Last spring, the global world of legal technology became a bit more connected, thanks to the unusual coincidence of of two legal tech world tours. One was by Dera J. Nevin, who traveled the world as the self-anointed “global ambassador for legal technology,” in conjunction with the Global Legal Hackathon. The other was by the UK company Legal Geek, which undertook Around the World with Legal Geek.
I wrote about these tours in a column at Above the Law I titled, Legal Tech World Tours Take Off — But How About The Heartland? While the global tours sounded cool, I wrote, the legal tech tour I wanted to see would venture into America’s heartland.
I want to know about the challenges faced by a solo lawyer in a small town in the Midwest. I want to talk to people in a rural legal aid office struggling to keep up. I want to hear from clerks and judges in an urban courthouse dealing with onslaughts of pro se litigants. And, yes, I want to hear directly from those who are unable to get the services they need.
Not long after I wrote that, I heard from Christopher Anderson, president and COO of How To MANAGE a Small Law Firm. While he could not send me into the heartland, he said, he would love to have me attend the company’s Law Firm 500 conference and interview some of the solo and small firm lawyers there about their use of legal technology.
That was an offer I could not refuse. So in October, I traveled to Lake Las Vegas accompanied by my son Ben Ambrogi, who is a videographer and producer of my LawNext podcast. At the start of the conference, Chris announced that there would be a sign-up sheet for anyone wanting to be interviewed.
We ended up recording 18 interviews in a single day. The interviews were completely unscripted and I knew virtually nothing about each lawyer before the cameras started rolling. But it turned out that each had an interesting legal tech story to tell.
Over the next month or so, I’ll be posting these interviews here on LawSites.
