Looking Ahead

• Author: Gerardo Alvarez and Jason Tashea
• Pages: 33-34

Looking Ahead

ABA Techshow 2018 examined where the legal profession is heading—with a

heavy focus on new and emerging technology

By Gerardo Alvarez and Jason Tashea

With a new and larger venue, A BA

Techshow 2018 went beyond the usual focus

on legal technology a nd provided sessions on

leadership, team bui lding and mindfulness.

At the Hyatt Regency in Chic ago for

the first time, the show pai red panel discussions focused

on mentoring female and minor ity lawyers alongside the

traditional se ssions examining workplace eciency, as

well as legal issues a rising from old, new and emerging

technolog ies.

Those technologies took c enter stage as multiple panelists

and speakers ta lked in March about the ways lawyers c an

augment their practice s by utilizing artificia l intelligence,

blockchain, vir tual reality and the “ internet of things.”

Referring to thes e emerging technologies as import ant

rungs of the “fourt h industrial revolution,” keynote speaker

Dan Katz, a ssociate professor and direct or of the Law Lab at

the Chicago-Kent C ollege of Law, argued that they hold the

key toward rest arting what he called a long-stal led trend

of legal innovation.

Katz argue d that the legal innovation agenda is not the

coming onslaught of robot law yers, contrary to popular

media accounts. R ather, the future is a marriage b etween

technology and huma ns, which he said is more powerful

than either group alone. “ To the legal innovators, I say let ’s

stay the course,” he said about looki ng toward the future.

Blockchain, for example, c an make legal services more

ecient and less costly by es tablishing automated smart

contracts that don’t have to rely on hum an intermediaries to

be enacted. Ac cording to David Fisher, founder and CEO at

Integra Ledger, a legal blockc hain consortium, lawyers h ave

to first understa nd how blockchain functions before it can

be eectively used in t he legal industry.

“The first step is for at torneys to understand what it is

because there’s a common misconce ption that blockchain

is a new application,” Fisher said during hi s “Blockchain

JUNE 2018 ABA JOURNAL || 33

Business of Law

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAVERIO TRUGLIA

Technology

Keynote speaker Dan Katz