Frankfurt Boookfair and digitization. A surprising connex

I have been visiting the Frankfurt Book Fair for 35 years. For reasons of cost (hotel prices at fair times are astronomical there), we usually sought out accommodations that were located outside. I have fond memories of a hotel in Hanau, for example. Hanau is a neighboring city of Frankfurt, and the public connections to the Main metropolis were good even then. But ...

But the trade show program also included attending evening events, which had to end with a cab ride back to the hotel. And here the horror began, not out of fear, but because the cab drivers regularly didn't have the slightest knowledge of the area as soon as they passed the Frankfurt city limits. Erroneous journeys, unsuccessful inquiries with colleagues - the journey home was always an odyssey.

Why do I remember this? Because these days the CEO of Uber Austria demanded that the test of local knowledge for obtaining the driving authorization should be dropped without replacement; it was obsolete in times of digitization (note: for rental car drivers like those of Uber, this obligation was only recently introduced in Austria). Is it?

I wrestled with myself for a while, but I think the man is right. Surely it's not a mistake for cab drivers to have some local knowledge. After all, systems can break down once in a while. But we live in the age of digitization, and it's more important to me that the driver drives properly and perhaps also speaks the local language. In truth, I don't care whether he follows his knowledge or a digital helper on the way to Hanau.

Perhaps the following will get around to the representatives of the cab industry: If you're late, life punishes you.

"The 'robojudge' is technologically impossible."

With this clear statement, the Executive Director of the Center for Legal Technology and Data Science at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Dirk Hartung, tried to direct the discussions about the digitalization of law into more realistic channels.  "We tend to be concerned with the social impact of technologies, the use of which is far beyond any meaningful period of consideration," Hartung said.

The occasion for his lecture was the 30th EDV-Gerichtstag (EDP Court Day), which for well-known reasons was again held virtually rather than in Saarbücken.  Prior to this, Florian Matthes, professor of computer science at the Technical University of Munich, had given a highly interesting talk in which he screened the main technologies that are currently shaping the development of legal informatics. Matthes did not hesitate to address controversial topics. When he describes Natural Language Processing (NLP) for legal texts as an essential field of research, hardly anyone will disagree with him; his appeal to rely (again) more on rule-based expert systems, on the other hand, is likely to meet with headwind.

The topic of NLP also reveals a topic that ran through the entire event. One might agree that "computer scientists and lawyers must become friends" (Maximilian Herberger) if one is concerned about the digitalization of law. However, the very mention of "understanding" legal texts as a link between the processing of existing texts and the generation of new ones triggers fundamentally different associations in lawyers and technicians: the linguistic-logical understanding of a legal issue literally collides with the mathematical approximation analysis that is meant by "understanding" from a technical point of view.

Also of direct interest to Austria is the issue of anonymizing court decisions as a prerequisite for their publication. Work on automating this labor-intensive process has been going on for some time in both Germany and Austria. It is interesting to note a thesis of the judge Isabelle Biallaß: Anonymization not only has to be humanly controlled, it also has to be scaled, depending on whether the anonymized text is to be made available to science or industry.

That could still take some time.

In the end, it's always about money

Wolters Kluwer's Future Ready Lawyer Study 2021 was eagerly awaited, as it provides an opportunity to track changes due to the pandemic. There is one aspect in particular that I would like to address here: the growing willingness of legal departments to change.

A quarter of in-house counsel surveyed said they were looking to change law firm(s). The figure has doubled since the previous year. A key reason is the lack of use of technology in law firms. That's worth a closer look.

One would like to think that a client could care less how the lawyer handles his mandate, as long as the time, quality and price are right. To paraphrase Bertram Burtscher (Freshfields): Whether hordes of "ants" (a term used by me) are involved in due diligence or AI-supported software - who cares, as long as the result is right. 

But that is obviously no longer true. Apparently, the awareness is spreading among in-house counsel that the use of technology in law firms can lead to better quality results. Presumably, however, it's not about the technology per se, but about the transparency of the processes for the client. Or thinking one step further: in the end, it's about the best possible quality and - surprise! - it's about money.

Digitization of legal studies (cont.)

Last week I wrote about an event of the Department of Innovation and Digitalization of Law at the University of Vienna (Prof. Nikolaus Forgò). A panel discussion had also addressed the question of the low level of digitization of law studies in Austria. Today I would like to take up this topic and dig a little deeper.

Thesis 1: Digitization is preceded by standardization

If we assume that there are about 20,000 active law students in Austria, then this would be an attractive number for a digitization project. However, if you look at how diverse the teaching and examination methods are, even outside of Corona, the number quickly becomes relative. Oral and written exams, multiple choice, comprehensive papers, course exams - the list goes on. There are good reasons for each individual form of examination - from the perspective of the respective faculty/university and the examiner/department. But what does one want to digitize? Teaching or learning?

Thesis 2: Before digitization comes the why

The finding that the study of law has not really changed for decades is correct. In other fields of study, things are different; medicine, for example, students now learn in a case-oriented manner in dialog with their professors; in the past, they had learned thick volumes by heart. But when we talk about change, we should first clarify what the real goal is:

• Is the teaching itself to be digitized? 
• Is the learning-process of the material to be supported by digitized methods/means?
• Or is the real goal to provide students with knowledge and skills of digitization as such via the digitization of studies? ("Computer skills")

Depending on that, answers and possibilities will be highly different. One thing should be noted, however: If the high goal of legal studies is to give students an understanding of structures and to enable them to recognize contexts, then this is the highest of all development levels in relation to digitization. It will be correspondingly difficult to make progress here - even if standardized teaching and examination methods were agreed upon.

Why isn't the study of law in Austria becoming more digital?

In a virtual panel discussion hosted by the Department of Innovation and Digitalization of Law at the University of Vienna (Prof. Nikolaus Forgò), the question was why law studies in 2021 would still be the same as they were 30 or more years ago.

Of course, there are initiatives: ReddyForLaw by MANZ, for example, a multiple-choice-like knowledge check and the most successful app of the market leader. Or Timebite and Studo, both community-driven information platforms. Another example is Lawstar, a marketplace for legal courses. But truly revolutionary is different. Why is that?

I think it is due to the self-image of law schools in Austria and the professional training system as a whole. "Law schools have an interest in placing their students, and as the roles of legal ops increases, they have an opportunity to move their students into those roles," Connie Brenton was recently quoted on the American platform law.com. She is the HR manager at data management and cloud giant NetApp.

In Austria, on the other hand, the faculties continue to insist on the model of teaching fundamental knowledge without taking into account professional qualifications. The several years of follow-up training required to qualify as a judge, lawyer or notary also prove them right. But one thing is clear: Where there is no job-specific training, there will be no knowledge transfer in the areas of digitization, automation or knowledge management.

What remains of Covid-19?

Recently, an interesting discussion took place on the topic of "What remains of Corona?" from the perspective of specialist information providers. There were predictable, but also surprising opinions. Here's a quick look. 

#1 Information Behavior. Those professionals who have "digitized" their information behavior in the now almost 1 ½ years since the Corona outbreak will stick with it. This is especially true for the use of cloud services; those who have given up their reluctance will not want to miss the benefits.

#2 Meeting culture. Participants did not draw a clear picture. If one wanted to draw a succus, it might be that virtual meetings will always remain when distance and duration play a role. Pure status meetings could also remain digital. On the other hand, it is safe to assume that meetings in which personal contact plays a role will be held in real life again as soon as possible. (The hospitality and tourism industries will thank you).

#3 Education and training. A similar trend is drawing here. Hardcore continuing education may remain digital; events that are more about face-to-face contact, such as conventions, will become real again.

#4 Home Office. This is where there was the most discrepancy. One discussant expects his employees to remain largely in home offices, and has already initiated a large-scale reduction in office space. Another managing director, also from the trade publishing industry, maintains individual offices for all her employees and has no thoughts of giving up direct personal contact.

Conclusion: General trends are not apparent; individual conditions and cultural aspects are the drivers. Also, all opinions mentioned reflect the German situation; trends in other countries and cultures may vary significantly.

Clause libraries instead of doc automation?

As Chief Product Officer of LexisNexis GB, Andy Sparkes is the master of 250 employees. In an interview for Artficial Lawyer he recently gave insight into the focus of their developments .

The most important asset continues to be high-quality content. In a first, complex step, it is technically developed and interlinked, for example by systematically adding references or metadata. This is followed by the introduction of analytical tools to make the content more accessible to customers. The third step is integration into the customer workflow. 

The whole thing is called "Legal Intelligence" and is intended to help lawyers make more decisions based on data (facts).

There was an interesting and, at first glance, surprising statement: LexisNexis GB is fully committed to integrating their content and tools into Office 365. The reason: the use of Office programs is so deeply established that customers are not willing to use third-party software. Clause libraries and guidance notes instead of doc automation.

What do we learn from this? Law business is local business - even in times of digitization.

Modern legal service - a note

 

Alisha Andert recently published an article in the newsletter of the Bucerius Center of the Legal Practice on the topic of WHY MODERN LEGAL SERVICE IS NOT A QUESTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL CASE that is well worth reading. In it, she calls for a holistic approach to legal advice, arguing that the traditional view of individual cases falls short in the digital era. We agree with the result, but only to a limited extent with the underlying assumption.

The author assumes that individual case thinking and legal detail determine everyday legal life and that standardization is therefore rather alien to the legal profession. Americans defend this approach as "bespoke lawyering". In many cases, however, the reality is not quite like that: "I haven't done a new contract in ages," confessed one lawyer during a recent interview. "The cases are so similar to each other that there are matching templates in the office for practically everything."

Now, of course, one can object that this is perhaps an isolated case, and moreover, everything is different in a large law firm anyway. Maybe, maybe only the dimensions change.

The point is this: If the example of the quoter is correct, then it is in fact the law firm staff who draw up the contract on demand, and from an economic point of view this process is quite efficient. Then it would also be understandable that many lawyers vehemently resist digitization and standardization - because in truth they have already standardized and therefore supposedly have little to gain.

But, once again emphasized, this should in no way call into question the author's conclusion based on her practically chosen example.