The "MIT School of Law" - Keynote Presentation @Stanford CodeX FutureLaw Conference - (V2.01)

The MIT School of Law
A Perspective on Legal Education in the 21st Century
Daniel Martin Katz
Illinois Institute of Technology
Associate Professor of Law

Despite some of the
blustery rhetoric

the market(s) for legal
services is not going away

that said -
the Market(s) for Legal
Services is Changing

and in turn so is the  
market for legal education ...

So the proper question
we should be asking ...

How Do We Prepare
Our Students to
Survive (Thrive) in the
emerging ordering?

Provide them with skills that
make them undeniable

to do so
we must imagine and
develop a new type
of legal education...

Liberal Arts Legal .Edu
Polytechnic Legal .Edu

Polytechnic Legal.edu
is arguably well configured
to the various existing
faces of innovation in legal

3 faces of innovation in legal

(1) lawyers for innovators / entrepreneurs

(1) lawyers for innovators / entrepreneurs
what most lawyers and law schools call “Law+Entrepreneurship"

(2) lawyers as innovators - substance /doctrine

poison pill - “the most important innovation in corporate law
since Samuel Calvin Tate Dodd invented the trust
for John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil in 1879”

emerging areas - 3D Printing, Driverless Cars, Augmented Reality,
Data Breach, Big Data+Privacy, etc.
Drones, Internet of Things, CyberSecurity,

(3) lawyers as innovators - business/process
innovation directed toward transforming the practice of law

(3) lawyers as innovators - business/process
innovation directed toward cultivating new markets for law

Some Major Trends
in the Legal
Services
Market

Trend 1:
General Counsel as
Legal Supply Chain
Manager

What is one major historic
barrier to legal innovation?

The Sophisticated
General Counsel

Although many of pieces
were already in place ...

The Financial Crisis Placed
Signiﬁcant Pressure on GC’s

Legal was brought
in line with
the Other C Level
Ofﬁcers/Divisions

“I am not running your
training program ...”

(i.e. Don’t Put
1st and 2nd Year
Associates
on our work)

“If you want our work -
you are going to work
with other providers”

The General Counsel
as Legal Supply Chain Manager

Blended
Teams
of
Providers
Law Firm
+
E-Discovery Firm
+
Legal Process Outsourcing
+
Law Division Insourcing
+
Software/Analytics Firm

Legal Supply
Chain Mgmt.
Data and Logistics =
General Counsels
as the Maestros

Client Sophistication is
Critical to this Story ...

Client Sophistication
has reset historic
relationships ...

and is a necessary
precondition for legal
entrepreneurs

Trend 2:
The Rise of
Quantitative
Legal
Prediction

implication is that
every organization
needs a data strategy

2011
The Age of
Quantitative Legal Prediction

2012
The Age of

2013
The Age of

- or -
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start
Preparing for the Data Driven Future of the
Legal Services Industry
Daniel Martin Katz
Assistant Professor of Law
Michigan State University
2013

Predictive
Coding
in
E-Discovery

“The software
identiﬁes standard
and terms in
contracts, and its
benchmarking
tools show
lawyers how their
current document
compares to the
standard.”

http://www.noticeandcomment.com/

General Counsels as Legal
Procurement Specialists
TyMetrix -
Using $50 billion+ in Legal
Spend Data to Help GC’s
Look for Arbitrage
Opportunities, Value
Propositions in Hiring Law
Firms
Legal Procurement
(High End of Market)

experts, crowds, algorithms
3 known ways to forecast

For most problems ...
ensembles of these streams
outperform any single stream

This is *not*
the end of lawyers

Instead the
pseudocode for our times ...

Humans
+
Machines
Humans
or
Machines
>

How to get students trained
for data driven law practice

Quantitative Methods for Lawyers
Professor Daniel Martin Katz

Legal Analytics
Professor Daniel Martin Katz
Professor Michael J Bommarito II

Trend 3:
Retail Legal Services
(US + UK)

70%+ of US does not
have a lawyer ...

architecting solutions
to this problem

technology aided
access to justice

Retail Legal Services
UK Edition
Interesting Models Are
Being Developed in UK

Retail Facing Legal Services
US Edition

LegalTechNYC is the
largest technology show
in the legal industry

Up to 20 billion dollars of
technology/commerce
on display**
**Estimate via Oliver Goodenough of Vermont Law School

Took A Photo When We
Were At LegalTechNYC

Process / Project Mgmt.
Workflow Optimization

Discovery /
Document Management

Search
Info Visualization
Automated Document Generation

Legal Analytics
Legal Prediction

Law + Tech Sector
is Heating Up

Some of these are
established
companies ...

But there are
many more coming ...

15
2009
Law or Legal Related Companies

15 400
2009 2014
Law or Legal Related Companies
+

R e p o r t e d s a l e
price between $35
million and $40
million.
Final Number was
likely between
$80 - $100 million
A n u m b e r o f
venture capitalists
have invested in
t h e c o m p a n y ,
including Silicon
Valley’s Sequoia
C a p i t a l w h i c h
invested $7 million
in 2007 ....

Law Schools as
academic research
institutions can help
support the frontier
of research and
development in law

Trend 5:
Tech/Process
Infused Law Firms

All of this is part of
so called #NewLaw

These Trends
(and Many Others)
Point to a Skills
Mismatch in the
legal market ...

In order to fully participate
students need a different
set of skills

Real Innovation
Real Competition
and

Law Schools Should
Stop Trying to be the
50th / 100th Best Harvard and Yale

Seriously,
These Schools
Are
Not Even
That
Great ...

And The Game Is
Rigged Anyway ...

By Making Their Backhand
Your Forehand

How Many
Professors
at either of these
Elite Institutions ...

Seriously Know
Anything About ...
Legal Information Technology
Legal Information Engineering?

Obviously that is a
rhetorical question

This Weakness Is
Serious Because The
Walls that Separated ...

Legal Education from the
Legal Services Market
Are Coming Down

Time to Reboot What It Means
to ‘Think Like a Lawyer’

{Law + Tech + Design + Delivery}
TM

{ Tech + Design + Delivery } = Process
{ Law } = Substance

{Law
Substantive
Legal
Expertise

{Law
Substantive
Legal
Expertise
Analytics
Platform
AI
Computing
KM
+ Tech

{Law
Substantive
Legal
Expertise
Process Engineering
User Experience
Design Thinking
Project Mgmt
+ Design
Analytics
Platform
AI
Computing
KM
+ Tech

{Law
Substantive
Legal
Expertise
Process Engineering
User Experience
Design Thinking
Project Mgmt
Business Models
Regulation
Marketing
+ Design
TM
+ Delivery}
Analytics
Platform
AI
Computing
KM
+ Tech

the thrust of this is actually
an idea developed @

The Components of the “T”
Obviously differ by subtopics but
there are some general themes

So How Exactly Can We
Train Law Students
to Thrive in
21st Century Law Practice

A Thought Experiment:
“MIT School of Law”

Blueprint for
Legal Education in the
Age of
Law’s Information
Revolution

I Guess I Was Fooled Because
it Made Tons of Sense to me

Many Current Lawyers
are really doing Hybrid Work

Traditional Tasks with the
Substantial Aid of Technology

Extend This Idea to
Skill Blending in
Many Domains

Building The
“MIT School of Law”
Inputs (Different Students + Faculty)
Better Training = Better Lawyers
Connect to the Broader Industry Ecosystem
Attract
Train
Place

MoneyLaw:
The Student Admissions Edition

Systematically
Undervalued By
The US News Rankings
Posturing

Applied Mathematics
Computer Science
Statistics
Economics
Engineering
Information Science

To Do So, You Need
to Make the Case of
Why Your School
Over Others?

If You Build It They
Will Come

If You Build It They
Will Come
They Will Come If The Rest of the Team
is there to join them

Faculty =
Having
“Hiring Lines”
Biases You To
Present

The “Best” Athlete Approach
Depends Upon Which Sport
You are Playing

≠
Tennis
Basketball
≠
Sumo Wrestling

Are You Sure You Have
the Right Athletes?

Training and
Skill Development
For Students

A Potential
Animating Rule ...

Every Course Be
Evaluated in Light of ...

its ability to help students
compete in the
Legal Labor Market

Down Come The
“Hot House” Walls

Of Course, There is
Uncertainty about What
Skills Are Needed

“65 percent of current grade-school kids may end up
doing work that hasn’t yet been invented”

Response --
Hedge By Providing Lots
of Different Types of Skills
>

Diminishing Marginal
Returns In Every Class

Therefore, Use The
Quarter System

Who Said This
Was Going to
Be Easy?

Yes, there is going to
be math on the exam

Unless it is a
Business Plan
w/ Mkt. Research

Students Must
Build Something...

Legal Incubator/ Startup
Legal Analytics Project
‘Lean’ Apprenticeship Program
Design/Legal Info Architecture Lab

R & D for the Industry
(Grant $$)

Strategic Relationships
with Key
Members of the Industry

Again Critical Mass
is Very Important

As Peer to Peer (P2P)
Education is Critical

need to do something
different and question
status quo thinking

hack the existing
prestige hierarchy

Portfolios Resumes>
Evidence > Noisy Signaling

http://about.me/
karenfrancismcwhite

http://patellis.wordpress.com/

Don’t Expect A
New Law School in
Cambridge, MA

This is not a
blueprint for all of
legal education

probably more likely to
be a well functioning unit
within an existing school

What I Am
Really
Saying Is ...

this is a very exciting time
in law.edu and there is
everything to play for ...

but the Future is
*Not*
Self-Executing

Daniel Martin Katz
Chicago Kent College of Law
Associate Professor of Law
@ computational
computationallegalstudies.com
danielmartinkatz.com

The "MIT School of Law" - Keynote Presentation @Stanford CodeX FutureLaw Conference - (V2.01)

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The "MIT School of Law" - Keynote Presentation @Stanford CodeX FutureLaw Conference - (V2.01)