Top Law Schools

Don't go to a school where you might only be able to get a job doing doc review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/science/05legal.html

Hey. Computers don't operate themselves.

Despite speech recognition and voice recording being available for quite a while, there are still court reporters. That's all I'll say about that.

We're already being replaced by computers in bed, and now they take our jobs? This is exactly the same path that led to my fear of illegal immigration.

shemori wrote:http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 3&t=149363

Your post history is weird. I think I may have you replaced by a computer.

i dont know who's avatar in this thread i like the most....

Adjudicator wrote:Hey. Computers don't operate themselves.

But lawyers don't run the computers!

Who goes to law school with the goal of doc review in mind?

harrijust86 wrote:i dont know who's avatar in this thread i like the most....

Bob Ross

Hannibal wrote:Despite speech recognition and voice recording being available for quite a while, there are still court reporters. That's all I'll say about that.

+1

Hannibal wrote:Despite speech recognition and voice recording being available for quite a while, there are still court reporters. That's all I'll say about that.

For now. As the technology develops and they become more accurate, that will probably change.

Mickey Quicknumbers wrote:Who goes to law school with the goal of doc review in mind?

1/2-2/3 of Fordham, All of BLS, Dozo, St. Johns, Pace, Touro, Hofstra, etc.

Nightrunner wrote:

174 wrote:

Hannibal wrote:Despite speech recognition and voice recording being available for quite a while, there are still court reporters. That's all I'll say about that.

For now. As the technology develops and they become more accurate, that will probably change.

B. Fails to recognize profit incentive v. no profit incentive.

?

I'll agree with 174, transcription software is still pretty primitive. It works as well as a really bad human would when transcribing what a single person is saying, but when there are multiple people, it becomes pretty useless, especially if people begin to talk over one another. Can't see why the gov't wouldn't use it when the technology develops. Not sure how much court reporters get paid, but they gotta eat, unlike their computer replacements, who also don't whine about health and dental benefits... yet.

All lawyers are going to be abolished by 2015. A kid and a crazy wild-eyed old man who claimed to be a scientist told me so.

katjust wrote:All lawyers are going to be abolished by 2015. A kid and a crazy wild-eyed old man who claimed to be a scientist told me so.

Great Scott!

alexonfyre wrote:

katjust wrote:All lawyers are going to be abolished by 2015. A kid and a crazy wild-eyed old man who claimed to be a scientist told me so.

Great Scott!

That's not great, and her name is Katherine.

Nightrunner wrote:And they are more willing to take small chances on software, if it means saving money.

The implication in the article is that firms are "taking a chance" by having humans doing doc review:

The computers seem to be good at their new jobs. Mr. Herr, the former chemical company lawyer, used e-discovery software to reanalyze work his company’s lawyers did in the 1980s and ’90s. His human colleagues had been only 60 percent accurate, he found.

“Think about how much money had been spent to be slightly better than a coin toss,” he said.

If that's the case, and the software truly is cheaper, faster, and more reliable, then there's very little reason to think there will be any doc review work to be had anywhere in the near future.

ROFLMAO!!!! Hell you might as well be.

Anyone planning to go into doc review needs to give up on law anyway. I hope the computers do replace those jobs, then maybe we will see more accurate job numbers from some of these TTTs.

Reasons we're still good for the next decade:
1. They are TERRIBLE with anything handwritten. The tech relies on OCR and native files, and a lot of litigation still involves documents that have handwriting that OCR tech currently cannot read and make searchable (related to this is the issue of data preservation; electronic files are not usually preserved as they are in the normal course of business after 5 years usually, think about how often you delete work emails)
2. The legal profession is highly resistant to change (Word Perfect? Still??) and most attorneys don't have any idea how to use technology, speak about technology in a meaningful fashion, or adapt to its use. The concept of e-discovery is still a relatively "new" thing to the profession, and the fact is most attorneys don't even know what metadata is, they just like repeating it as a buzzword. Getting them to use something like Clearwell is still going to be a hard process to adapt to, even with superb results like those in the article.
3. While Clearwell is fantastic and amazing to work with, you still need to do an initial doc review to determine what your search terms are and you need to review the docs that the program culls down for you.
4. This tech is massively expensive if you are not BigLaw and it will take a push to get an initial investment in it even if it is a long-term money saver

I'm obviously not arguing that it won't cut back legal industry jobs, but it seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. Plus some of the tech in the article has been around for quite a while (de-duping and OCR searches) with less impact that you might expect.

Nightrunner wrote:

2011Law wrote: ?

The point these posters are making is that computers do not yet succeed at the level of humans, and that courts (who could use transcription programs that are more reliable than current doc review programs) haven't replaced court reporters...both of which are true.

But - in the long run - that analogy falls apart because courts are public entities, entrusted with maintaining the integrity of the justice system. Courts don't care about profits. Courts would almost never do anything to reduce the guarantees of fair and flawless reporting. Firms, on the other hand, are businesses. They are intensely concerned about profits. And they are more willing to take small chances on software, if it means saving money. They are also, very likely, willing to invest in developing that software, if it will save them money (or, even, make them money) in the long-run.

Think of it from an entrepreneurial programmer perspective. If you wrote the best court transcribing program of all time, you might - might - get some courts to give it a shot, to save a little money from a government budget. If you wrote the greatest doc review program of all time, you'd immediately be up to your ears in profits, because firms want to make money, even if it means halving the size of their class of young associates.

The profit incentive means that doc review programs are both (a) more likely to be developed successfully and (b) more likely to be adopted by their target markets. To that degree, the analogy falls apart, and the expectation (hope?) that 2018's doc review class won't be nestled in a hard drive is less certain.

I was actually speaking as a person that has a very close relationship with 2 court reporters, neither of which get paid by the courts. Court reporters have been historically high in demand on the corporate level, and even ITE the reduction in court reporting work (most court reporters are contractors) hasn't been replaced by recordings or voice recognition, but has just been as a result of fewer depositions and a reduction in transcript purchases. From what they tell me, attorneys just feel better having a human there, and consider it worth the investment even though reporters could easily just write from a tape recording (transcripts aren't delivered for a few days after a deposition). While I'm not sure that the lack of switchover in that industry will be the same here, I think the same emotion will play, and probably even stronger since doc review seems more high-stakes, in my opinion.

Hannibal wrote:

Nightrunner wrote:

2011Law wrote: ?

The point these posters are making is that computers do not yet succeed at the level of humans, and that courts (who could use transcription programs that are more reliable than current doc review programs) haven't replaced court reporters...both of which are true.

But - in the long run - that analogy falls apart because courts are public entities, entrusted with maintaining the integrity of the justice system. Courts don't care about profits. Courts would almost never do anything to reduce the guarantees of fair and flawless reporting. Firms, on the other hand, are businesses. They are intensely concerned about profits. And they are more willing to take small chances on software, if it means saving money. They are also, very likely, willing to invest in developing that software, if it will save them money (or, even, make them money) in the long-run.

Think of it from an entrepreneurial programmer perspective. If you wrote the best court transcribing program of all time, you might - might - get some courts to give it a shot, to save a little money from a government budget. If you wrote the greatest doc review program of all time, you'd immediately be up to your ears in profits, because firms want to make money, even if it means halving the size of their class of young associates.

The profit incentive means that doc review programs are both (a) more likely to be developed successfully and (b) more likely to be adopted by their target markets. To that degree, the analogy falls apart, and the expectation (hope?) that 2018's doc review class won't be nestled in a hard drive is less certain.

I was actually speaking as a person that has a very close relationship with 2 court reporters, neither of which get paid by the courts. Court reporters have been historically high in demand on the corporate level, and even ITE the reduction in court reporting work (most court reporters are contractors) hasn't been replaced by recordings or voice recognition, but has just been as a result of fewer depositions and a reduction in transcript purchases. From what they tell me, attorneys just feel better having a human there, and consider it worth the investment even though reporters could easily just write from a tape recording (transcripts aren't delivered for a few days after a deposition). While I'm not sure that the lack of switchover in that industry will be the same here, I think the same emotion will play, and probably even stronger since doc review seems more high-stakes, in my opinion.

This made me think of what happened to medical records transcription. Very outsourced. Court reporting definitely could go the same way, but I think at least for purposes of keeping the people responsible within easy reach of the court, we aren't going to see it happen. For obvious reasons, we aren't seeing things that require a license to practice law get outsourced.

Look at the similar case of medical expert systems for interpreting diagnostics, such as EKGs and EMGs, which have been around for over a decade. These have not supplanted doctors even in these relatively menial tasks, even in practices that can afford the good ones. Various explanations can account for this, many of which I think would carry over directly into the doc review world. For instance, if the system screws up, who's liable? How reliable is the system? Is it more prone to false positives or false negatives? How does it handle unusual situations? Do our professionals know how to use the system?

Indeed, in the practices where these expert systems are used, they're just a tool to speed up the process and let the doctor see more patients (where possible), or just to reduce hours billed to the practice. In law, reducing billable hours may be something that firms are going to do everything they can to avoid.

Is court reporting really as big of an expense as doc review is? I don't understand how the legal industry is structured very well, or at all to be honest. But the larger the expense, the more interest people have in cutting it.

joebloe wrote:In law, reducing billable hours may be something that firms are going to do everything they can to avoid.

Unless it's my business strategy to undercut you on price. Or if automated doc review allows me to get you to trial faster.

It doesn't really seem like firms are interested in innovating like this, but the legal industry is mired in a 19th century business model. dla piper seems to be trying to do things differently, but they seem to be doing them wrong. Someone will get it at some point though.

ahduth wrote:Is court reporting really as big of an expense as doc review is? I don't understand how the legal industry is structured very well, or at all to be honest. But the larger the expense, the more interest people have in cutting it.

joebloe wrote:In law, reducing billable hours may be something that firms are going to do everything they can to avoid.

Unless it's my business strategy to undercut you on price. Or if automated doc review allows me to get you to trial faster.

It doesn't really seem like firms are interested in innovating like this, but the legal industry is mired in a 19th century business model. DLA Piper seems to be trying to do things differently, but they seem to be doing them wrong. Someone will get it at some point though.

Going to trial is something most law firms want to avoid, the risk is fairly substantial and in most cases the client is not going to like it (due to the tremendous expense and time commitment.) The reason that firms would go for automated doc review is because they can make their clients billable hours go further, and SETTLE cases more quickly. The real money is in new cases coming in, not old ones dragging along.