Legal technology refers to technology used by lawyers or to perform legal work conventionally done by lawyers. The Finnish Legal Tech Forum is a new organization promoting legal tech in Finland with around 40 members. It plans to take over the Helsinki Legal Tech Meetup and hold events to discuss topics like online dispute resolution and legal tech startups. The presentation provided an overview of legal tech areas and upcoming conferences and meetups for people to learn more.

1. What is legal technology?
What is the Finnish Legal
Tech Forum?
Anna Ronkainen, president
@ronkaine
at Microsoft Flux, Helsinki, 2016-09-05

2. What is legal technology?

3. The most important legal technology to
date: written language!
Code of Hammurabi,
Mesopotamia 1754 BCE
(Wikimedia: Rama CC BY-SA 2.0)

4. But more to the point...
- technology (especially ICT) that is used
- by lawyers (for legal work), or
- to do work conventionally done by lawyers
- research, development, deployment
- generally not the same thing as Law &
Technology or ICT law (substantial legal
issues related to (emerging) technologies)
- (old-fashioned) umbrella term for both: legal
informatics

5. Some examples of legal
technology

6. Legal information retrieval
- access to legal sources (cases, statutes,
doctrine)
- initially basic database functions, now
increasingly sophisticated
- NLP-powered interfaces, recommendations,
better UX
- new open data based solutions coming
(where data available!)

7. Legal practice technology
- communication: e-mail and all its killers
- case/docket management and workflow
- timekeeping
- document management
- document automation
- knowledge management
- ...

8. Court technology
- case/docket management
- online dispute resolution
- decision support

9. Attorney/client interfaces
- legal services platforms
- lawyer matching
- lawyer/referral networks

10. Task- and issue-specific solutions
- e-discovery
- due diligence
- contract analysis
- immigration
- family law: divorce, prenups, estates
- mergers and acquisitions
- bankruptcy
- construction
- end-of-life
- patents
- trademarks
- DRM
- parking tickets
- ...

11. Legal tech in Finland: Industry
- publishers: Edita (Edilex/Finlex), Talentum
(suomenlaki.com)
- public sector ICT behemoths: Tieto, CGI
- NewLaw: e.g. Fondia, Turre Legal
- legal marketplace: Lakivälitys
- contract management: M-Files, Sopima,
ContractZen
- practice management: CSI Helsinki
- trademark AI: TrademarkNow

12. Legal tech in Finland: Academia
Relevant research (that I’m aware of):
- legal AI: modelling interpretation and
vagueness (yours truly/Helsinki)
- Semantic Finlex (Hyvönen et al/Aalto)
- legal design (Haapio/Vaasa, Passera/Aalto)
- ODR (R Koulu/Helsinki)
Teaching:
- Turku law school: Introduction to Legal
Technology (by yours truly), spring 2015,
autumn 2016, ...
- Helsinki: dispute resolution and technology

13. What is the Finnish Legal
Tech Forum?

14. The Finnish Legal Tech Forum is...
- a newly started organization to promote
legal tech in Finland
- open for everyone interested in legal tech
- not that expensive to join (annual dues: 20 e
for regular members, 10 e for student
members, 150 e for corporate members)
- growing fast: ~40 members now

15. Meet the Finnish Legal Tech Forum
board
- Anna Ronkainen (president)
- Antti Innanen (vice-president)
- Kristian Lauslahti (secretary)
- Petteri Günther (member secretary)
- Johanna Rantanen (member secretary)

16. Concrete plans for the Forum
- taking over organizational responsibility for
the Helsinki Legal Tech Meetup (will remain
open also for non-members)
- autumn AGM in November/December
- massive behind-the-scenes lobbying to make
the world a better place with legal tech ;)
- other events and activities TBD
- join us to have a say in what we do!

17. Where to go from here?

18. General information on legal tech
- Legaltech News magazine
- blogs, e.g. Law Technology News, Lawyerist,
Above the Law
- my intro presentation from the first meetup
(on my Slideshare, link in yesterday’s email)
- Introduction to Legal Technology course
(Turku Law School) starting Oct 25 (last
year’s slides also on my Slideshare)

19. Conferences etc. abroad
- huge tradeshows: Legaltech, ABA Techshow
- more interesting: e.g. Clio Cloud, FutureLaw
- Legal Geek legal startup conference (London, Oct
18)
- VQ Knowledge and Strategy Forum (Stockholm,
Oct 18)
- Tallinn IT Law Conference (Tallinn, May)
- meetups in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Tallinn...
- Nordic Conference on Legal Informatics (Stockholm
Nov 10–11)
- International Conference on Artificial Intelligence
and Law (London, Jun 12–16)

21. Conferences etc. in Finland
- Riikka Koulu’s doctoral defence (Helsinki,
Sept 23)
- Berggren Future Forum (Helsinki, Oct 8)
- Käräjät 2016 (Edita, Helsinki, Oct 28)
- Legal Design Summit (Helsinki, Nov 16,
legalexperience.fi)
- Helsinki Legal Tech Meetup

22. Upcoming meetups
- next: online dispute resolution (October, exact
date TBD)
- (some) potential topics for future meetups:
- why do government IT projects (almost) always
fail and what can be done about it?
- bot v. bot: automated enforcement and defence
- Finnish legal tech startup showcase
- legal tech from a law firm perspective
- legal publishing and legal tech
- we’re always looking for speakers and event
hosts, get in touch!

23. Thank you!
http://legaltech.fi/
http://meetup.com/Helsinki-Legal-Tech-
Meetup/
Twitter: @legaltechfi #legaltechfi