FIFTY YEARS OF LEGAL TECHNOLOGY
We’ve Come A Long Way
How would you respond to this particular question? Are you 100% sure about this?Was it a licensed horse dealer?Is this a regular part of your diet? Are you 100% sure about this?
YES
19701980199020002010
In 1995, less than 1% of people had internet
In 2011, 35% of US adults have Smartphones83% of US adults have Cellphones
2001
Info governance focus in wake of Enron scandal
2002
Social Media site
Friendster
2003
Social Media site
Myspace
2003
Type Pad
&
WordPress
blogging
2004
Facebook
2004
Term “
podcasting
”
coined
2005
YouTube
2005
TAR
computer-assisted review & predictive coding
2006
Twitter
2006
ESI
in the FRCP
Overnight Delivery, Dial Up Research & Word ProcessingPCs, Cell Phones & Pagers Windows, MS Office & Internet
Blackberries & BloggingSocial Media, Podcasting & ESIiPhone, Android & Artificial Intelligence
Mobile, Voice Assistants & Cloud A2J, Hackathons, Blockchain & Data Security
Ask Jeeves
instructed users to ask questions, introduced
natural language search
1996
Palm’s
Palm Pilot
PDA
1997
SixDegrees, the
first social media siteAOL Instant Messenger
launched
Term “
weblog
” coined
1998
First
blogging
platform Open Diary launched
Blackberry’s
glorified pager & ubiquitous mobile email device
Ecommerce
picked up, law firms slow to adaptScreen scraping, workflow automation &
AI development
paved way for
robotic process automation
Term
“Internet of Things”
coined
1981
IBM’s first
PC
&
Osborne’s first
laptop
Records begin being consolidated electronically
1984
Apple’s first
MacSpreadsheet
software&
Lawyer-specific software
(depo searching, doc assembly, outline creators, contacts & calendars, DBsfor doc indexing)
1985
LANs
(local area networks) herald network drives & intraoffice sharing. Also the advent of the firm helpdesk
1988
Pagers
and
cellphones
1992
Windows
3.1 & LAN use proliferated
1992
IBM’s first
smartphone
-Simon
MS Office suite
of applications developed
Scanning
&
OCR
& paper to digital conversion & production commenced
1995
Mosaic
browser
released for the
World Wide Web,
surfing the Internet began
Bulletin boards
&
listservs
connected strangers over common topics Lawyers created online communities
2007
iPhone
introduced & mobile computing wasborn
2008
Android
operating system released Portals & extranets developed
West KM
for knowledge management Hackers, viruses &
SPAM
increased
IoT
was born -more objects connected to Internet than people
2009
Blockchain
&
Bitcoin
digital currency
2010
IBM Watson
, first NLP system, launched & fascination with
AI
ensued
Robotic process automation
emerged
1971
Fed Ex
introduced
1973
Lexis
dedicated UBIQterminal for caselaw search
1975
West
version, headnotes only, using dialup
1975
Electric Pencil, first
WP software
1978
WordStar software introduced
1979
Wang’s first
dedicated
WP unit
1979
Fax machine
introduced
Metadata,
first included in docs in the 60s, first referenced in FRCP in the 70s
2010
iPad
2011
Siri
smart voice assistant
Cloud computing
took off
2012
Microsoft buys
Skype
2012
Duty of tech competence in Ethical rules
2014
Alexa
2015
Mandatory Tech CLE
Legal analytics tools
developed(Edge, Advance, Context, ROSS, Premonition, KIRA, LexMachina, RAVN)Legal
Chatbots
appearedLegal startup market grew & conferences started featuring or focusing on tech
2016
Microsoft, LSC& Pro Bono Net piloted state legal access portal -
A2J
became a focus
Smart contracts
, first proposed in 1994, gained interest
2016
Legal hackathons
a thing
2018
EU strengthened data protection with
GDPR ,
US followed on state level
2018
LegalTech investment & acquisitions boomed
2018
Legal tech podcasts increased
Alternative Legal Service
providers on rise
