This document summarizes a keynote speech about the changing legal services industry and the role of technology. The speaker notes that while headlines claim it is a bad time to go to law school or be a lawyer, this is an exciting time for those interested in how the law impacts people and society. There has been a huge increase in events and programs focused on legal technology and the business of law. Major investments in legal tech startups are also fueling changes. While some argue that law is too "special" to change, the speaker believes law is special but must also change to better serve people and address problems, where technology can help solve certain issues. Lawyers and technologists need to work together to find solutions.

1. Law is Special – LawTech Camp 2013 Key Note (June 8
th
2013)
Good morning. I’m really excited to be able to participate in this event today. A big thanks to the organizers for
putting this together, and a special shout out to Monica, for really motivating me to get out here. I think they’ve
got a great day planned.
I wanted to start today by talking a little bit about something pretty obvious - the state of the legal services
industry.
If you read the headlines today, there is an overwhelming theme that reads something like this – it’s a horrible
time to go to law school, to be a lawyer or to be in law.
And there is some truth to that, especially if your primary reason for being a lawyer is something like “to make
more money.” But to be honest, it’s never really been a good time to go into law if that was your only motivation.
If you’re really interested in the law though, and the impact of the law on people, or just how the law works, I
couldn’t disagree more that sentiment. If those things motivate you it’s really an incredibly exciting time to be in
law and events like this are both a reason and result of that. If those types of things motivate you, you’re in or
entering into an area that’s experiencing a huge amount of really interesting change.
A few years ago, believe it or not, an event like this was really hard to find. I remember searching for good events -
I still have logs of potential events that I found combing event sites. Now, it’s getting hard to choose between the
events that are happening. Just a few years back when I was completing my MBA I searched endlessly for more
information on the legal industry as a business, a how the regulatory environment impacted that business to very
little avail. Now, I can barely keep up with the posts and papers that are coming out.
And that’s great.
There is clearly a movement afoot and it’s an exciting one.
If you’re less of a community or academic type and more a numbers person and want to quantify what’s going on,
take look at financing events from this year alone:
Axiom - $28 million
Rocket Lawyer - $15 million
Lex Machina - $4.8 million
Ravel law – 1.1 millon
Smaller rounds for companies like Docracy and launches all over the place.
The industry still ranks pretty low overall for investment… well, very low, but this level of investment is a huge
change. I’ve been at LegalZoom for almost 10 years now and trust me, this wasn’t happening in 2003. And it’s not
just the business side of law that’s going through these changes.
Law schools are reacting to their own market changes and making changes. If you haven’t checked out
LawWithoutWalls,

2. the Reinvent Law Laboratory,
Codex at Stanford,
the Georgetown Irontech Lawyer competition
or one of the many other great programs running today, your missing out. The energy in those programs and the
new brand of law students coming out of them are extraordinary. I wish I would have had the opportunity to
participate in that type of program when I was in law school – truly.
But every movement, of course, has a counter-movement.
If you follow the discussion of the future of legal services online, you’ll undoubtedly note that the conversation is
being framed as one of futurists vs. dinosaurs or professionals vs. hacks on the other end of the spectrum.
And in case you were wondering, in the mind of the dinosaurs, futurist is a dirty word.
There is a great deal of hyperbole in these so called conversations. Curmudgeons liken preparing your own will to
performing surgery on yourself. Futurists warn of extinction and threaten us with things like math… but maybe
that’s just a personal thing... there are countless debates on whether people who go to lawyers for services should
be called customers or clients. Guess what? They’re both.
For the most part I ignore the noise on both ends of the debate, but there is one point that I really feel needs
addressing. This is the argument about the “specialness” of law.
On the extremes you have one side saying that these discussions about the future of law are silly because law can’t
change – law is special and the futurists don’t get it. On the other hand you have arguments saying that the rules
of any business apply to law – law is not special and if you treat it as such you’re expiration date is approaching
rapidly.
But, like all debates of this nature, this is a false dichotomy to some extent.
I get asked from time to time what I think about this argument, presumably under the assumption that I side
squarely with the futurists. I agree with a lot of the gospel coming out of this movement. I don’t, however, agree
with the idea that there is nothing inherently special about the law. Law is special - You can quote me on that.
If you’re starting up a company that deals with legal services, your company is NOT like every other company out
there. As much as you may or may not like to think about it this way, you aren’t selling cogs or widgets.
People in the legal services industry are offering something much different.
At LegalZoom we talk about the fact that we provide people with access to the ability to protect their families and
to start new careers or launch their dream business. They trust us with weighty stuff and that deserves our
respect.
But this doesn’t mean that lawyers shouldn’t be aiming to change.
In fact, it makes that change even more important.
How can a profession that provides something so important underserve so greatly?

3. How can that profession treat the people it serves so poorly that it consistently has satisfaction and respect scores
near the bottom of all professions?
We, as lawyers need to stop providing reasons why can’t change and start taking a hard look at why so many
people are asking us to. In there, there are bound to be some actionable items.
And that’s where the tech comes in. While the futurist dinosaur camps paint each other as all or nothing on
technology, we all know that’s not true. There are pain points in the delivery of legal services that technology can
and will solve. There are others that, at least in the foreseeable future, it will not.
Tech will not solve our problems, but tech could make it a lot easier for us to solve some of them and… just
possibly present some better options we weren’t even looking for.
It’s important to remember though, that tech is not in itself an end goal. Technology has to be used to solve a
problem or create a benefit to make sense.
It’s only through working technologists and lawyers working together that we’ll find those kinds of solutions.