I spent a memorable recent Friday in New York glimpsing the future of the legal profession at the Reinvent Law convocation held at the Cooper Union. This was the second time that Professors Daniel Katz and Renee Knake of Michigan State University Law School invited the thinkers and the doers involved in the burgeoning movement to integrate technology and law together in one place. Last year’s meeting was in Silicon Valley. I did not attend that, but watched many videos of the presentations on line. New York proved to be just as hip and exciting a place as Palo Alto, though a bit colder.
The players in this field range from entrepreneurs working in startups who want to make law available to the masses on ubiquitous platforms such as smart phones and tablets to corporate counsel from some really huge consumers of legal services (Cisco, FMC Technologies) who purchase billions (yes, billions) of dollars in legal services from some of the largest law firms in the world.
