Patrick Palace is a lawyer who doesn't code or know how to create a bot. But he can leverage his experience and knowledge to combine legal and tech expertise.

“This is our time to build the projects to create the system that really has all the answers instead of tinkering and tinkering,” said Palace, owner of Tacoma, Washington-based Palace Law, at the the Clio Cloud Conference's “Building Partnerships Between Law Firms & Tech Companies” session.

Palace noted that there are barriers to fusing the legal and tech industries completely. Rule 5.4 of the Rules of Professional Conduct prohibits firms from sharing legal fees with nonlawyers and practicing law with nonlawyers, and the rule may create more hoops lawyers have to jump through to collaborate with tech companies, he said.

But he added there are still ethical ways lawyers can work with tech experts to create innovative tools.

He cited examples of a law firm contracting with a tech company to work on a tool, or a firm becoming a joint developer who doesn't share fees but shares ideas. Attorneys can also start companies outside of the law firm and create a joint venture for a limited purpose, he said.

In fact, Palace's small firm collaborated with tech companies in many of these ways to develop tools to increase their revenue.

He noted that tech company MetaJure helped his firm quickly gather and organize its lengthy discovery process. The firm also joined forces with Coral Docs to produce a chatbot to quickly assess if a prospective client has a claim worth pursuing. Additionally, Palace's firm teamed up with a tech company to create a case value calculator, and partnered with Suffolk University Law School to develop an algorithm based on 14 months of data to deduce the statistical probability of winning a case.

The tech companies the firm worked with all sold their programs to other clients. But while Palace's firm didn't share in those profits,  it did see an uptick in revenue from using those programs practically for free.

“Everything we did wasn't expensive,” he said. “Everything we did anyone in this room could do. I'd like to think if all of us felt empowered to do these things, we could really take a crushing blow to the access-to-justice gap, and we could make a lot more money than we are already making.”

Indeed, Palace believes the current law firm model is being left behind by a burgeoning legal industry funded by nonlawyers and tech experts.

“We don't know how to get outside to the experts who do all the cool things that other companies can do like LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer. No one is putting them in a silo. They get to raise $500 million, they get to partner with anyone they want, they get to create these amazing tools and platforms that the entire country can use for $79.99. And where are we?”