Future & Trends
AI Lawyers Help Build Business for Human Lawyers
In recent months, many lawyers and firms have started to embrace artificial intelligence, recognizing that it won’t displace all lawyers but instead, free them up to do higher value bespoke work that requires creativity and judgment. But believe it or not, AI and other technologies can actually help create jobs for lawyers by helping to…
Read MoreThe Reason Why Legal Tech Remains the Domain of the Legal Elite: It’s All About The Money
For those who regularly follow my blog, you may have noticed that it’s been a long, long time since I’ve written critically about legal technology trends. Several reasons for that. For starters, whether it’s because I’m a woman or write about the solo and small firm space or actually practice law or don’t tow the…
Read MoreI’m a 21st Century Mom. Where’s My 21st Century Lawyer?
For the past two days, I was thrilled to have my older daughter home for a brief 48-hour layover between an overseas trip and her return to her job up in Boston. Unfortunately, she brought with her a vicious cough and sinus infection that pretty much grounded her after her arrival. When it became apparent…
Read MoreAre You Practicing #NewLaw? Register for Our FREE Webinar on Starting a Trade Association
If you’ve visited MyShingle before, you’re most likely familiar with our wildly popular profiles of lawyers focused on the 40 Practice Areas That Didn’t Exist 15 Years Ago. Several of these new areas took off in 2018, in particular cannabis which spawned all sorts of new regulatory and legal issues as described here and here.…
Read MoreValue of Lawyer Time Managing Trust Accounts Eclipses IOLTA Funding for Legal Aid
One of the most interesting statistics to come out of Clio’s 2018 Legal Trends Report concerns the amount of time that lawyers spend managing their trust accounts. According to Clio’s report, lawyers spend around an hour day on the byzantine task to trust account management. And although the Clio number seems high on its face,…
Read MoreHow to Be A First Mover in Law From A Company That’s A First Mover. Literally.
Always a trendsetter, IKEA can now claim the moniker of “first mover” quite literally. according to NextBigFuture.com, IKEA has designed seven autonomous workspaces on wheels to explore how self-driving vehicles might “operate as extensions of our cafes, homes, and offices,” and make retail products and services more readily accessible to consumers. For lawyers, a self-driving office could…
Read MoreHow Solos and Smalls Can Reach Rural Populations
For the past seven years, I’ve blogged about the legal services crisis in rural America. Yet despite creative solutions and a plethora of new programs, demand for lawyers in rural parts remains acute. Unfortunately, for the time being, pure tech solutions like online document providers aren’t likely to be effective. According to a recent Pew…
Read MoreTax Implications of Productizing Legal Services
Converting legal services into products like self-help books and videos, assessment tools, apps or chatbots invariably raises the same perennial issues for lawyers. Some lawyers obsess about the ethics of commoditization such as whether a product sold nationally might place a lawyer in violation of unauthorized practice of law (UPL) prohibitions or give rise to…
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