What is legal technology?What is the Finnish Legal Tech Forum? Anna Ronkainen, president @ronkaine at Microsoft Flux, Helsinki, 2016-09-05

What is legal technology?

The most important legal technology to date: written language!

Code of Hammurabi, Mesopotamia 1754 BCE (Wikimedia: Rama CC BY-SA 2.0)

But more to the point... -  technology (especially ICT) that is used -  by lawyers (for legal work), or -  to do work conventionally done by lawyers

-  research, development, deployment -  generally not the same thing as Law &

Technology or ICT law (substantial legal issues related to (emerging) technologies)

-  (old-fashioned) umbrella term for both: legal informatics

Some examples of legal technology

Legal information retrieval -  access to legal sources (cases, statutes,

doctrine) -  initially basic database functions, now

increasingly sophisticated - NLP-powered interfaces, recommendations,

better UX -  new open data based solutions coming

(where data available!)

Legal practice technology -  communication: e-mail and all its killers -  case/docket management and workflow -  timekeeping -  document management -  document automation -  knowledge management -  ...

Court technology -  case/docket management -  online dispute resolution -  decision support

Attorney/client interfaces -  legal services platforms -  lawyer matching -  lawyer/referral networks

Task- and issue-specific solutions -  e-discovery -  due diligence -  contract analysis -  immigration -  family law: divorce, prenups, estates -  mergers and acquisitions -  bankruptcy -  construction -  end-of-life -  patents -  trademarks -  DRM -  parking tickets -  ...

Legal tech in Finland: Industry -  publishers: Edita (Edilex/Finlex), Talentum

(suomenlaki.com) -  public sector ICT behemoths: Tieto, CGI - NewLaw: e.g. Fondia, Turre Legal -  legal marketplace: Lakivälitys -  contract management: M-Files, Sopima,

ContractZen -  practice management: CSI Helsinki -  trademark AI: TrademarkNow

Legal tech in Finland: Academia Relevant research (that I’m aware of): -  legal AI: modelling interpretation and

vagueness (yours truly/Helsinki) -  Semantic Finlex (Hyvönen et al/Aalto) -  legal design (Haapio/Vaasa, Passera/Aalto) -  ODR (R Koulu/Helsinki) Teaching: -  Turku law school: Introduction to Legal

Technology (by yours truly), spring 2015, autumn 2016, ...

-  Helsinki: dispute resolution and technology

What is the Finnish Legal Tech Forum?

The Finnish Legal Tech Forum is... -  a newly started organization to promote

legal tech in Finland -  open for everyone interested in legal tech -  not that expensive to join (annual dues: 20 e

for regular members, 10 e for student members, 150 e for corporate members)

-  growing fast: ~40 members now

Meet the Finnish Legal Tech Forum board - Anna Ronkainen (president) - Antti Innanen (vice-president) - Kristian Lauslahti (secretary) -  Petteri Günther (member secretary) -  Johanna Rantanen (member secretary)

Concrete plans for the Forum -  taking over organizational responsibility for

the Helsinki Legal Tech Meetup (will remain open also for non-members)

-  autumn AGM in November/December - massive behind-the-scenes lobbying to make

the world a better place with legal tech ;) -  other events and activities TBD -  join us to have a say in what we do!

Where to go from here?

General information on legal tech -  Legaltech News magazine -  blogs, e.g. Law Technology News, Lawyerist,

Above the Law - my intro presentation from the first meetup

(on my Slideshare, link in yesterday’s email) -  Introduction to Legal Technology course

(Turku Law School) starting Oct 25 (last year’s slides also on my Slideshare)

Conferences etc. abroad -  huge tradeshows: Legaltech, ABA Techshow -  more interesting: e.g. Clio Cloud, FutureLaw -  Legal Geek legal startup conference (London, Oct

18) -  VQ Knowledge and Strategy Forum (Stockholm,

Oct 18) -  Tallinn IT Law Conference (Tallinn, May) -  meetups in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Tallinn... -  Nordic Conference on Legal Informatics (Stockholm

Nov 10–11) -  International Conference on Artificial Intelligence

and Law (London, Jun 12–16)

Conferences etc. in Finland - Riikka Koulu’s doctoral defence (Helsinki,

Sept 23) -  Berggren Future Forum (Helsinki, Oct 8) - Käräjät 2016 (Edita, Helsinki, Oct 28) -  Legal Design Summit (Helsinki, Nov 16,

legalexperience.fi) - Helsinki Legal Tech Meetup

Upcoming meetups -  next: online dispute resolution (October, exact

date TBD) -  (some) potential topics for future meetups: -  why do government IT projects (almost) always

fail and what can be done about it? -  bot v. bot: automated enforcement and defence -  Finnish legal tech startup showcase -  legal tech from a law firm perspective -  legal publishing and legal tech

-  we’re always looking for speakers and event hosts, get in touch!

Thank you! http://legaltech.fi/ http://meetup.com/Helsinki-Legal-Tech-Meetup/ Twitter: @legaltechfi #legaltechfi