Ian Lopez, Legaltech News
CEO, speaker, author and former
lawyer Mike Walsh invites ILTA attendees to think of the workplace in new ways.
Widely
considered a futurist, author and speaker Mike Walsh finds the classification
discomforting, as futurists, he explains, are associated with fortune tellers.
Yet it is through real-world discussions, research, and simple observation that
leads Walsh to note that the decade of disruption” is not only upon us, but
“only the very beginning of the story.”
So began “Re-Imagining Legal Technology for the 21st Century,” the first keynote presentation
at ILTACON 2016. Commanding the stage with a rock star’s presence, Walsh
informed the audience “what’s happening now is the beginning of a new chapter
in the tale of transformation,” adding, “if disruption set the stage for the
reinvention of technology, then transformation is the journey we’re being
called for.”
The crux of Walsh’s message was reimagining the ways
lawyers work, a notion that was conveyed in the form of a challenge to the
audience to consider three big ideas:
1.“How will the next generation influence the future we know?”
A window to the future may be available to those with
children, as those born after 2007 will potentially have grown up with
smartphones as part of their daily existence. As such, the future workplace
will be shaped by minds structurally different than our own, with new
preferences for communications and expectations for them to be met.
“Forget the millennials and generation why and all of
them,” Walsh said. For the upcoming generation, mobile “is just everyday life
for them.”
Additionally, “these children will be the first
generation partially raised by artificial intelligence,” and when they have
questions we can’t immediately answer, they know to turn to SIRI, Google and
the like. Furthermore, blockchain technology, as well as internet of things
devices are gradually “becoming part of the daily life” for these kids, meaning
that they will have a different relationship with technology and the digital
world than we do.
2.How the 21st Century Firms and Legal Departments Differ from those of the 20th Century
The time is coming for us to “redesign the places in
which we work to make them more appropriate for the era we live in,” Wash says,
and this especially true for the lawyers. “We’re still trying to figure out
what it means to be a 21st century
enterprise.”
In searching for what exactly that means, Walsh spoke
with Google’s head of legal operations Mary O’Carroll. Walsh learned that now,
scaling up requires operations teams to handle legal technology, vendor
management, and the strategies around what they should be doing. Additionally,
he learned that the best way to disrupt the legal industry is standardization
and working with those that would otherwise be competitors.
Walsh also notes that he’s “discovered the power of
machine learning,” and with it, Google automate answers for legal enquiries and
study the metadata of contracts. This is beneficial, as partners are
increasingly looking to automate to ensure that employees have the time and
freedom to provide maximum value.
Yet Walsh notes that “the most disruptive change
you’re going to see” will be led not by the legal departments themselves, but
by their clients. Therefore, it’s essential to hire “agile thinkers” rather
than process driven people, the “kids of people who when you hit them with a
new problem, they don’t panic. They’re excited.”
3.How Will AI, Algorithms and Automation Impact the Legal Profession?
In describing the effectiveness of AI, Walsh
noted DoNotPay, the chatbot
that automated disputing parking tickets created by a 21 year old, which has
overturned 160,000 fines in the past four months. Now, Walsh says, this
inventor is applying this technology to homelessness.
“None of this is particularly good news for members of
the legal profession, because what it’s showing is how particularly
transformative the application of simple technology may be,” Walsh says. He
adds that that this technology, along with other chatbots and avatars, will
play an increasingly important role in the legal industry in the years ahead.
Therefore, Walsh says the best question to ask is, “In
the 21st century,
what does human intelligence look like?” The question isn’t about whether
algorithms and automation will replace lawyers, he notes, but rather what is a
21st century
lawyer like? To begin answering this question, he says “we have to learn to
understand how data rally creates value inside our organizations.”
Walsh noted that the boardroom of tomorrow will likely
have real-time visualization of data as it applies to particular facets of
their business. In looking to his own experience in years past, Walsh points to
his own experience as an intern while in law school, where he was given the
duty of proofreading documents. Now, he says, this can be done easily with AI.
Yet there rises the question – If you’re now going to
automate everything in tasks like e-discovery and contract analysis, “How do we
now elevate the functions of the human being there?”
The key challenge for any 21st century leader, Walsh says, is
reinventing themselves to function in the environment of AI, automation and
real time data. And sometimes, for better or worse, embracing the future means
“challenging everything we know to be true.”
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