I have the honor and privilege to serve as the 2023-24 Chair of the Computer and Technology Section (C&T) of the State Bar of Texas. The C&T Section’s membership is diverse and has members from solo practices to major law firms and lawyers from major technical industries and Fortune 500 companies. As I like to say about the C&T Section, when it comes to technology and the law “Our Bench is Deep”. As an example of our “bench” recently the State Bar created a Taskforce regarding AI and ChatGPT composed of seven lawyers, three of which were members of the C&T Section.
The C&T Section is rich in resources, no matter how small or large your firm and no matter what level of technical knowledge. We are here to help you. In this ever-changing world of legal technology like AI and ChatGPT, and our duty of technical proficiency, we are here to provide those resources for you.
7th Annual Tech and Justice for All CLE program December 1, 2023
Don’t forget to register for our upcoming 7th Annual Tech CLE program taking place in Austin on December 1, 2023. The full brochure and registration options information will be forthcoming, and your section membership will provide you with an immediate discount upon registering for this outstanding CLE.
Member Benefits As a member of the C&T Section, here are some of your immediate benefits:
Free CLEs For the price of just one CLE course, the C&T Section provides members with four quarterly free CLEs covering major issues at the intersection of technology and the law.
Our first CLE alone is worth the price of joining the section. On September 29, 2023, starting at noon, section member John Browning, Chair of the State Bar of Texas Taskforce regarding Ai/ChatGPT, will present “To ChatGPT, or not to ChatGPT, that is the question” and you don’t want to miss this benefit as a section member.
John’s recent ChatGPT presentation was just cited in an opinion by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Allen Michael Lee v. The State of Texas, case number 10-22-00281, in the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Judicial District.
Texas Bar Legal App Our Texas Bar Legal app is available to all members and provides Texas and Federal Codes, Rules, and Statutes. We support Apple and Android devices and even a weblink. More information regarding our app can be found here.
Circuits The C&T Section publishes the quarterly Circuits Newsletter covering a broad range of topics regarding technology and the law. Here you will find articles regarding such topics as current technology, practical applications and utilizing technology for your practice.
Covering the latest Legal Technology The ABA Tech Show is a must event for staying up to date with the latest legal technology and we annually send our members to cover and report on the seminars, lectures, updates and products for multiple speakers and vendors. This year’s review can be found here.
Need to Join or Renew Your Membership? Dues are still just $25
With all these benefits of a membership to the C&T Section, I encourage you to join or renew your membership now. If you haven’t already, please renew your membership with our Section by logging into your MyBarPage at the State Bar of Texas Website. We encourage you to join now and reach out to your fellow lawyers and friends. Let them know about the low annual membership fee of $25 in exchange for multiple valuable benefits!
I am excited for the new challenges of technology this year will bring, and promise our continued emphasis on delivering the best information and assistance for lawyers to you and our State Bar.
Finally, I would like to thank Pierre Grosdidier for his outstanding service as the Section Chair for the past year.
Warm regards,
Reginald A. Hirsch, Chair Computer and Technology Section State Bar of Texas
The Computer & Technology Section makes free CLE available to attorneys as a service of the Section and the Texas Bar. This CLE is entitled: “Space Law, AI, and Cybersecurity: Protecting the Security and Sustainability of the Next Frontier” Speaker: Charles Lee Mudd, Jr.
Course Number: 174195229 The recording will be available until 03/31/2024. MCLE Credit: 1 hour of participation with .25 hours of ethics.
It’s been 3 years since I last had the physical ability to last see the many techie lawyers, consultants, entrepreneurs and vendors at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago and drink in the elixirs of TECHSHOW.
It’s been a long three years. That drought came to an end this past March 1-4, 2023
and the water did not disappoint the thirsty.
The presentations were very fluid, so much so that it was difficult to spend any significant time in the Expo Hall. The fast and furious meetups with the vendors of legal tech that we could get to highlight the many acquisitions and mergers that occurred in the legal tech space over the last several years.
Several announcements preceded TECHSHOW, the majority of which appeared to come from Bob Ambrogi, the veteran impresario who was presented at the opening startup pitch competition with the very deserving award for a lifetime of achievement and promotion of the legal tech industry and TECHSHOW.
This trend of acquisition is somewhat ironic as compared to the pre-2008 crash period in legal tech; during which economic depression gave way to a super-infusion of startups in the practice management space (Clio, Rocket Matter, MyCase, etc.). Much of what seems to be occurring is the buy-up of players in sub-markets, which was a part of the pre-2008 ‘big-law-vendors’ playbook, where the two biggest law vendors would buy up software companies for their market share. However, to counter this irony, the new buyouts tend to be more in line with folding the tech into existing platforms.
Several of the biggest splashes over the last three to four years came after massive cash infusions of VC money into the existing Practice Management System coffers.
In addition, the infusions now appear to be two-fold–with companies being bought not just for their tech but also for the re-branding of some to create umbrella companies and the buy-up of brands within those brands. Thus, there are now several companies that own and/or are positioned to own different Apps within the penumbra of their ‘rights,’ so to speak.
If this trend holds, look for the top 4 or 5 (in my opinion at least) in the startup pitch competition to possibly come into play, something that is not lost on those seeking the winning ticket. In another twist of irony, the winner of the startup pitch competition was Universal Migrator, which claims to be able to move a law firm’s data from any of approximately 60 different case and practice management systems to any other system.
If these companies and vendors represent the process, the large number of speakers certainly stepped up with the substance. While there were many I didn’t get to see but have certainly followed, including Regina Edwards of Facebook’s Lawyer On The Beach (LOTB) fame, there were many others that competed in sometimes overlapping manners for our attention. This is perhaps a problem that TECHSHOW organizers faced in the past and that had subsided but seemed to make a reappearance, along with the continued problem of materials being relatively unavailable ‘en masse.’ This for me is perhaps like dancing on the head of a needle as TS continues to be a re-education of both my right and left brains.
The first keynote featured Jack Newton (celebrating 15 years of Clio’s launch) doing a Q and A with a number of very visible startup leaders in the recent three years. Those included several startup pitch competitors of past years, all of whom have dynamic personalities with a very high degree of integrity with regard to their products. Erin Levine (a prior James Keane award winner) launched Hello Divorce several years ago and was one of the first to really propel DIY divorce forward. There are now numerous competitors in the space and I’d expect more, if not hybrids of some lawyers seeking to optimize their efficiency. This optimization is no more apparent that with Kimberly Bennett, who co-founded Fidu, one of my top 4 in the startup alley/pitch competition this year and the third-place winner in the competition. Fidu is a platform created to allow attorneys to focus on flat fee arrangements by taking advantage of automation within the practice of law.
In addition, Jazz Hampton completed the trifecta of keynote panelists, having also come from a law practice background and also with very personal reasons for doing what he does. He created Turn Signal, which is an app that anyone can have on their phone, and if pulled over in a traffic stop, with the click of a button call up an attorney for advice on what to say and do or more importantly what not to say and do. The price point is approximately $60.00 per year but they will not charge anyone making less than $40k and have marketed to companies as an employee benefit.
While the call for speakers and decisions on the same are typically finalized in the summer for the following spring, the unexpected and massive infusion of Chat GPT, reignited the AI in legal discussion but this time in a way that could be obtained by the masses (intermittently unless you’re on a paid account). There are probably several hundred integrations not the least of which is Google’s Bard and Microsoft (into Bing), though many of these are just really smart people trying to figure out how to add automation into their own products by the AI within ‘chat’ (Open AI).
One of the speakers was Pablo Arredondo, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Casetext, which I believe could be positioned with their new product CoCounsel to counter what I expect to be a massive amount of Chat GPT generated legal work product, either by attorneys simply sending a query and then dumping the output into their documents; or by pro se/self-represented litigants doing something similar. The ability of Judges and even attorneys attempting to counter this will be significantly tested. I write this, one word at a time while on my first of two flights to get home but I intend to run a query in ‘Paul Bunyan’ fashion and see which indicates a better woodchopper. Arredondo was shepherded into this role and presentation by Steve Embry, Chair of the LPM Section of the ABA, who humbly lauded his efforts and highlighted Arredondo’s theoretical jump. Arredondo spoke in historical terms of Walter Pitts of the1940s and early theories of neuron mapping, at one point analogizing “if you want to be smart, do what the smart thing does.”
When transitioning the argument to lawyers’ space he mused “ours is a castle built with language.” By several analogies, he brilliantly wove a pathway (neurons and all) to show us that contextual search will perhaps be everything down the road. When explaining that perhaps Chat GPT shouldn’t be used for anything important right now, he offered “I’m from northern California so there’s a place for hallucinations but it’s not really for litigation”
One of my favorite people (and perhaps the most knowledgeable legal tech presenter I know), Chelsea Lambert, reappeared this year again and presented on a very hot topic as demographics change— that being a guide to succession planning, alongside the very knowledgeable Texas family lawyer, Jordan Turk. This topic is incredibly relevant right now and is the focus of our Texas State Bar President and LPM committee, planning multiple presentations for the State Bar Annual Meeting coming up in June. Their presentation was a great mix of rules, laws (mostly California and Texas, though applicability could cut a wide swath), and practicality, touching on the four C’s of client management and three options for planned transitions and exits from practice. Hit up one of them or me for materials, if desired. I’m sure it would be obliged.
In the vein of seeing presenters close to home, I was thrilled to be able to attend “No Code, No Problem, with Austin, Texas attorney Alex Shahrestani and Tulsa, Oklahoma attorney Trevor Riddle
In what I previously termed a ‘mind-bending creation’ of spreadsheet backups while pulling via keywords from Gmail using Chat GPT, Alex and Trevor walked the entire audience through a how-to workshop; they combined the use of Zapier with Gmail and Chat GPT to create a Zapin this fashion. While much was above some of our heads, the concept was analogous to all kinds of use-case workflows, and its practicality after the front-end work was illuminating. While Alex focused on the Google steps, Trevor complimented the same workflow on the Microsoft side.
In a heartwarming twist, Nefra Macdonald, expanded the “Client Centered Law Firm” approach by adding some additional more human-centric accents, citing Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way, A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity,” something that I think ought to be more widely implemented in our business space.
She went on to talk about first order thinking (a more knee jerk reaction) and second order thinking (where one would consider a more deliberate range of options and ask us about the longer-term cause and effect of decisions). She referenced getting to the root cause of problems as they come up and how flexibility is not a luxury. She then continues on with the extension that flexibility and sustainability might also be in conflict; where being too rigid might prevent you from solving problems and being too flexible might result in too many single points of failure.
She rests on the philosophy that one should diversify to eliminate single points of failure (i.e. one place in your law firm that could end you). She goes on to liken anti-fragile law firms as being ones that think about creating good environments, where fewer people would leave for the work-life balance that has recently become more significant in the last several years.
All of these enlightened points are clarity waiting to happen in our minds. While I question whether this is an actual extension of the original client-centered theory or more of a self-fulfilling and holistic approach of her own, the effect is a warm wrap in an ever-increasing cool business world where too rigid decisions increasingly appear to be in potential conflict with the bottom line. Either way, I’m grateful she stands apart among the crowd.
Please note that there were approximately 80 sessions/talks and the few referenced above are not even a smattering of the knowledge that was presented. But, if you are interested in what else was covered, see www.techshow.com for the complete schedule.
And remember, ABA TECHSHOW will be back again next year, starting on February 14th. You might even be able to make it a valentine’s weekend, replete with legal tech presents for your significant other if you’re like some of us and legal tech makes your heart throb.
Before big events, I like to look for the ‘feel good’ get-together. Back in the day when going to Newport Jazzfest there was the Friday night concert by the headliner at the International Tennis Center. Ask me sometime about how Diana Krall sang to me (and maybe 999 others) and stopped time in my world.
Startup Alley is occupied by the is the top 15 startups after massive voting, seeking to garner attention, mass-clapping, and excitedness from those first to have arrived at Techshow. It’s quite literally like the ‘Shark Tank/AG/American Idol’ of legal tech. I’ve always be something of a Mark-Cuban-wannabe, searching for my lost youth and still somewhat rubber-bandy agility of the reinvent-the-wheel mentality. I’ve met many really great people on their way up. Previous years’ offerings were impressive, and this year looked to be no exception. In hindsight, they didn’t disappoint.
Calloquy Platform is a remote litigation platform that proffers to be safe, secure, and efficient for meetings, mediations, depositions, and arbitrations; and boasts to be coupled with licensed court reporting providers. I haven’t drilled down yet on their platform, but given the number of zoom mediations I’ve done for others, there is an actual need for the siloing of offers/counteroffers/and evidentiary documents.
Parrot is an all-in-one platform for depositions, specifically remote depositions, and claims a “90-in-90” mantra– that being that after deposition, within 90 minutes, you’ll have a deposition transcript that has a 90% accuracy rate (though the actual rate has appeared at closer to 94%); they sync audio and video and while this has been done before and continues to be done, Parrot telegraphs future focus on keyword search, exhibit sharing, and collaboration.
Docgility is an AI-powered contract acceleration platform that claims to have an 80% faster contract execution. That’s a pretty significant claim and supports contract review in all of the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. It supports Word and PDF formats, redlines, and document edits.
Catylex Contract Analytics is another contract review tool designed as described to get through the “trough of disillusionment” with reviewing contracts. This description alone in a presentation was enough to make me wonder if this would be scalable into other legal practice spaces.
EsquireTek attacks the very real-time and money suck of discovery with the tagline “Discovery Sucks Donut” (and they’re offering killer swag to prove it). This was one of my top 4 players as I believe this is a significant access to justice issue potentially, at least in Texas, where, since 1.1.21 there have been mandatory certain disclosures, but that has not slowed the post-covid launching of additional discovery. In essence, all discovery questions go into their platform for true collaboration between attorneys, staff, and clients. I’ve played with various ways and manual workflows for this, but this claims to solve some of the lack of efficiency problems. There are checkboxes and objections that can be inserted via a few clicks and it allows for the upload of customizable objections etc. While it’s unclear how often these objections are checked or updated, the solution is a strong promise. My workarounds have included fill-able forms, google forms, and text-expander for standard objections, though these require more manual work. Interested to see a real use case on this one.
Universal Migrator was the first-place winner and promises to migrate a firm’s data in our out of over 60 platforms/ case management system. While this is not a problem as ubiquitous as discovery as mentioned above, a firm’s data is the blood in the law office’s veins. How it flows is significant. How it’s used and usable is life itself oftentimes. This massive claimed ability made it one of my top four.
CitRight claims that it “helps you save cases from online legal databases and makes them available right where you are — inside Microsoft Word.” This is a nice concept and takes advantage of being a conduit from your legal research platform to your legal document, pleading brief of otherwise.
Fidu was co-created and pitched by the very impressive Kimberly Bennett (also a speaker this year at Techshow) and provides a platform for the automation of workflows by creating a very usable client portal so that an attorney or firm can leverage flat fee billing by massively increased efficiencies. This was one of my top 4 without question, given the very real and actual need for alternatives to the billable hour. In Texas, unless the Courts allow for Attorney’s Fees to be measured other than by the hour, there will still be the need (when Attorney’s Fees are being argued) to contemporaneously record the time. However, this potentially makes efficiency the benchmark to getting people help with legal representation, thus I think overall it is the greatest objective need in our current environment. Fidu came in third place out of the fifteen offerings and was easily one of my top four.
DecisionVault — Also one of my top 4, and coming in second place, Decision Vault claims to take information much better than the existing apps for collecting information into a firm’s CRM database in order to “Simplify intake for your clients & automate the data flow in your practice” and also offers a client portal for seamless use.
CaseYak is a case estimator platform, currently in four states and will be in four more by next month with further expansion planned. Limited to personal injury law for case value estimations, I’m unclear how this provides the claimed ‘access to justice’ it did but is impressive to be able to collect state judgment data and then evaluate over 53 data points to then apply within a machine learning model (AI) to give attorneys an estimate of what the case may be worth.
Truve is a data platform to take the pain out of an average law firm’s management of spreadsheets in order to evaluate firm performance (KPI’s) etc., of which the average number of spreadsheets is estimated by them to be 14, an average number of KPI’s to be 120 and average amount of time spent maintaining these spreadsheets to be between 8 and 10% of the time.
Case Chronology, led by board-certified orthopedic/spine surgeon John Shim, this is a medical platform that focuses on the chronology of a patient/client’s medical problems while being tested in litigation. Dr. Shim, from Florida, currently built this out in custom form and is now moving towards standardization of timelining the patient, with the immense ability to link to all source documents necessary to support the conclusion. This includes medical records of all kinds and is essentially a chronology creation software with records integration. In my time of creating timelines for litigation, smart documents, and indexes with links to all supporting documents, this to me is very significant. It is limited to case types like medical malpractice or personal injury and the like, but the ability to create “dynamic timelines” is something that is truly compelling.
10BE5 claims to maximize efficiency and automate substantive legal work in capital markets. While this application is somewhat limited to my space, its implications are certainly impressive, if it is scalable.
Techie Lawyer in Chicago Hotel (MIU+AI/DALL • E 2)
By Mitch Zoll, Mark Unger, and… ChatGPT
There are several ways that a lawyer can stay competent in technology:
Continuing Legal Education (CLE): Many states require lawyers to participate in ongoing legal education, and many CLE programs now offer courses and seminars on technology and its application in the practice of law.
Professional Development: Attending conferences, such as ABA Techshow, and participating in webinars, can help lawyers stay current with the latest technology and trends in the legal field.
Networking: Joining professional organizations, such as the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center, or attending networking events can help lawyers connect with other legal professionals who are knowledgeable about technology and its application in the practice of law.
Self-study: Lawyers can also stay competent in technology by reading relevant articles, books and blogs to stay current with the latest trends and developments in the field.
Hands-on experience: Lawyers can also stay competent in technology by using relevant software, apps, and tools in their practice, such as e-discovery software, legal research databases, and document management systems.
Hiring outside help: Lawyers can also stay competent in technology by hiring outside help such as IT staff, LegalTech consultants or virtual paralegals for the specific needs of their practice.
It’s important for lawyers to stay up-to-date with technology in order to be able to effectively represent their clients and to be able to navigate the legal landscape of the 21st century.
What is ABA Techshow?
ABA Techshow is an annual conference and expo designed for legal professionals to learn about the latest technology and its application in the practice of law. Attending ABA Techshow can help lawyers stay current with the latest tools and trends in the legal field, network with other legal professionals, and gain valuable continuing legal education (CLE) credits. Additionally, the conference typically features keynote speakers and panel discussions on a wide range of topics, providing attendees with valuable insights and perspectives on the intersection of technology and the law. Overall, ABA Techshow is a great opportunity for lawyers to stay informed, stay engaged, and stay competitive in the legal field.
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The content above was written entirely by ChatGPT, the new AI content platform at has the potential to revolutionize the way we obtain and process written information. Although ChatGPT can only pass portions of the Bar (On LawNext Podcast: Can the AI of GPT-3.5 Pass the Bar Exam? We Find Out | LawSites), it is ready to help provide FAQ responses to your clients’ questions.
But where does ChatGPT fall short? I next asked ChatGPT: “Why am I going to TechShow?” This time ChatGPT was stumped:“I’m sorry, I am an AI and I do not have the information about your personal schedule or reasons why you would be going to the ABA Techshow.”
Luckily, I have the answer to this one. TechShow was the first legal conference I attended when I opened my firm. The information I learned there, and the connections I made, have been invaluable to building a practice that allows me to efficiently serve my clients while balancing the work-life balance I wanted at an attorney. The sessions provided marketing, operations, client service and, of course, technology related information and I have called upon that information every day in the operation of my firm. The vendor expo has the leading and emerging law firm tech providers there to answer questions and I can learn about and evaluate the best tools for my firm. Finally, I am going back because as Technology evolves and improves, I want my firm to do the same.
Time is running out if you want to join me at TechShow but the discounted rate DEADLINE has been extended to February 25th! ABA TECHSHOW
Members of Computer & Technology Section can register for ABA TECHSHOW 2023 at an additional special reduced rate of $100 off the standard rate using discount code EP2312 at checkout, but the rate increases soon!
