Law Firm
What’s So Hot About Texas? For Law Firms, Apparently Everything
March 20, 2018
The state's strong energy sector and booming economy are luring out-of-state law firms looking to boost business. “It’s been going on for 20 years, but all of a sudden the out-of-state firms have finally recognized the state’s incredibly vibrant and growing business opportunities and are trying to position themselves to take advantage of them,” said bankruptcy and restructuring lawyer Joe Wielebinski, who recently moved to Winstead’s Dallas office from Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr. Less...
March 20, 2018
The state's strong energy sector and booming economy are luring out-of-state law firms looking to boost business. “It’s been going on for 20 years, but all of a sudden the out-of-state firms have finally recognized the state’s incredibly vibrant and growing business opportunities and are trying to position themselves to take advantage of them,” said bankruptcy and restructuring lawyer Joe Wielebinski, who recently moved to Winstead’s Dallas office from Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr. Less...
The Law Firm Disrupted: What Does Litigation Finance Do for Big Law’s Capital Cravings?
March 18, 2018
Burford Capital's big income and profit figures could give managing partners room to maneuver. In the big picture, bringing finance to an entire industry is the kind of untapped market that could justify the kinds of money investors have piled into litigation funding in recent months. Burford isn’t the only one with a war chest: A Financial Times story late last year estimated that something like £70 billion in capital was available for litigation finance. That article also notes that...
March 18, 2018
Burford Capital's big income and profit figures could give managing partners room to maneuver. In the big picture, bringing finance to an entire industry is the kind of untapped market that could justify the kinds of money investors have piled into litigation funding in recent months. Burford isn’t the only one with a war chest: A Financial Times story late last year estimated that something like £70 billion in capital was available for litigation finance. That article also notes that...
Data (Gold) Mining: The Rise of the Law Firm Data Analytics Teams
March 17, 2018
The business platitude “data is the new oil” has proven its worth in spades over the last decade. The country’s biggest companies, groups like Google, Facebook and Amazon, trade primarily in data; organizations across industries have invested heavily in business analytics, developers and analysts; and “data scientist” roles have become some of the most lucrative jobs on the market. Yet law firms, for the most part, haven’t quite caught up. But that might be changing. A growing number...
March 17, 2018
The business platitude “data is the new oil” has proven its worth in spades over the last decade. The country’s biggest companies, groups like Google, Facebook and Amazon, trade primarily in data; organizations across industries have invested heavily in business analytics, developers and analysts; and “data scientist” roles have become some of the most lucrative jobs on the market. Yet law firms, for the most part, haven’t quite caught up. But that might be changing. A growing number...
Harvard Law Students Develop AI Program to Help Lawyers Draft Contracts
March 16, 2018
Harvard Law Today is reporting on a new computer program developed by four Harvard Law School students that uses artificial intelligence to help lawyers draft contracts. HLS students harness artificial intelligence to revolutionize how lawyers draft and manage contracts Four Harvard Law students have their heads in the cloud—and they think the rest of the legal profession should join them. With their powerful new search engine called Evisort that harnesses cloud storage and artificial...
March 16, 2018
Harvard Law Today is reporting on a new computer program developed by four Harvard Law School students that uses artificial intelligence to help lawyers draft contracts. HLS students harness artificial intelligence to revolutionize how lawyers draft and manage contracts Four Harvard Law students have their heads in the cloud—and they think the rest of the legal profession should join them. With their powerful new search engine called Evisort that harnesses cloud storage and artificial...
One-Third of Texas Law Firm Leaders Say They Are Open to Merger Talks
March 14, 2018
A new survey finds that 82 percent of Texas law firm leaders have been approached over the last year about a potential combination, and 32 percent say they are open to considering it. Texas’ legal market is burning hot, so it’s not surprising that 82 percent of law firm leaders in Texas have been approached over the last year about a combination with another firm, according to a new survey. In addition, 32 percent of those firm leaders said they are open to considering a firm combination...
March 14, 2018
A new survey finds that 82 percent of Texas law firm leaders have been approached over the last year about a potential combination, and 32 percent say they are open to considering it. Texas’ legal market is burning hot, so it’s not surprising that 82 percent of law firm leaders in Texas have been approached over the last year about a combination with another firm, according to a new survey. In addition, 32 percent of those firm leaders said they are open to considering a firm combination...
AI Is Besting Human Lawyers at Parsing Contracts. What Do Lawyers Think?
March 11, 2018
The results of the study—which was administered by independent attorney Christopher Ray and involved a stable of high-profile legal scholars—are striking. Using five nondisclosure agreements from the Enron data set as the baseline, 20 lawyers were pitted against LawGeex’s AI in parsing 30 provisions. On average, the LawGeex software achieved an accuracy rate of 94 percent. The humans? An average of 85 percent. Here’s the real kicker: The fastest human attorney completed the task in 51 minutes....
March 11, 2018
The results of the study—which was administered by independent attorney Christopher Ray and involved a stable of high-profile legal scholars—are striking. Using five nondisclosure agreements from the Enron data set as the baseline, 20 lawyers were pitted against LawGeex’s AI in parsing 30 provisions. On average, the LawGeex software achieved an accuracy rate of 94 percent. The humans? An average of 85 percent. Here’s the real kicker: The fastest human attorney completed the task in 51 minutes....
Case.one Announces Its Own Alexa Integration for Voice Controls
March 3, 2018
Now comes another Alexa integration for lawyers. Today, the practice management application Case.one announced its new integration with Amazon’s Alexa. The integration enables lawyers to make entries and call up information within Case.one’s practice management application. The functionality includes the ability to enter billing details, authorize users, find a case by name, add and search tasks, add and search events, and add and search notes, all using Alexa voice commands.
March 3, 2018
Now comes another Alexa integration for lawyers. Today, the practice management application Case.one announced its new integration with Amazon’s Alexa. The integration enables lawyers to make entries and call up information within Case.one’s practice management application. The functionality includes the ability to enter billing details, authorize users, find a case by name, add and search tasks, add and search events, and add and search notes, all using Alexa voice commands.
Ravel Law’s Integration with Lexis Advance
March 2, 2018
Daniel Lewis was just in his second year at Stanford Law School when he had an idea for a different way to do legal research, as I recounted in this 2014 ABA Journal article. His idea was to display search results visually, along a cluster map that shows the relationships among cases and their relative importance to each other. Shortly after he graduated in 2012, he and classmate Nicholas Reed had launched the legal research platform derived from his idea, Ravel Law. Last June, five years after...
March 2, 2018
Daniel Lewis was just in his second year at Stanford Law School when he had an idea for a different way to do legal research, as I recounted in this 2014 ABA Journal article. His idea was to display search results visually, along a cluster map that shows the relationships among cases and their relative importance to each other. Shortly after he graduated in 2012, he and classmate Nicholas Reed had launched the legal research platform derived from his idea, Ravel Law. Last June, five years after...
Summer Associate Hiring Declines Largest Firms
February 24, 2018
The data is in from this fall's OCI hiring season and it shows that at the nation's largest firms (employing more than 700 attorneys), summer associate hiring is down for the first time since 2012. Of course time will tell whether this is temporary, relatively meaningless setback in terms of the overall strength of the legal job market or instead whether it portends a bigger problem yet to come. The American Lawyer has more details: Summer Associate Hiring Slowed at Largest Firms Law firms...
February 24, 2018
The data is in from this fall's OCI hiring season and it shows that at the nation's largest firms (employing more than 700 attorneys), summer associate hiring is down for the first time since 2012. Of course time will tell whether this is temporary, relatively meaningless setback in terms of the overall strength of the legal job market or instead whether it portends a bigger problem yet to come. The American Lawyer has more details: Summer Associate Hiring Slowed at Largest Firms Law firms...
Here Come the Quantum Computers
February 24, 2018
If you thought super-computers like Watson were revolutionizing the workplace (and law practice in particular), you ain't seen nothing yet. Read this short piece from today's New York Times on "quantum computers" and their predicted impact on both education and the workplace. There's also a video below that explains quantum computing for the uninitiated. But first, here's a salient quote from the NYT article: [IBM’s C.E.O. Ginni Rometty says]: “Every job will require some...
February 24, 2018
If you thought super-computers like Watson were revolutionizing the workplace (and law practice in particular), you ain't seen nothing yet. Read this short piece from today's New York Times on "quantum computers" and their predicted impact on both education and the workplace. There's also a video below that explains quantum computing for the uninitiated. But first, here's a salient quote from the NYT article: [IBM’s C.E.O. Ginni Rometty says]: “Every job will require some...
