I Witness. Bridging Law and Technology

• Author: Rebecca Hutchinson
• Pages: 11-12

iWitness

Published in Litigation, Volume 46, Number 2, Winter 2020. © 2020 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not

be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association. 11

REBECCA HUTCHINSON

The author is a 3L at University of Richmond Law, an Institute for the Future of Law Practice intern at

Thompson Hine LLP, and a certified project manager.

When I was nine years old, my dad

brought home our family’s first comput-

er—the then cutting-edge IBM Personal

Computer XT—which he had bought

at the local Sears. It was probably only

slightly smaller than a mainframe, and

its massive monitor sat atop a desk in the

corner of our kitchen.

The internet was new to households

like mine—it was new to almost everyone.

Although the world, at dial-up speed, lay

at our fingertips, the most we could man-

age was to insert a 5.25-inch floppy to play

Wheel of Fortune, complete with Vanna,

or write school papers. After viewing our

schoolwork reflected in bright white font

on a black screen, we would listen to the

buzz of the dot matrix printer as it took

the digital and made it physical.

By the time I was a teenager, my high

school had bought a handful of Macs,

which allowed us to create professional-

looking graphics and to “professionally”

edit photos for the yearbook. By the time

I was in college, course registration was

online, though you still had to go to the

library to register on one of its comput-

ers. After graduating, I began working at

a company that boasted about how much

of the internet’s physical infrastructure it

owned. There I learned everything from

how to make cables and run them to our

new routers, to how to use project man-

agement principles to implement almost

anything, a skill that led to my project

management certification in 2005.

After a few more stints with other tech

companies and more projects under my

belt than I could fit on my résumé, I decid-

ed to leave project management behind and

pursue law. I soon realized, however, that

I had not left project management behind.

The opportunities to implement

technological tools in law are many, and

successful implementation requires

good project management. And as I’ve

discovered, not all lawyers, even good

ones, are good project managers.

Fortunately, it’s not hard to be a good

project manager. And despite advances

in technology, the hurdles to successful

implementation have largely stayed the

same. The following principles, gathered

as battle wounds in projects large and

small, technical and not at all techy, will

give you a framework of how to use proj-

ect management principles to clear com-

mon hurdles. So what do you need to do

to be a successful project manager?

Pause. First and foremost, pause.

Maybe you have been to conferences,

read articles, or attended webcasts that

pitched some amazing legal tech solution.

It is an exciting time for legal technology;

there seems to be a tool for just about ev-

erything. Instead of looking further into

technology that sounds life-changing, just

pause. Set the technology aside. This is

the most difficult part, as instinct and the

fear of being left behind often drive us

to jump in without proper thought. Law

is fueled by competition. But the best

competitors (winners) evaluate and pre-

pare before taking action. Implementing

technology without the appropriate fore-

thought leads to money wasted and tech-

nology that goes unused.

Start with the problem. Chances are

that, as a lawyer, you enjoy analysis, which

is an essential precursor to implement-

ing legal technology. Conducting a busi-

ness analysis will uncover needs and of-

fer potential solutions. This process may

involve surveying employees and clients

alike on what isn’t working; what is time-

consuming; and what would improve ease

of use, speed, and accuracy. Don’t forget

to tap into that mountain of data that you

likely sit atop. Once you isolate a problem,

you may find that the solution is indeed a

new technology, or it may simply be a new

process or possibly better utilization of a

tool that you already have.

Assemble a “virtual” team. It is not as

futuristic as it sounds. Assembling a vir-

tual team means gathering representatives

BRIDGING LAW AND

TECHNOLOGY