Eric Elfman

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Sophisticated investors are betting on contract tech. It’s about business, not the intricacies or importance of law.

Today’s post (256) and last week’s (255) are a two-part series on the burgeoning legal tech sector.

Whereas Post 255 focused on the explosion in the legal technology market over the past year—five new #Legaltech Unicorns, three companies go public—this post looks contract tech, which is arguably legal tech’s hottest subsector.
Continue Reading Because Everyone Else Cares: Why legal should be paying attention to contracts (256)

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Five New #Legaltech Unicorns.  One Unicorn Nearly Doubles in Value.  Three Companies Go Public. 

It might be unfair to say that legal technology arrived in 2021. After all, law firms and law departments, the primary target buyers of legal tech, have been preparing for the impact of AI and automation.

In 2018, Amlaw 100 firms like Reed Smith and later Wilson Sonsini began creating dedicated tech-focused subsidiaries. See Post 213 (Zach Abramowitz’s overview of law firm-led legal tech.  In late 2019, the chairman of an AmLaw 50 firm told us, “We know there is new stuff, we know that our clients know about the new stuff. The question is how we become proactive so that our clients don’t bypass us on the way to the new stuff.”
Continue Reading How the first half of 2021 signals the maturity of an ecosystem (255)

A slice is reserved for everyone who predicts the future of law.

Today is the debut of Anusia Gillespie’s monthly Q&A column on NewLaw Fundamentals.  See Post 243.  This post (241) is an explainer on why we are running Anusia’s series. One part of the explanation is practical.  A second part is deeply analytical and likely of more interest to regular Legal Evolution readers.  Both parts, however, are rooted in the value of humility.
Continue Reading Humble pie diet (241)

A crowded, chaotic landscape in love with the future.

The opening graphs of Richard Susskind’s Tomorrow’s Lawyers (2nd ed. 2016) predict the revolution that is now underway:

This book is a short introduction to the future for young and aspiring lawyers.

Tomorrow’s legal world, as predicted and described here, bears little resemblance to that of the past. Legal institutions and lawyers are at a crossroads, I claim, and will change more radically in less than two decades than they have over the past two centuries. If you’re a young lawyer, this revolution will happen on your watch. (p. xvii)

Indeed, only a revolution could explain the above “market map,” which reflects literally hundreds of point solutions for a rapidly expanding one-to-many legal marketplace.
Continue Reading The best metaphor for today’s legal market is the auto industry circa 1905 (231)

When David Cambria sat down with Eric Elfman to discuss his willingness to try Onit software, he stated that if ADM in-house lawyers were required to engage “in a single unnatural act,” the implementation would fail.

Cambria elaborates, “Why are we all so comfortable with Word, Excel, and Outlook? Because these tools don’t have an…