Wrecking ball

At the SoLI conference held yesterday on April 30 on Vanderbilt Law School's campus in Nashville, not just once, but quite often, speakers and attendees alike showed what humans armed with collaboration and technology can accomplish. Organized by Vanderbilt Law's Program on Law & Innovation (PoLI), SoLI—the Summit on Law & Innovation—was creative, exciting and energetic.

The event drew faculty from prestigious law schools across the nation, successful legal technology entrepreneurs, practicing lawyers from law firms and corporations of all sizes, and media. All were attracted to SoLI's theme of “Breaking Down Silos and Building Connections.” Law schools, law firms, corporate legal departments and legal tech companies all have much to learn from each other so SoLI set out to eliminate barriers and foster discussion about what they can accomplish together by pooling their considerable resources.

Inside the Primer Talks

Three longer keynotes, or “Primer Talks,” each drove forward four short Ignite sessions with power-packed 10-minute talks. The Primer speakers—Dean Chris Guthrie of Vanderbilt Law School, Lawton Penn of Davis Wright Tremaine (DWT), and Shawnna Hoffman of IBM Global Cognitive Legal—universally told the SoLI audience that change has already arrived, and that it will continue to advance, so the best approach is to join in and move forward, too.

Guthrie called for law schools to recognize the positive impact of innovation, including new revenue streams, employment opportunities for students and graduates, and chances to enrich legal education by partnering with outside entities.

Penn invoked the work of the DWT De Novo team she leads, which is tasked with thinking about law in systems and seeking technology to solve problems not conquered by people and processes alone. She explained law from the client's perspective, saying that clients are hungry for insights and eager to extract data. Instead of focusing on what questions we are asking, focus on what answers we should be questioning, she advised. Penn said, “When value is more valuable than waste, there's a world of opportunity.”

Hoffman gets to talk to IBM Watson every day, so right away, SoLI attendees were fascinated to hear about the computer that beat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy by a country mile. Amid swirling concerns that robots will be replacing lawyers in the near future, Hoffman reassured the SoLI audience that robots will NOT be taking away their jobs, at least not the tasks they actually like doing. Machines like Watson can handle the routine, annoying, boring items that you don't want to do, like reading invoices. Hoffman discussed blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI), both topics of previous events hosted by Vanderbilt Law's PoLI. She said, “Blockchain is foundational for the promise of AI and trust. We have a humungous data crisis and blockchain will help us store the information, focus the data, and know it can be trusted data.”

She also predicted that lawyers will actually be busier than ever before, not “out of a job,” given all the sovereignty, transparency and governance issues that blockchain and AI will raise. She gave several examples of how Watson was being used in the field already, sharing that Watson itself is barely bigger than a breadbox.

Tales from the Talks

In addition to these three powerful keynotes, a succession of 10-minute TED-style talks provided insights and exhortations to get involved and make a difference. Mary Juetten of Traklight and Evolve Law said, “We don't need fancy technology. We need post-its and markers. If we're going to do something, put the clients first, the lawyers second. Less talk, more action, more tech.”

For another surprise at SoLI, wellness is not a common topic at a legal industry event, but Ann Pruitt of the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services (TALS) challenged attendees to consider what “Legal Wellness” looks like. TALS created a legal wellness app built on the Neota Logic platform, and individuals can use the app to determine what legal problems are holding them back or causing problems, connecting them to resources to help them resolve their issues.

Vanderbilt Law alumnus Casey Kuhlman, CEO of Monax, a blockchain-based contract management system provider, explained that law students, and consequently the lawyers they become, are taught issue-spotting, i.e. risk identification, but they are not learning to assess risk management or severity.

Additional notable speakers included Alyson Carrel of Northwestern Law School, Ritu Khanna of LexisNexis, Elizabeth Renieris of Evernym, J.B. Ruhl of Vanderbilt Law School, Joe Green of Thomson Reuters, Andy Daws of Kim Technologies, Katrina Lee of Ohio State University Law School, Patrick Palace of Palace Law, and Marie Bernard of Nextlaw Labs. Legaltech News also published an article about the “Leading Lawyers Without a License” panel, which featured Kathleen Pearson of Pillsbury, Camille Reynolds of Fenwick & West, and Teresa Walker of Waller.

Different Thinking About Design

The concluding chapter of SoLI was the human-centered design thinking bootcamp or “sprint” led by Cat Moon, SoLI co-organizer and director of innovation design at PoLI, alongside Alix Devendra, Nicole Bradick, and Tony Threatt. SoLI attendees divided into teams to brainstorm, setting out to solve some of society's most vexing problems armed with sticky notes, sharpies, crayons and candy (for sustenance). Whether the problem was homelessness, free healthcare for all Americans, legal access to justice, or a host of other possibilities, the teams engaged wholeheartedly in discussions.

In closing, Cat and Larry Bridgesmith, adjunct professor at Vanderbilt Law, urged SoLI attendees and speakers to take their discussions forward into action. So much heat was generated by the conference stemming from cross-pollination of ideas, they said, and clearly, many new ideas and connections bubbled to the surface.

Many at the conference asked what SoLI's next step will be, and time will tell on that, but new paths have begun to appear already. The reverberations of SoLI will look to break down silos between legal academia, practicing lawyers and legal technology, leading to future conversations, breakthroughs and benefits to the legal industry and the public as well.


 Christy Burke is President and Founder of Burke & Company, a New York City-based consulting firm specializing in legal/tech public relations and marketing. For more information, visit burke-company.com or follow Christy on Twitter @ChristyBurkePR.