So let’s answer the question first, absolutely.

Hype over the last few years has been the issue. How many times have we heard artificial intelligence, big data or blockchain mentioned. Some of these have had a few case studies, but none have caused a revolution,

But taking a look at the legal tech start-ups now, is almost like being back in the late 1990’s and wandering the floor of ” The Solicitors’ & Legal Office Exhibition” when a whole host of new technology firms were starting to implement on that beige thing with a screen that was in the corner of a lawyers office at the time.

This image is just a small number of the start-ups in one area that you’ll be familiar with in legal.

Perhaps not all these will work, but the difference now from the hype cycle above is that these are targeting business problems.

And that is where we are seeing the big change, innovation as a synonym for “new shiny technology” has started to morph into finding problems, applying techniques like lean six sigma or design thinking and working out ways to solve business challenges. Sometimes this is business change internally, sometimes it is people creating a start-up to deliver a solution to a problem.

With so many new options available to law firms and many options to solve the same problem, how do you chose? Or more importantly how can you try out these solutions quickly? Fail fast if you will.

Well this goes back to part 3. If we’ve got a platform that presents all our data and key services outwards and provides standard interfaces to access these, then plumbing in these new tools to test functionality can be much easier than in the past where you might have the spiderweb of interconnections between systems needed.

I want to go back to AI though to finish. A technology that I have may have been cynical of meeting it’s initial hype.

But a recent listen to this Forrester podcast last month shows that AI as a tool is now being put in some great solutions. One quote jumped out:

“29% of developers are using AI and machine learning technologies to build application that are infused with AI”

Infused with AI. This to me is AI moving beyond hype, it’s no longer buying “AI” as a product, realising that It’s not a “thing” but think of it more like a database, it’s becoming a core piece of a solution that solves a problem.

But here’s some takeaway to think about.

So we build software and what we are doing is giving the software more capabilities using machine learning, so rather than defining our input and getting a defined output, we build in machine learning and allow the software itself to learn and define the output. So the same input could give different outputs.

And so here we have a challenge, how do we test AI solutions to ensure we can be confident of the results. It’s not the end of the world if your Alexa get’s things wrong, but a decision in a legal case?

There are a number of cases of AI bias causing unwanted results when the solutions were released in the wild. Two well known ones are Micorsoft’s “racist bot” Tai and the US Compas system used to do risk assessments during sentencing.

Testing will need to change, the results are not deterministic and so a test engineer would need to run a test many times and make sure that statistically the conclusion is correct. As more and more legal technology infuses AI it makes sense to start looking at the test frameworks that are starting to be creating for AI testing, especially functional testing to limit the risk in bias.

How we test AI will certainly be a topic that will need to become part of the law firm IT dept arsenal in coming years as more legal tech get infused with machine learning. But as you ponder this new world of AI testing I will leave you with one quote from a testers blog

“What happens when both testing applications and systems under test use AI?”

We’re so used to using multi devices in our personal lives, and the ease of using this set up is largely due to the rise in the large platforms (others call these ecosystems, but we’re meaning the same thing). Whether that be the Google platform with Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Hangouts or Microsoft’s with Outlook, OneDrive, Word Online, Skype. If you’re solely an Apple device user there are equivalents from Apple, but the former don’t tie you into a specific device manufacturer.

These platforms brought the ability to hold your email and documents in one place, but then to have them accessible through any device, to be able to make calls and collaborate on the content easily no matter whether you were using your PC, Tablet or Phone.

The next stage for law firms therefore is to bring this ubiquitous access to services and data to the corporate devices and unlock the ease of use and the device and mobility requirements we’ve discussed in parts one and two.

The challenge though is we’ve a lot of legacy systems and historically implemented these systems for specific purposes, creating many islands of data and functionality.

Also many of these islands have very specific ways of access, only providing access via an installed application on a PC for example. If you’re lucky you may also have access to a mobile app with possibly some of the functionality.

But then overtime we’ve also complicated things by linking some of these systems together, usually in a very fixed inflexible proprietary way each time. So as an example the link or data exchange from the PMS to the DMS is a totally different format to that between the PMS and HR System.

Creating access to multiple devices has been through a vendor provided app on  the various devices, but something complex like creating a collaborative view of matter data taking financial information and document management data and allowing you to select key documents from the KM repository on a mobile device. Well forget it.

Well the future is within reach.

Let’s start with an obvious recognisable one. Microsoft’s 365 platform. Now this image is slightly out of date now as some services have been renamed and more have been added, but this is a great example of one of the benefits of cloud platforms, they are constantly bringing additional functionality online.

There is too much available to cover in this post but let’s pick out some areas which may be of use to a law firm:

Starting with all those consumer items mentioned above which are now all available in one corporate platform – All your Mail, Calendar, Contacts. Online access to documents through OneDrive and telephony through Teams.

Teams is though provides much more, like collaborating on information and documents, group communication, chat facilities and wikis. For those familiar with Slack it’s essential Microsoft’s answer to that.

Stream – this is essentially a corporate YouTube

Yammer – a corporate Facebook

With all these services on one platform you have out of the box services available on multiple devices, as well as a wealth of tools to build out additional services using tools like PowerApps and Power Automate. The obvious challenge for law firms is what about the DMS? But most of the major vendors in the legal space are aware of the 365 platform and are starting to ensure that access to documents is easy through it.

For most firms there won’t be one overarching platform that can delivery every service and solution a law firm needs, it also doesn’t necessarily give the flexibility to add a brand new service or product quickly from a different vendor or maybe a bespoke need.

But the platform concept still works, the key though for a lot of firms will be sorting out our data.

When I first started my career as a programmer for a utilities firm as a placement student, I worked on ICL mainframes developing in COBOL using an IDMS database. One of the features of this database was the in built data dictionary. This meant I had a clear picture of what all the data meant, how it was related, used and formatted. We lost some of this rigour in the clamour for the agility that SQL databases brought.

It seems obvious to have this organised data view, but how many of us have access to a fully defined data model for our firms, a cross system understanding of the data, that is mastered once in the enterprise and shared and managed across all the systems?

Now if we did have this and created a platform across all of this data that could transform, add value and present out the data to allow it to be consumed by services above easily, we’d have a platform that could facilitate building out new services or products quickly.

So imagine a scenario where we want to find all the profitable matters using data from the PMS, use this understanding on the data from the DMS and the communications to the client, and from this identify candidate templates or common clauses from the documents (KM) and develop a template plan (LPM) for future work in this sector. Then use data on clients to understand which this work could be marketed to.

There is potentially so much value in the data we hold. It’s not buzzword bingo any more, we’re not talking about “big data” but simply understanding the data in the various systems, ensuring it is tagged consistently, has consistent understanding of the meaning, mastered once but shared easily.

Providing an easy way to access all this information will allow us to start to explore some of the new legal tech quickly to see what works and what doesn’t.

Click here to read part 4

One area though where technology is still finding its way and hasn’t settled is in the office. I expect in the next few years this is going to accelerate even more due to a number of factors,

First Climate Change, whether you like it or not (or even whether you believe it or not) this is going to have an impact on the amount and the distance we are likely to commute in the next 10-20 years. Whether it’s through government commitments to achieving carbon neutral by 2050 (and some councils, like mine in Wakefield, are pushing for 2030).

Or whether it is through the disruption of activists blocking city centres and places of work.

Another impact that is very relevant right now is the rise of something like the Corona virus that is shutting offices and travel down right across the world.

Then there is the push for firms to best use their office space. Whether this is to maximise occupancy levels, to reduce costs or to meet their own carbon zero targets, the result will be a requirement for technology to step in and help the remote worker feel, well less remote.

This could start with pure open plan workspaces,

but I think there will be a bit of a backlash against this form in the coming years. There are already many articles and studies showing they can impact productivity.

And as one article nicely put it “The most obvious coping mechanisms – headphones, phone booths, hiding in conference rooms – rely on closing up that openness”.

But regardless of the form of the office layout, open plan or a mix of open plan and office, there will be a shift to hot desking. Software is already out there to help this by monitoring desk and meeting space usage, banks have been using this for a number of years using tools like Occupeye.

Not to be confused with the tracking software that Barclays has been forced to scrap recently, an altogether different form of employee tracking!

As a recent adoptee (not yet convert) one thing I will say is that care needs to be taken when setting up hotdesking. So I thought I’d list a few tips:

1. You need docks for your laptops, these have to be set up the same on every desk. Every cable in the same ports. Nothing is more irritating than plugging into docks with two screens and it switching the left to right and vice versa.
2. Desk kit consistency. You need to rock up to the desk and have the same kit. Keyboard, mouse, chargers etc.
3. Lockers. You’ll not want to lug everything around in your laptop bag all the time, somewhere to lock your non-standard desk kit away.
4. A booking system or a way of telling which desks are free, who’s away etc. A spreadsheet or a whiteboard will suffice if you’re only managing a few desks but this is where software can help for full office hot-desking.

Working away from office is much easier now, whether from home or from hotel or coffee shop. Most places have good WiFi to connect from, but just remember to use VPN when on a public hotspot to ensure your connection is secured.

And this should become even easier over the next few years as the 5G network starts to rollout, I know we thought as much with 4G and I’m wary of hyping up a new technology. But there is one specific that makes me think this time (particularly in cities) things should improve. The fact 5G can support significantly more devices per square kilometre than 4G.

Key to the success though of all of this hotdesking and remote working is communication and collaboration tools. Most will have used Skype for work I imagine, some will now be working in Teams or Slack. This will only increase. But something needs to change to improve online meetings. Take a shot of this slide on your phone and play Conference Call Bingo on your next call, I bet you get a line within 10 minutes!

There are additions to Teams to make video conferencing better using things like background blur.

But really who uses video on conference calls?

For me in conference calls the key is not new technology, it’s better technology. And specifically better audio. Ditch using the bandwidth for video, use it to provide very high quality audio and then ensure that everyone has the best microphones possible. Perhaps meeting rooms should bin the in ceiling mics and get everyone a lapel mic. But if someone can create something like Apple Face ID that checks when you’re speaking and only then unmutes the mic they’ll make a fortune!

For those with touchscreen PC’s with a pen or iPads with a pencil I’d suggest looking at the whiteboard application from Microsoft, it is fantastic for those collaborative meetings.

This is now integrated into Teams which when combined with technology like the Surface Hub can really bring remote workers into a collaborative meeting.

Which brings us back to the point where part one finished, the requirement for all these devices to enable us to have ubiquitous access to data, documents and services. Picking up from one device to another with ease.

And to do that we need the power of platforms….

Click here to read part 3

Since the advent of the PC there has been a push for mobility, the first portable PC’s though were essentially full size PCs with a mini monitor built into the case.

But then came the laptop and notebook PC’s and so started the PC war, which form factor was going to win, did you need a desktop anymore? My first mobile device was a Mitac laptop that I had for university, it have a monochrome monitor, huge 40Mb harddrive and a powerpack that was almost as big as the device itself!

But everything heated up with the launch, in 2010, of the iPad. Since then we’ve had ongoing predictions of the end of the PC.

This war has forced (or encouraged) manufacturers to create many kinds of form factors. Some successful, some not.

We’ve had tablets from Android, tablets in different sizes from 7″ to almost 13″, this had led to touch screen laptops, with Windows 8 failed OS attempts to merge these form factors, then came the more successful Surface Pro that brought a pen and a detachable keyboard. Others have tried fold around screens, Apple tried a pencil. And so it goes on and on.

But hands up who uses only one device, whether it’s a PC, a laptop or a tablet. Just the one and none of the others? Personally I went from that Mitac notebook, to a desktop, added and iPad 3 and now have replaced the desktop with a Surface Pro and the iPad 3 with an iPad Pro and Pencil.

So no I would put forward it’s not going to be about a single device, we pretty much all use different form factors for different scenarios. Whether it’s the type of work or the location we’re in, it can make one form factor more convenient than the other.

If I’m doing work, then I prefer a PC with two large monitors. But for browsing the internet or some shopping, I’ll use either the PC or iPad, taking notes I prefer the pencil and an iPad over the pen and my Surface Pro. But it’s all personal preference.

We’ve reached device détente.

But as in the cold war just as things seemed to be calming down and we were all settled on having a laptop and an iPad things are starting to escalate again. With the Surface Duo, the Surface Neo and the Samsung Galaxy Fold another new form factor is emerging.

I personally like the Surface Neo concept,

the ability to have a two screen set up with laptop functionality could work well for those who like the separation of two screens. Apple filed a patent a couple of years ago for something similar so we could see a MacBook or iPad device like this soon too.

However in reality I think this will be a blip in the story and just be another option and probably more a curiosity than anything substantial. Fundamentally the thing that has driven the success of multiple devices over having just one device is the software and more importantly the cloud platform behind the scenes, whether it’s Google’s, Apple’s or Microsoft’s it’s the same concept of being able to pick up where you left off on a totally different device with ease.

More on how these concepts are arriving in law firms in the next parts.

Click here to read part 2