Tess Blair, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. Courtesy photo.

There's data analysis, and then there's data analysis. Most law firms today know how to look at a line graph of costs, or to chart revenue from a certain client. But how many firms are actively taking the next step: Seeking out new forms of data to learn something that you didn't know before, to give a leg up on competitors or to work for clients in an unforeseen way? It's something that many would say they'd love to do, but answering the "how" can be difficult—unless you know what roadblocks you're facing.

As part of the run-up to Legalweek 2020, Legaltech News is chatting with a number of speakers from this year's sessions to know. Today's Q&A is with Tess Blair, partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and founder of the firm's e-data practice. Her Legaltech sessions include "GDPR & CCPA Are Fueling High Demand for On-Point RegTech Solutions" at 11:30 a.m. Feb. 4; "Algorithmic Malpractice & Lawfare" at 2 p.m. Feb. 4; and "With Over $1B in Venture Backed Capital, Could We Be on the Verge of Another Tech Bubble?" at 3:30 p.m. Feb. 4.

Legaltech News: What do you think legal tech looks like in 10 years? What will be the biggest opportunities and challenges?

Tess Blair: I see a profession where access to legal technology will be easier and broader, applications simpler and more diverse and use of technology in practice universal. Practice is likely to be far more platform based with far more dominant players in each legal tech market segment. So instead of countless contract review/analytics platforms and e-discovery packages, perhaps we'll have fewer but really good ones that are offered on platforms differentiated by user base. The winning platforms will be simple, secure, nimble, but importantly will be designed to optimize practice by leveraging user data.

This is probably wishful thinking, but I'd like to see the gap close between the consumer user experience and the legal user experience, and my user experience in legal is downright pitiful compared to my experience using even the most basic online consumer platforms. Maybe we don't want a MySpace for legal, but can we get an Amazon or a Spotify-like experience?

What will be the biggest opportunities and challenges?

As is true throughout the economy, data will be the currency of future practice. Access to and the profession's ability to monetize its data is at once the biggest opportunity and the biggest challenge in legal tech.

For a profession that is in essence an information consumption, generation and delivery business, law has not even begun to figure out how to exploit the value in our data, our information, our knowledge. Indeed, a lot of lawyers will tell you they can't even find it half the time. Few have the courage to say it out loud, but KM in legal is regarded by many as an utter failure both in concept and in reality, and until we finally acknowledge that and start to think about our data the way Silicon Valley does, legal will never realize the enormous untapped value we're sitting on.

What is the biggest roadblock to digital transformation?

The historical roadblocks have been significant but they are falling away and new entrants to the profession and the legal tech market are clearing a path to real transformation. The first has historically been lack of investment resources or even incentives to investing in the resources necessary to digitally transform an organization. Law firms are not structured to do R&D or to make long term infrastructure investments, and legal departments still have a heavy lift when seeking transformational technology investment from the business. Of course, we are now seeing a veritable flood of outside investment in legal tech companies, which will hopefully find its way to worthy ideas and companies.

Second, lawyers have a well-earned reputation as Luddites, and even among those who are technophiles, the notion of transformational change in the profession may be intimidating. That is changing as diversity in the profession and greater workforce improves. Legal tech is no longer created by or for a single user base or use case. Diverse perspectives, requirements, and applications are creating opportunities and ideas in legal tech and infusing it with new energy and an optimism that's been missing.

The biggest historical roadblock to transformational change in legal tech was probably complacency. Until the 2008 financial crisis, the profession faced little competition or pressure to change. Now, that competition is everywhere: new law companies, ALSPs, LPOs, and the Big Four. Proposed changes in law firm ownership rules promise to fuel even more. Competition between law firms has always been cordial, but legal technology is (finally) creating real opportunities for competitive separation between firms. And of course, legal tech enables corporates to do plenty of their own legal work that used to go outside.

Have you seen digital transformation become easier or harder to accomplish over the past few years?

I don't think we have seen much of it yet. The conditions are ripe for the long predicted disruption in legal, all of the elements are there—investment dollars, a lagging market with ample problems to solve and opportunities to exploit (and gobs of data), entrepreneurs with great ideas and new tech and a receptive customer base enjoying a very busy, productive business cycle. The tipping point might be the next downturn, but the smart money won't wait.

What do you hope attendees take away from your Legalweek sessions?

I'm doing a number of panels and hope to be a troublemaker. In a good way, of course. Question received wisdom. Think differently about legal tech and about the way we practice. Look, this is a very exciting time to practice and especially to practice at the intersection of law, technology and data. But there is no rulebook for this, so it is up to those of us who practice here to work together to talk about how law ought to be practiced in the future.