(L-R ) Gina Passarella, American Lawyer; Mary Shen O'Carroll, CLOC; Dan Reed, UnitedLex; Mark Cohen, Elevate Services; Mark Smolik, DHL Supply Chain America and Anthony Crowell, NY Law Schoolnon a panel titled "The Evolution of the Legal Services Model" at Legalweek at the New York Hilton Hotel in New York on Tuesday, January 30, 2018...(Photo by David Handschuh/NYLJ)

When discussing legal technology, it's easy to go overboard in detailing a platform's potential. UnitedLex CEO Dan Reed noticed some of this at Legalweek 2018, where he described solutions and ideas circulating the conference as “a mix” between the innovative and typical.

On the one hand, Reed said, there are vendors “promising significant advancement in artificial intelligence” and similar technologies. But, he cautioned, while “those kinds of technologies make sense when you're dealing with large volumes of data” leveraging technology toward “more nuanced and more layered kinds of decision making” is “kind of a ways away from being relevant.”

“Nothing massive is moving technology other than being able to zip through and manage a lot data more efficiently. But beyond that, I'm not seeing it.”

In this podcast, Reed discusses hearing about robot lawyers and how they won't be “ready for prime time” for at least another seven to ten years, the “pure marketing” of “buzz behind Watson,” and how combining technology with newer service delivery is the current step in “that natural evolutionary curve.”