remaining on a free‐form recall basis. Through in‐depth qualitative analysis, we identify...
May 26, 2018
Inspired by Atul Gawande's bestselling Checklist Manifesto, many commentators have called for checklists to solve complex problems in law and public policy. We study a unique natural experiment to provide the first systematic evidence of checklists in law. In 2005, the Public Health Department of Seattle and King County revised its health code, subjecting half of inspection items to a checklist, with others remaining on a free‐form recall basis. Through in‐depth qualitative analysis, we identify...
