ABA Journal: Legal Rebels

One of the biggest and longest-running legal technology shows in the country, the ABA Techshow, is right around the corner. From March 1 to 4, thousands of lawyers, legal professionals and vendors will descend upon Chicago to talk about technology.

For some academics, researching, writing, editing and publishing a scholarly piece of work can take months, if not years, of painstaking effort, diligent commitment and rage-inducing frustration. In December, Andrew Perlman, the dean of the Suffolk University Law School, authored one in less time than it takes to watch an episode of the Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon.

Legal operations handle a lot of the business and technological stuff that many lawyers either aren’t trained to handle or don’t want to deal with. All so lawyers can focus on practicing law and representing their clients to the best of their abilities.

There hasn’t been much progress when it comes to driverless cars. Most major car manufacturers have sunk hundreds of billions into developing and testing driverless cars; yet the finish line seems to be nowhere in sight. So what happened?

The metaverse is all the rage these days. Users can enter a virtual world where they can interact with people from all parts of the physical world, play games, engage in commerce and do a lot of other things. Some law firms have also seen the potential.

Programmed to communicate as if they were living, breathing people, AI chatbots function by asking you a series of questions and providing you with your available options. Lawyers, law firms and courts have even gotten into the act.

Thanks to nearly two-years of COVID-19-related shutdowns and sheltering-in-place orders, working from home has become the new normal. Face-to-face interactions have been replaced by meeting on real-time videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom, FaceTime or Microsoft Teams, while cloud-based collaborative programs have become absolutely vital if any work is to be done.

Immigration is an area of law that lends itself well to technological innovations. It is in that intersection in which immigration lawyer Greg Siskind does his work.

Are you struggling with debt? Do you have collectors breathing down your neck, threatening to repossess your property and filing lawsuits against you in court? For many Americans facing this dilemma, their options are fairly limited.

Facial recognition software is becoming a greater part of our everyday lives. But the technology is controversial and not without its critics. Questions about its accuracy—especially relating to recognizing minority faces—remain.Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Smokeball.