Thursday, January 27, 2022

Justice as a gamechanger

Today I was interviewed by the agile Nerds of Law Katharina Bisset und Michael Lanzinger for their podcast. As often, the question was, will legal tech become more widespread? What will that mean for the legal profession?

For the most part, there are fairly balancing answers to that question. For once, I'd like to spin a polarizing thought:

"The gamechanger" par excellence in Austria was the justice system. It began deep in the 20th century with the introduction of the form-based dunning action and the digitization of the land register, and a little later the company register. Mandatory electronic legal transactions with the courts gave Austria a decades-long head start. What if the justice system were once again the driving force, and what might that look like?

A thought experiment: laws would be written in machine-readable German, i.e., with clear logical relationships and well-defined terms. There would even be room for discretionary leeway, but we would have to dispense with undefined legal terms and systematic loopholes. The jurisprudence of all courts would be analyzed in depth by machine and connected to the new laws by means of connectors. THAT would be a game changer, but one that would not please many of those involved in the legal system (lawyers, judges, even experts), because many court proceedings could be automated or simply eliminated.

Is the idea absurd? No, research on legal language is plentiful. The bigger issue would certainly be the connection of the jurisdiction, but at least it would not fail today because of the computing power.

Not to be misunderstood: This is not a proposal, but a thought experiment. But the underlying thesis is a fact: Digitization in Austria runs through the justice system!


Thursday, January 13, 2022

Digitization of the judiciary: Now!


In Austria, an obligation to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is to be stipulated by law. Needless to say, this plan is polarizing opinion. Recently, the professional association of judges and public prosecutors expressed its position on this issue. In addition to constitutional concerns, the issue is the immense additional burden on the courts resulting from the expected appeals against penal decisions. There is talk of a 6-digit number of additional proceedings "threatening" the administrative courts and supreme courts. 

The concern is certainly justified. One does not have to be a prophet to foresee that this wave of complaints will be steered on the one hand by certain political parties, but also by the legal profession. And there the question of resources does not arise? No, because these complaints will certainly be handled with a high level of technological support. Just as in the case of flight delays or fines for speeding.

These resources must also be available to the authorities! The cases will resemble each other or can be typified, the arguments will be repeated. If lawyers manage to build up the necessary infrastructure - why should the judiciary not be able to do so?

It is certainly not a financial question. Probably a legal one, but the lawyers on the other side are also obliged to personally authorize each and every appeal, and the relevant case law of the Administrative Court is well known. But of course, it also requires the willingness of judges (and politicians) to accept technological support. If compulsory vaccination actually becomes law, typical mass proceedings must be expected. The timing for a digitization push in the judiciary could not be better.


Friday, December 3, 2021

The power of money


Austrian industry magazine Horizont recently reported on the unexpected economic success of news service Substack in the US. After a slow start in 2017, the scale recently rose to more than 1 million paid subscriptions.

Paid newsletter subscriptions??

The business concept is amazing: Substack collects the best and most prominent authors by offering them 2 advantages over the traditional media world: 1. no content control by publishers, editor-in-chief or the like, and 2. a 90% share of the revenue generated.

The business concept could be transferred easily also to legal contents: one looks for the most prominent, shrillest specialists and offers to them a weekly column against absolute maximum fee. The authors take over the marketing through their mere availability.

The catch: the business concept inevitably leads to exaggeration and selective reporting. - In the past, this would have been called puffery. Now, I am not an enemy of the boulevard; it rightly has its place in the media world. But specialist information for experts must remain objective and predictable.


Friday, November 26, 2021

USA: COVID-19 does not increase cloud usage among lawyers


An interesting article on law.com recently addressed the question of whether the pandemic has led to increased use of cloud technology among lawers. A survey by the American Bar Association of several hundred members from law firms of all sizes paints rather the opposite picture. A fairly stable 40% of American lawyers continued to reject cloud technology.

The reasons given are not new. On the one hand, there is the cost risk involved in a transition from on-premise to cloud during the changeover phase.  More important, however, are security concerns. These can be roughly divided into two categories. One set of concerns is factually based. The fear that cloud providers could install spy software under pressure from public authorities and thus gain access to confidential information is usually cited. These reservations probably cannot be definitively dispelled for the USA.

It is more difficult to deal with dogma, such as the following. "Data storage in the cloud carries a higher security risk than on premise." Once you internalize this, it will be hard to convince you otherwise. So ultimately, it will be the clients who motivate their advocates to use contemporary technology. Or everything will remain as it is.

Parallels to current discussions are coincidental, but not necessarily wrong.


Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Digitization of the judiciary?

The highly esteemed Markus Hartung quotes the German Federal Bar Association on Twitter: "BRAK has already made a decisive contribution to this process [i.e. to the digitization] by setting up and operating the (... beA)". He leaves the quote uncommented - but I would like to take it up briefly:

In wide legal circles, the opinion still prevails that the use of word processing and e-mail as well as the use of legal databases is already "the" digitization. If one assumes this, the establishment and operation of a secure document transmission system is undoubtedly a step forward. But it is also only a beginning.

A further digitization of court proceedings will inevitably affect established principles. The immediacy of proceedings, for example, the decision by judges as persons at every stage of the proceedings, the performance-based remuneration of lawyers, and - yes, even the new idol called data protection. None of this will happen today or tomorrow, and of course it will require constitutional amendments - but digitization is more than just remote access to files, even if much has already been gained with the latter.


Thursday, October 21, 2021

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.


Thursday, October 7, 2021

The Oxymoron in Legaltech


In the context of the anniversary event of the German EDV-Gerichtstag - I reported - a judge had raised the postulate of scalability, but at the same time human control, in connection with the machine anonymization of court decisions. An exceptionally educated, highly esteemed colleague spoke privately of an "oxymoron" in connection with this. Is he right and are oxymora perhaps even generic characteristics of legaltech?

If one follows the various dictionaries of terms, oxymora are combinations of contradictory words or terms to or within a statement. This probably applies to the example cited at the beginning, because automation and human control run counter to each other. But are there other examples?

In a recently published survey by a major professional information provider, there were quite a some clues: For example, the respondents rated collaboration with clients highly, but at the same time considered communication by phone and e-mail to be indispensable. Or the cost-effective automation of office processes is desired, while at the same time the continued use of the law firm's own forms and formats is postulated.

I don't know if these are oxymora in the strictest sense of the word. Most importantly, I wonder if those who express these contrary desires are even aware of this fact. If the answer was no, it shouldn't be surprising. The buzzword bingo in legaltech in its monthly variations of terms is not to be outdone. What non-specialist is supposed to keep track of it all? And the feeble query "What importance do you attach to AI. in the future?" is already confusing in its generality. The appeal to legaltech providers can therefore only be to present clearly defined products in equally clear language and not to keep changing the vocabulary.

Otherwise, the legaltech providers themselves are the oxymoron.


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