It’s hard to believe how quickly 2017 is flying!  We are now just a few weeks away for  our annual CodeX FutureLaw conference at Stanford!  It’s also amazing how fast the FutureLaw event has gathered traction.

 

The first conference was held on April 26th, 2013, five days before Lex Machina closed a $4.8 million Series A Funding round led by Cue Ball Capital. Today, Lex Machina  (founded at Stanford in 2009) is thriving, after being acquired by LexisNexis in November, 2015.

The 2013 agenda had 26 speakers, including Daniel Martin Katz, then assistant professor of Law at Michigan State University’s College of Law. He launched ReInvent Law, and spent a lot of time on airplanes as he preached world wide about the need to change the way lawyers work. “I’m developing a group of assassins who are going to [reform] the profession,” he said at a Fordham University School of Law event.

 

Five years later, Katz is now an Associate Professor of Law, at Chicago-Kent College of Law—Illinois Institute of Technology, where he is now focusing on “FinLaw”—how the financial industry will no-doubt have a very different role with the future legal community.

That’s just two examples of what’s happened in the last five years. Many people would say that CodeX FutureLaw has grown exponentially; the 2017 agenda (April 6) addresses everything from predictive analytics in law (including Lex Machina CEO Josh Becker), to the need to change law “to reinvent it for a complex global economy” — the topic of Prof. Gillian Hadfield’s opening keynote.

 

The 2017 CodeX FutureLaw agenda tackles fresh topics and also addresses the evolution of earlier topics. Here are quick shots—do visit the full agenda site for nuanced details.

“The Rule Systems Panel” will cover computational law, and focus on “the power of Big Data and computer processing to predicting the odds of certain legal outcomes.”

 

I don’t recall any past discussions of legal chatbots, but no worries — it will be addressed during the 2017 conference.  And to celebrate the fifth year, there will be the “FutureLaw @5 Lightning Round.” (I always look forward to Jim Sandman, who blew the proverbial roof off Paul Brest Hall with last year’s keynote.)

 

Last but certainly not least is “The Customer Roundtable,” where Lucy Endel Bassli (Microsoft), Carlos Gamez (Thomson Reuters), Michael Lucas (Wilson Sonsini) and Mary O’Carroll (Google) will tackle challenges including “Using a Law Firm v. Alternative Legal Service Provider,” “Cloud v. On-Premise” and other topics.

Can’t wait! Hope to see you there!

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Date: April 6, 2017.  8:30 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.
Location & Parking: Stanford Law School – Paul Brest Hall, 555 Salvatierra Walk|
Agenda
Registration
Speakers

LISTEN & READ
• Webinar: Lex Machina: “The Future of Law,” Dr. Roland Vogl, Josh Becker and moi.
• Above The Law: “Sun And Chatbots @ CodeX FutureLaw.”

Monica Bay is a Fellow at CodeX and a freelance journalist. Email: mbay@codex.stanford.edu. Twitter: @MonicaBay.

Cover image: Clipart.com