Updated to correct Zach Warren’s title. Nobody at FutureLaw would have needed a sip of coffee once James “Jim” Sandman, president of the Legal Services Corp., took the podium for the keynote address. His electric presentation was jammed full of concrete strategies on how to use tech to get legal help to the masses.

Zach Warren, Managing Editor at ALM’s Legaltech news, in his report, “The Impediments and Opportunities in Using Technology to Close the Justice Gap” noted that Sandman outlined some unexpected tactics.

“Sandman observed 10 different impediments to accelerating technology’s impact on the justice gap,” wrote Warren. “Some of these impediments, such as having legal decisions dispersed among all sorts of courts and the existence of insufficient capital to support innovation at scale, are commonly-known problems.” A “major impediment in Sandman’s eyes is what he called a pricing model that penalizes, instead of rewards, efficiency. ‘The fact remains today the billable hour is still dominant as the billing model,” he explained. “When many attorneys talk about alternative fee arrangements, all they mean is discounted hourly rates, perhaps with a cap. Wow, how wild.’”

But “other issues that Sandman raised were novel,” such as “the idea that insurance companies can be allies—both general insurance companies who rely on standardization and access to legal data for their own work, as well as malpractice insurers that view innovation as a way to decrease risk. “Law firms will listen to them,” he pointed out.

Read the full story here.

Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/The National Law Journal/ALM

Monica Bay is a fellow at CodeX and a member of the California bar.