This week I have highlights from LegalTech Hong Kong 2016 and several contributions from our members.
LegalTech Hong Kong Highlights
With the highest attendance ever, LegalTech Hong Kong provided ILTA members with a full day of great content and networking. LegalTech Hong Kong and U.S.-China Legal Summit shared the keynote speakers, Dan Katz, Professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, and Honorable Justice Kevin Zervos from the Hong Kong High Court. Dan Katz gave a fast-paced tutorial on artificial intelligence and the need for the legal industry to learn from the finance industry’s application of AI. He advised we treat a portfolio of litigation cases like a portfolio of stocks – look for performance across the block of cases rather than the financial benefits of an individual case. Judge Kevin Zervos discussed globalization’s effect on the law and the need to better understand laws from different jurisdictions and their impact on each other. Breakout sessions on data privacy, innovation, information governance and artificial intelligence followed the keynotes.
Chris Dale from the eDisclosure Information Project, Dmitri Hubbard from Xerox and Xiaoyan Zhang from Mayer Brown JSM led the data privacy session. They recommended firms focus on understanding the state of privacy laws and global concerns, and be proactive regarding privacy. Firms should not put policies in place only to wait for bad things to happen.
Bob Charlton from Berwin Leighton Paisner and Vivian Ng from NetApp presented “Managing Innovation and the Business: The Impact of IT Budget on Innovation.” Charlton discussed the necessity of innovation to maintain and improve client-firm relationships. Charlton warned that if law firms don’t innovate, they will be left behind. Ng shared examples of her company and team taking an innovative approach to procuring legal services.
Adi Elliott and Sebastian Ko from EPIQ and Conor Crowley from UBS shared ways to collaborate and communicate even with the impact of emerging data issues and the lag in the regulatory landscape.
Dan Katz from IIT Chicago-Kent, Jane Livesey from Linklaters and Jonathan Wong from Freshfields spoke about artificial intelligence. Katz gave a great primer on AI and his thoughts on data analytics and data driven projects. Livesey and Wong shared examples of their data driven projects and their concerns. All presenters agreed, though some law firms utilize “near AI” such as natural language processing, machine learning, expert systems and predictive coding, firms have yet to use real AI.
LegalTech and China Legal Summit attendees reconvened for a closing session on cybersecurity and cybercrime laws and the cybercrime impact in Asia.
The next day, ILTA members gathered for an ILTA roundtable hosted by Linklaters to discuss LegalTech takeaways and to delve more deeply into concepts addressed at LegalTech. Topics included generational issues, better promotion of new ideas to management, creating multiple streams of training to reach all learners and more. This roundtable helped attendees create action items to immediately improve the way they and their departments work.
Assistive Technology for People with Disabilities
Recently a member asked about recommended assistive technologies for the visually impaired. This piqued my interest. I know there are tools available to help employees with disabilities, but what are the tools and how do they work? To start, I found the American Foundation for the Blind’s “Assistive Technology in the Workplace” and the Hearing Loss Association of America’s assistive technology sites recommending a variety of tools ranging from simple hand magnifiers and speakers to more sophisticated screen reading and voice recognition tools. To search for a broader scope of tools, see the AbleData product database. Unfortunately, I discovered many of the computer based tools require older operating systems. Disability.gov also provides articles and recommended assistive technologies including a Guide to Assistive and Accessible Technologies.
SOMETHING EXTRA – EU-US Privacy Updates and Recent Member Input on Outsourcing and the Self-Service Generation
Need to stay abreast of the new EU-US privacy requirements? Access the recording and PowerPoint from last week’s ILTA webinar “Effects of the EU Safe Harbor Decision.”
Does the DIY revolution of home brewing, woodworking or building your own gaming computer translate to DIY policy development in the workplace or should it be outsourced? ILTA member Dana Sarti analyzes the options in her blog post, “Outsourcing Policy Development – Outsource or DIY.”
Considering modifying your training program to fit the self-service generation? The ILTA Self-Service Generation Project team conducted a survey to determine how ILTA members deliver training and other information to those raised on Google. To review the results, see Self-Service Generation Survey results.
As ILTA’s content curator, I’m always monitoring the discussion forums to discover what topics are top-of-mind among the members. Each week, I focus on a few areas that spark your interest, and I provide some curated resources to assist your own information-gathering on the topics. If there are specific topics you would like assistance exploring, please contact me at joanne@iltanet.org