Bringing Future Law to the Rest of the Lawyers

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Warren Agin, partner at Swiggart & Agin and founding chair of the Legal Analytics Joint Working Group at the American Bar Association’s  Business Law Section, has graciously provided this guest post. —Monica Bay

 

Warren-Agin
Warren Agin

 

At CodeX FutureLaw 2016, an audience member asked a panel what was being done to bring computational law, data analytics and machine learning to the rest of the legal world. This year, the American Bar Association’s Business Law Section started a new entity, the Legal Analytics Joint Working Group, dedicated to this precise task.

Here is how the working group came to pass and its plans for the future—and the part CodeX and those already invested in the technology metamorphosis can play.

I admit to being a little on the older side; already established as a lawyer when the Internet was just getting started. At CodeX FutureLaw 2016, I met people who hadn’t been born when Mosaic launched. That’s quite a gap. In college I was a business major with a minor in economics, taking classes in quantitative business analysis and statistics. I could program in multiple languages (none anyone uses today). Then I went to law school. In 1986 lawyers didn’t do math or economics, and they didn’t code. I used multiple regression analysis and utility theory to help pick my second year law school courses and then put down my analytic toolbox and didn’t touch it again for almost 30 years.

Recently, I became interested in behavioral economics. A modern offshoot of traditional economics, behavioral economics had clear implications for the work I did as a lawyer—it presented new ways of thinking about negotiations and dispute resolution among other things. Studying behavioral economics led me back into statistics, traditional economic constructs and game theory. More importantly, it led to data—particularly Big Data analytics. Data is now everywhere and easily collected—and tools for analysis are more robust, more powerful and more accessible than ever before. More than anything, this is what’s driving the rapid change.

In 2015, Jamie May, Associate General Counsel, University Hospitals of Cleveland, submitted a series of three articles to the ABA Business Law Section’s magazine. I happen to chair the magazine. They described the idea of using data to analyze contracting risks and thus redesign how companies manage their contracting function. The articles clearly applied the statistic and economic theories I’d been studying to a distinct business law problem. I became convinced that this was the future for business law.

A few weeks later, I discussed these ideas with a friend who runs a financial technology (aka FinTech) business using supercomputers, Big Data and behavioral economics to predict investor behavior. Together, we explored ideas for applying data analytics to business law problems. Finally, I turned to him and asked, “If I started a group in the ABA to study these ideas, what do you think I should name it?” He replied, “Call it Legal Analytics.”

Warren Agin article in progress
Jamie May

 

The Legal Analytics Joint Working Group
We launched the Legal Analytics Working Group in April, 2016. Three of us walked around the ABA Business Law Section’s Spring meeting in Montreal, and talked to anyone who would listen and tried to sign up members.

Technically, the working group is what the ABA calls a joint subcommittee. In practice, it operates independently within the Business Law Section. We’ve made some progress since April. We have more members, a webpage (http://bit.ly/ABA_LAWG) and a hashtag (#BLSAnalytics). CodeX affiliated professors, including  Daniel Martin Katz and Harry Surden, let us provide links to educational materials—and  most importantly, we have plans to introduce the world of legal analytics to the rest of the business law committee.

Our official mission is to explore—and educate business lawyers about—the use of math and economics in the substantive practice of business law. Specifically, we are focused on the use and application of:

  • Data analytics, statistics and probability theory
  • Economic theories of choice under uncertainty
  • Game theory
  • Behavioral economics
  • Machine learning
  • Computational law
Warren Agin article in progress 1
Kelly Peters

 

 

 

At the start, we need to bring to the Business Law Section attorneys and other professionals who are at the forefront of legal analytics. CodeX already plays a part in that effort, even if unofficially. Our inaugural program for the ABA Business Law Committee is scheduled for Sept. 9 at the Business Law Section’s Annual Meeting in Boston. Named “The New Paradigms: an Introduction to Legal Informatics for the Business Lawyer,” it features CodeX Fellows:

The Working Group will also host a meeting on Sept. 10, as part of the conference, to bring together the lawyers in the Business Law Section who are interested in the subject, and discuss future activities. Hopefully, the Working Group won’t just serve as a venue for the general business lawyer to meet and learn from those at the forefront, but also a place for business lawyers to contribute to the new paradigms and explore how the increased use of tools like big data, analytics, and artificial intelligence might change the structure of the law itself.

Helping the New Meet the Old

At CodeX FutureLaw 2016, I was impressed by the participants’ youth and energy. That’s definitely to be expected. If I were coming out of law school today—knowing statistics, two or three programming languages and with a background in economics—I’d have tools to apply that knowledge to what I was learning in law school. We didn’t have those tools in 1989.

But many older attorneys are slow to adopt. New lawyers come out of school into a culture that is, in some ways, stuck in a different era. It is no surprise that younger lawyers are attending legal hackathons or launching new businesses based on analytics, instead of trying to work within the more traditional legal community. It is also no surprise that some more prescient older attorneys have simply left their traditional folds. I know three pioneers in advanced legal tech who were very active in the ABA Business Law Section—but left when it failed to keep up. Unable to find acceptance within traditional law organizations, the lawyers who are ahead of the curve have formed new groups, like CodeX.

Bringing Future Law to the Rest of the Lawyers

The Legal Analytics Working Group is designed to change that. We need the leaders of the new legal community to participate, and help expose others to legal analytics. We also want to engage younger lawyers, who might otherwise find less use in their professional lives for the ABA Business Law Section. That’s why the Section’s Young Lawyer Committee is one of our parent committees and lead sponsor for our Sept. 9 CLE program. Finally, we want to find those lawyers who are ready to explore the new world of legal analytics—but just don’t know it yet.

Over the next few months we will be working to find those lawyers, and plan our next steps, including programming for the ABA Business Law Section’s 2017 Spring Meeting in New Orleans. We will be looking for people interested in talking, writing, and learning about legal analytics. I’m personally convinced that the work being done by CodeX and affiliates will revolutionize business law, and soon. The Legal Analytics Working Group wants to help with that transition.

To learn more about the Legal Analytics Joint Working Group visit http://bit.ly/ABA_LAWG or e-mail Warren Agin at wea@swiggartagin.com

Cover image: Clipart.com