Recently, one of my buddies was distraught. I’ve known him for almost 20 years; I could tell something was weighing heavily on his mind. I asked what was going on, and he said one of his children got into a bit of hot water due to their cellphone usage at school. We talked it through, and he realized the issue wasn’t that detrimental in the grand scheme. Sometimes we all need a bit of objectivity.
Ari Kaplan recently spoke to Anne Post, the CEO of Xakia Technologies' North America division. Xakia Technologies is a provider of legal matter and contract management solutions.
Editor’s Note: Starting in September, the Bryan Garner on Words column will be running monthly on ABAJournal.com. Although we hear a lot of talk about artificial intelligence, a large segment of the legal profession knows little about it and hasn’t tried it. Some bemoan this technological revolution, fearing it will…
If your firm focuses on a single practice area, your software options, historically, have been limited. Developing tools tailored to a specific practice area often didn’t pay off for vendors providing premises-based software. The potential client market was too small, the cost of adding new features to the software and shipping updates to customers was too high, and supporting multiple versions of software across a variety of small customer bases was unnecessarily complex and inefficient.
“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." That quote, often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, kept running through my head as I read social media reactions related to the plea deal of Bryan Kohberger, who was charged with the 2022 murders of multiple students at the University of Idaho.
We all know that lawyer. You know the one. The lawyer who has built their entire practice on the back of a handful of referrals. It looks easy when they do it, real “no big deal” type of stuff. But if it truly is that easy—how is that lawyer so good at it when you don’t even know where to start?
Should a Supreme Court ruling on its emergency docket be deemed binding precedent in the lower courts? Until recently, I would have thought no, the law would not allow it. Rulings on the emergency docket are without the benefit of full briefing or any oral argument. Often there is little or even no explanation from the court.
On the surface, ILTACON 2025, the International Legal Technology Association’s largest annual legal technology event, had all the makings of a great conference. But despite the thought-provoking sessions and keynotes, networking opportunities and PR fanfare, I couldn’t shake the sense that we were in the midst of a seismic shift in legal tech, surrounded by the restless energy of a boomtown.
Many corporate legal departments and law firms have gone “all in” on alternative fee arrangements, while others have chosen not to adopt them at all. After more than a decade in common use, only an average of 23% of legal work is performed under an AFA despite wide acknowledgement of their benefits. Why does this divide exist? It's not just about financial risk but also execution.
