Joe Technologist Blog

Subscribe
Visit Blog
By: Joe Technologist

Blog Authors

joseph raczynski

Latest from Joe Technologist Blog

In this week’s episode, we showcase a conversation with Ron Levine, General Counsel at Herrick, Feinstein LLP. Ron, a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, speaks as a thoughtful realist, proponent for good, and a practitioner of what he preaches. He bears witness as a 40-year litigator, discussing the fascinating dealings of what happens behind the class action suit scenes, describing a lack of transparency, and what he would do to improve the system. Ron dives into the importance of technology, as a crusader for others in the field. Specifically, in the eDiscovery space he stresses the importance…
https-www-legalexecutiveinstitute-com-wp-content-uploads-2020-09-ilta-png
Originally published on the Legal Executive Institute. By Joseph Raczynski In a year like no other, the most prominent legal technology conference recently wrapped their weeklong virtual event as the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) morphed its annual ILTACON event into ILTA>ON. After initially vacillating on a hybrid in-person and virtual event, before ILTA decided to go with a fully virtual event with more than 100 sessions and various virtual activities. According to the site, ILTA>ON (as it was known) had roughly 3,800 attendees and vendors compared to past years of around 5,000 — a very respectable haul…
I had the privilege of being selected to report on how ILTA (International Legal Technology Association) did on their predictions from 2013 up to today, during their 2020 ILTA-ON Conference. Even more fun, predicting what technology and LegalTech will look like from 2020-2025, and then going out to 2060. Check out the entire recording here: https://youtu.be/UgyDyBSJ3AA Remember back when we had ‘Law Firm 2020 predictions’? In the first part of my ILTA-ON presentation, we will go ‘Back to the Future’ reviewing past predictions to see what came true and what we got wrong. Then, we will blast into a journey…
In this episode I am joined by David Brown, Legal Director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF). TLDEF is a transgender-led organisation fighting for transgender rights through litigation and other legal avenues. Working with numerous law firms, David and his team bring lawsuits to demonstrate how statutes are unequal and discriminatory. David tells me how his family inspired him to want to fight injustice. And he explains how TLDEF strategically selects cases with the ultimate aim of moving the law and the equality agenda forward, while also ensuring they authentically represent transgender people’s lives. David talks about…
https-joerazz-files-wordpress-com-2020-08-platform1-pngw1024
Originally published on the Legal Executive Institute. By Joseph Raczynski In the past, I’ve spoke about a possible tsunami of change within the legal industry. It is something I have been carefully watching for several years, but now I think the switch may about to be thrown. During a recent discussion about legal tech startups, Prof. Richard Susskind mentioned that several years ago there were a few hundred start-ups in the legal space, now there are a few thousand. This is a catalyst for the idea of a legal platform. How does the industry integrate all of these…
https-joerazz-files-wordpress-com-2020-08-platform4-pngw1024
Originally published on the Legal Executive Institute. By Joseph Raczynski Previously, we discussed how platforms create an ecosystem or environment that allow people and businesses to interact and accomplish tasks and ultimately create a network that can connect and benefit the entire community. Within this environment, of course, interoperability flourishes – pushing early adopters and innovators to think boldly about workflow and connectivity. How can connecting various applications help attorneys do their job better? One core component enabling a successful platform to help lawyers be more efficient is the use of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). These API services allow…
https-www-legalexecutiveinstitute-com-wp-content-uploads-2020-08-razz_image-2-png
Originally published on the Legal Executive Institute. By Joseph Raczynski By 2030 we will see significant lawyer work being done by machines. As exponential growth of technology consumes to world, the legal industry is especially appetizing. As a result, legal services will be fundamentally different than today in terms of both job function and the way legal services are provided. In the final of a four-part global webinar series, The Uncertain Decade, Legal Geek brought us bold concepts and vision about the future of the legal industry, bringing together two of the most respected names in the legal industry…
Originally published on the Legal Executive Institute By Joseph Raczynski Likely the single most salient after-effect of the current pandemic on the legal landscape is its impact on the courts. Previously, the variance of their technological proficiency ranged from fundamentally unchanged over the last 100 years, to jurisdictions that embraced a technological bent forward over the last decade. Indeed, because of the pandemic, the speed of change has been unparalleled, pushing courts from hopeful murmurs of being virtual in a decade’s time, to courts functioning virtually within two weeks. The state of the courts Recently I listened to a pair…
https-www-legalexecutiveinstitute-com-wp-content-uploads-2020-06-legal-geek-3-image-png
Originally published on the Legal Executive Institute By Joseph Raczynski In the next decade legal knowledge will be a skill, not a practice. The assumption is that knowledge is table stakes, and technology is now the enabler buoyed by flourishing legal tech startups. These industrious neophytes are marshaling services previously owned by the practice of law stewards, dramatically changing the legal landscape. Another avant-garde concept — that the current legal educational system is misfiring, proving to be generally antiquated and looking for relevance in to 2020s — is also ascendant. These sentiments and a rousing discussion of how the legal…
This week we talk privacy, piracy, and intellectual property. Before the lockdown, I sat down with Chris Mohr, VP for Intellectual Property and GC at Software and Information Industry Association. Working at the heart of the US federal government in Washington DC, Chris tells us about life as a lobbyist on Capitol Hill and how he navigates the challenges posed by different global approaches to intellectual property. He also talks about the intersection between IP and privacy law and the Constitution, as most data is effectively speech for Constitutional purposes, there are fundamental conflicts when people’s privacy rights are at…
https-i0-wp-com-www-legalexecutiveinstitute-com-wp-content-uploads-2017-12-joseph-raczynski-jpg
Originally published on AnswersOn. By Gina Jurva – Joseph Raczynski The Covid-19 pandemic is exposing long-standing societal inequalities that range from access to healthcare to access to childcare and place our society is under a microscope. One of the biggest challenges is getting stimulus funds to those who need it most, especially in those cases where the individual may lack access to a bank account. Thomson Reuters technologist and futurist Joe Raczynski explores how the pandemic may end up being the catalyst that eventually solves the financial inequality gap for the unbanked population. What does it mean to be underbanked…
https-blogs-thomsonreuters-com-answerson-wp-content-uploads-sites-3-2020-06-legal-geek-pic-png
Originally published on AnswersOn. By Joseph Raczynski General counsel (GCs) across the United States and the United Kingdom have varied approaches to the current market conditions, according to recent surveys. Interestingly, at the center of the debate is how alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) are utilized and perceived compared to traditional law firms. Not surprisingly, many GCs felt that individual client needs ultimately superseded the ALSP v. law firm rift when looking at the legal landscape beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. In the second of a four-part global webinar series, The Uncertain Decade, Legal Geek again brought Mark Cohen, CEO of…
https-blogs-thomsonreuters-com-legal-uk-wp-content-uploads-sites-14-2020-06-upcoming-year-png
Originally published on Legal Insights Europe. By Joseph Raczynski Cloud adoption has increased steadily over the last several years since we last forecast an Increasingly Cloudy outlook for law firms in 2017. The most recent industry data, ILTA’s 2019 Technology Survey finds that 72 percent of those surveyed across the law firm landscape will expand their use of Cloud based technologies in 2020. That is up from 62 percent in 2016. Based on my own observances, sentiment around the technology has clearly changed over the last decade from skepticism to general adoption. ILTA Annual Technology Survey – 2019 The…
I spoke with Gail Gove, General Counsel at Reuters who takes us behind the scenes of the case that grabbed the world’s attention in 2018: the incredible story of Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who were imprisoned in Myanmar while investigating reports of mass murder. Gail and I talk about the all-encompassing nature of the work and what it’s like to work with one of the most famous lawyers in the world, Amal Clooney. Starting out as a civil rights lawyer, Gail speaks of the importance of looking at legal issues through a wide-angled, global lens, the…
https-i1-wp-com-www-legalexecutiveinstitute-com-wp-content-uploads-2020-05-richardsusskindhighres-500px-jpg
Originally published in AnswersOn. By Joseph Raczynski It’s the questions on the mind of every legal professional: What will legal life look like after the COVID-19 pandemic passes? What will this “new normal” actually be? And more specifically, if courts close and clients are shuttered, what will half the world’s lawyers do? In the first of a three-part global webinar series, The Uncertain Decade, Legal Geek sought to shed some light on these questions, bringing together two of the most respected names in the legal industry — Mark Cohen, CEO of Legal Mosaic, and Prof. Richard Susskind — to delve into…