Sunday, March 25, 2012
Lead-up to ABA Techshow
Last week started with an article by Christina Farr in VentureBeat on a new generation of legal technology start-ups, including Tabulaw. For all the recent coverage given to law and law school in the New York Times and other mainstream media publications, there has been comparatively little on legal technologies. In part, that may be due to the fact that a clear inflection point--where the pace of innovation visibly accelerates--has been slow to materialize in law. Indeed, the author did not sugar coat the difficult reality of start-ups in this space. But I believe that the article reached an important audience of engineers, tech entrepreneurs and investors, who can help this inflection take place.
And I have been fortunate, as a result of the article, to be able to speak with some of the trailblazers in legal tech, including Rich Granat, who started the mylawyer.com network, and Donna Seyle, founder of Law Practice Strategy. Both will be presenting at the ABA Techshow in Chicago. And though I will miss that event, thanks to these recent contacts and the growing legal tech community in the Bay Area, I feel that I've gotten a mini version of the Techshow experience out West.
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I must say that from what I have seen of Tabulaw, it was the best of an otherwise mediocre lot of junky (or should I say "lean") products by folks who think that they know what solos want. At least Tabulaw seems to recognize the need for low cost, sophisticated research tools for solo and small firm lawyers to use to expand meaningful access to law. See my post here - http://myshingle.com/2012/03/articles/myshingle-solo/the-start-ups-that-give-access-to-justice-are-already-here/
ReplyDeleteI also think that Tabulaw will help smaller firms embrace technology, especially because it focuses on a single service, instead of trying to equip lawyers with everything they need to survive "digital age". That recalls some Steve Jobs mantra.
ReplyDeleteSuch services will be the real contributors to increasing access to justice, not the startups that were covered in the VentureBeat article. In the words of Carolyn - "it's about access to venture, not access to justice".
Here's my take on it - http://virtualcourthouse.blogspot.com/2012/03/71-are-startups-increasing-access-to.html