Lawtomatic Newsletter Issue, #152
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
The Intentional Law Office: the pandemic took people out of their offices, and now, Jordan Furlong explains, we have a chance to reimagine what our work spaces mean to us and how we want them to function in the future. This one is equal parts food for thought and game plan.
The Law Firm of Google, Amazon, & Apple, LLC: according to one of the pioneers of alternative legal business structures, British litigation specialist Gary Gallen, tech giants will be the next big disruptors in legal services. In short, he says it's because there's a huge, untapped market, and they have 'the entrepreneurial risk-taking approach.' I don't know if he's right or wrong, but it's not far fetched in my mind to envision customers checking out from Amazon by putting a "bill of sale" or "simple will" in the shopping cart, only to be rolled over to a site that looks and feels like their own version of LegalZoom.
HelloPrenup Featured by CNN: I was excited to see that a CNN.com piece this week on how prenuptial agreements can be affordable and useful for non-rich people. I especially liked it because the article quoted the co-founder and CEO of HelloPrenup, Julia Rodgers. I liked it for a few reasons: first, because HelloPrenup became the first legal tech product to win on the ABC show SharkTank, and it's interesting to see how a small legal tech company can boom with a good product and the right media attention. Second, it's encouraging to see a big outlet like CNN recommending a legal tech solution for legal problems. Finally (here comes the brag!), Julia was my student at Suffolk Law, where she learned the fundamentals of document assembly. It's gratifying to see that sort of know-how turned into a business that is helping people who might otherwise go unserved.
The Strategic Issue Of Lawyer Independence And Law Firm Technology Advances: What if law firms could accept venture capital funding? What would that do to the advancement of the practice of law? Ken Crutchfield, who is the VP/GM of Wolters Kluwers's Legal & Regulatory group has some interesting thoughts on this opportunity and how to balance independence with increased access to funding that would promote growth.
Ed Walters Interviwed on Data Driven Lawyering: Ed Walters (of FastCase and beyond) is one of the people I always like listening to because I always learn something from him. This podcast interview by John Strohmeyer of the Five Star Counsel Podcast is no exception. Ed has a really good handle on the role of data in decision making, and is building products to help legal professionals benefit from it.
The $409 Strawberry: reportedly, the world's best strawberries come from a farmer in Japan whose typical strawberries start at the equivalent of about $20 each, and range up to 50,000 Yen. At current exchange rates, that's $409. For. A. Single. Strawberry. The wildest part about the video is that the host, a Paul Hollywood (of Great British Bakeoff judging fame) seems to think it's worth it once he tastes the thing.