Earlier this month, CodeX—The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics (http://codex.stanford.edu)—presented Evolve Law, a demonstration event for legal technology. Owen Byrd from IP analytics firm Lex Machina, gave the opening keynote, and I had the privilege of moderating a panel of truly inspiring founders of several different legal technology companies, each of whom provided a demo of his or her product, along with personal insight into entrepreneurship within the legal tech industry and the ongoing transformation of our legal system.

The list of panelists included:

Ned Gannon, Co-Founder & CEO, eBrevia, whose product allows attorneys to review contracts more accurately and efficiently, with applications for due diligence, contract management, and document drafting.

Jake Heller, Co-Founder & CEO, Casetext, a legal research company where lawyers can read cases, statutes, and regulations that are annotated by the entire legal community; Jake is also a CodeX fellow.

Mary Juetten, Founder & CEO, Traklight, which helps people identify and protect their intellectual property via self-service online IP solutions; and also a co-organizer of our Evolve Law

Tony Lai, Founder & CEO, LawGives, an online portal matching lawyers with those in most need of their services; Tony is also a CodeX fellow.

Daniel Lewis, CEO, Ravel Law, a company applying data visualization, machine learning, and data mining to online legal research; Daniel is also a CodeX fellow.

Ben Longoria, Founder & CEO, Wizdocs, a company providing a software solution that makes corporate transactions and company legal document management more efficient and cost effective.

Julia Shapiro, Co-founder & CEO, Hire an Esquire, an online legal staffing company;

Nicole Shanahan, CEO, ClearAccess IP, an online docketing system for patents; Nicole is also a CodeX fellow.

Important Problems to Solve

These entrepreneurs are solving systemic problems that still plague the legal profession: unnecessary manual processes and administrative tasks, inefficiencies, and excessive costs. These issues contribute to lawyers being overworked and frustrated.

Another significant issue is access to justice. The majority of people who need legal help don’t receive it, and this has to change. Leveraging technologies to serve the untapped market for legal services will also create tremendous new opportunities for lawyers.

Lawyers Can Be Their Own Worst Enemy

There are some challenges unique to the rapidly expanding legal technology community that can make launching a legal startup company particularly challenging. First, venture capitalists are not as familiar with the pain points in the legal industry—although there are more and more investors making investments in the legal tech space. Second, industry sales cycles are long, 12 months or longer. Many investors may not be willing to wait this long to begin to see sales. Third, certain technologies are inchoate: for example, there is still a way to go for computers to analyze legal documents for useful information. There are legal tech startups that are successfully applying natural language processing and machine learning techniques in legal contexts, such as in e-discovery. However, as Casetext’s Heller pointed out, by and large these technologies are only 85% there, and in many legal applications, lawyers need 100% accuracy.

Finally, several panelists pointed out that a significant barrier to legal technology is lawyers themselves. Lawyers are sometimes hesitant to embrace change, and are afraid technology may disintermediate them. In fact, technology can act as a liberator, freeing up lawyers’ time to do the high-level work for which they were trained, allowing them to practice more efficiently, and even more important, to enjoy the work they feel inspired to accomplish.

Looking to the Future

Tony Lai, of LawGives, offered these inspiring words:

“We’re on a journey together, sailing in the midst of this fog. Yet we see these lights through the fog, and know that we’re going in the right direction. Some of us [legal tech entrepreneurs] may sink along the way, but at the end of the day, we’re going to find a new world. The legal profession still has legs, and lawyers, given the right tools and technology, can make a huge impact.”

Asked about the increasing number of attorneys who have evolved into legal tech entrepreneurs, Shapiro, of Hire an Esquire, pointed out that lawyers are hard-working and focused, which are essential characteristics to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Despite prevailing challenges, it benefits us all—lawyers, entrepreneurs, the legal system as a whole, and the public—to embrace the technology-driven changes revolutionizing the legal industry. As the panel and the audience questions suggested, there are many reasons for lawyers and entrepreneurs to be optimistic about the future of law. I certainly am.

For a video-capture of the event, please visit the CodeX YouTube playlist: http://youtu.be/6LpKQkgr9iU.

Dr. Roland Vogl is Executive Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology, and a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School. He is also Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Legal Informatics (CodeX), and Co-Founder of SIPX, Inc., a privately held company. Contact: rvogl@law.stanford.edu.