Nate's News

💡 The Takeaway: The Impact of Coronavirus

• The new normal for law? U.S. courts are turning to video or postponing cases, major law firms are going virtual and legaltech conferences are getting delayed. Internet service providers are doing their part to ensure lawyers, and others, can work from home without downtime.
• Remote working due to coronavirus carries cybercrime risks for both federal employees and corporations. 
• Over 150 law schools have moved their classes online. The ABA has loosened restrictions on the number of online credits law students can earn.
• Law students worry about losing biglaw summer associate positions due to coronavirus. But firms assure entry-level hires that their offers are good to go. Experts currently expect little impact on lateral hires as well.
• Travel restrictions are delaying anti-bribery efforts. Corporate compliance officers' are postponing in-person visits and interviews with witnesses.
• LexBlog has launched Coronavirus Legal Daily to track the pandemic's impact on the legal world and other services are offering free resources.

📰 Read

• Boutique and solo firms should quiz legaltech providers about encryption, data portability, server & backup locations, and other cybersecurity concerns. Many firms lack strong security protocols. Microsoft's Alex Weinert shared that 99% of Microsoft enterprise accounts lack multifactor authentication, leading to 0.5% of these accounts being compromised by hackers each month.
  • Shamless portfolio company plug: contact Privva to navigate this!
• New York’s City Council is making bias in algorithmic hiring illegal starting in 2022. Questions remain unanswered, however, about who has the expertise to make such audits, what biases those auditors may have, and how different interpretations of current employment law impact these audits.
• Data shows that focused firms (50% of hours in one practice area) average 2.9% demand growth, more than triple that of other firms.
• AI-powered tools in litigation continue to improve. While many platforms currently face issues with poor inputs, improvements in data refinement and new algorithms are accelerate the effectiveness of these platforms.
• Legaltech should focus on serving companies' legal front door (the tools non-lawyer employees use to interact with in-house legal departments). These tools make legal functions more self-service and responsive to business unit needs.
• English law firms like EMW and Gateley (both ABSs) are acquiring non-legal consultancies to bolster their existing offerings.
• Casey Flaherty makes a compelling case that constantly improving the same process, such as contract review, will have diminishing efficiency gains. His solution? Focus on the lowest hanging fruit across all elements of a firm's operations first.
• The California State Bar has put a hold on proposals for a "regulatory sandbox" and relaxed advertising laws, citing potential political obstacles. 
• Our friend Augie Rakow discussed Atrium's shutdown with Artificial Lawyer: "It’s hard to combine venture capital with professional services." Legaltech needs to avoid conflating tech-enabled services with technology that focuses on making lawyers more efficient.

👂 Listen

• LawNext chats with PwC’s Global Innovation Leader Vicki Huff Eckert about innovation in professional services and the parallels between the accounting and legal professions (28 min).
• Lee Rosen discusses how lawyers can influence potential clients, employees, and judges (13 min).
• Rodney Smolla, dean of the Delaware Law School of Widener University, explains how experiential legal education makes better lawyers (32 min).   

💰 Companies and Funding

• Everlaw, a cloud-native machine-learning enabled eDiscovery platform, raised $62M in a Series C round led by CapitalG and Menlo Ventures, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and K9 Ventures.
  • CapitalG's Jesse Wedler, who joined Everlaw's board as part of the round, believes the company is on the path to an IPO.
• Case Status, a marketing and customer-relationship management platform for law firms, raised $1.5M in Seed funding from BIP Capital.
• Contract analytics platform Eigen Technologies raised $5M from ING Ventures. ING is already a client of the company.
• UrbanLeap, a company helping governments test tech-enabled initiatives, raised $4.2M in funding, led by StageOne Ventures, with participation from lool Ventures.
• Overhaul, a platform to spot and automatically fix compliance issues in cargo supply chains, raised $17.5M in growth funding from Edison Partners and Abbey International Finance Group.

📖 What Else I'm Reading

• McKinsey's report on the wide-ranging impacts of coronavirus on global business.
• Stanford Law's Mark Lemley and Andrew McCreary critique incentives pushing startups to be acquired, rather than go public: "Silicon Valley’s focus on the exit strategy leads to concentration in the tech industry, reinforcing the power of dominant firms."
• As more people hunker down to watch television while they self-quarantine, well-funded media startup Quibi is facing patent issues over its new streaming platform.
• An interview with NBA legend, and angel investor, Shaquille O'Neal about his prescient investments in companies like Google, Vitaminwater, and Ring. 

Nate's News in LegalTech is a weekly digest of all things legaltech. Know someone interested in reading more? They can subscribe here.