ABA Journal: Legal Rebels

Adriana Linares considers it a badge of honor to work in the legal profession without being a lawyer. Linares co-founded LawTech Partners with Allan Mackenzie in 2004 after several years in the IT departments of two of the largest firms in Florida. Now she travels across Florida, throughout the country and sometimes abroad as a law practice consultant and legal technology coach. “Lawyers, as far as I’ve ever seen, certainly understand how to research and apply law in a way that helps their clients,” she says. “But where they might need my help is identifying tools and services that will help them with their practice management.”

Legal journalist and blogger Bob Ambrogi recounts his unorthodox path towards legal journalism, as well as where he sees the legal industry heading – especially as it relates to technology.

Bruce MacEwen is both a doctor and an epidemiologist in the world of BigLaw firms. A Legal Rebels Trailblazer, the Adam Smith, Esq. founder can diagnose structural illnesses, including aspects of the partner-as-owner model, and he can point to unhealthy customs and practices, such as when aversion to failure becomes its cause. He also can give advice and guidance for getting better and surviving or, in some instances, provide a dispassionately detailed autopsy.

John Tredennick started a focus on legal technology in 1988—back when law firms saw it as something limited to fancy computers and adding machines. He asked Holland & Hart, the Denver-based firm where he was a partner, to add the words chief information officer to his title. “You need a leader, not just somebody on staff but somebody who understands the bigger vision of the firm—where we fit in the legal landscape and how we can harness technology to get us where we want to be,” Tredennick told partners. “I said, ‘I want to be that leader,’ and they made me the technology partner.”

Michael Mills has been helping law firms figure out their technological needs since before there was an internet. As one of the first of what are now known as chief knowledge officers, Mills played a leading role in educating his fellow lawyers and implementing tools and processes designed to help lawyers do their jobs more effectively. After over two decades in Big Law, Mills decided to stake out on his own, eventually co-founding Neota Logic, a company that allows users to design and create their own tools to fit their needs. Mills talks about his career, as well as what role technology will play in the legal industry going forward.

For more than three decades, Richard Susskind has been one of the profession’s most prolific voices in support of implementing technology with legal services delivery. The author of more than 10 books on the topic, his next one will focus on technology in the courtroom. “A better way of running state-based dispute resolution is largely using technology, rather than using traditional methods,” says Susskind. “Rather than hiring a lawyer, one might instead have an online dialogue with the other party and a judge and resolve a dispute more rapidly.”

For years, Paul Lippe has been a leader in helping corporate law departments adopt the approaches used in the best and most innovative parts of their own companies—and in doing so, significantly changing the relationships with and the work done by their outside lawyers. A Legal Rebels Trailblazer and one of the original New Normal contributors for ABAJournal.com, Lippe’s career path has been all about change and innovation.

Plenty of lawyers hate to do legal research: It can be tedious and time-consuming, and one mistake can tank an entire case. For lawyers of a certain generation, the very sight of those two-toned, musty-smelling books that all look the same is enough to fill them with dread. For younger lawyers, electronic resources can be just as intimidating and mystifying. Luckily for Lisa Solomon, she loves that kind of work.

Stacy Stern is in charge of revenues, among her other roles at a successful for-profit company, but she tends to talk more about giving away products and services. It becomes obvious that she thinks giving is more important than receiving—not that Justia, the legal portal she and her husband, Tim Stanley, created, isn’t out to make money. But–philosophically at least–they turn the standard business model on its head. Profit for the 100-plus-employee company makes it possible to put up more free stuff. Stern, a 2017 Legal Rebel Trailblazer, and Stanley, one of the original ABA Journal Legal Rebels, make basic law free and available to one and all, while turning a profit by helping lawyers market themselves.

In this special ABA TECHSHOW episode of the ABA Journal’s Legal Rebels Podcast, Molly McDonough catches up with Legal Rebel Stacy Stern, president of the vast legal portal Justia. Stern, one of the co-founders of Findlaw, was named a Legal Rebels Trailblazer in early 2017. She talks here about the expansion of Justia, which champions free law for all in the United States and Mexico.