#LegalTechLives with Dan Lear, Director of Industry Relations, Avvo and blogger at Right Brain Law Here’s soccer champ Dan Lear’s take on what the legal industry will look like in 15 years, his time at Brigham Young University and how he’s a miss on all three Seattle stereotypes.
Dan Lear is a technology-focused business lawyer, blogger and legal industry gadfly, who has advised companies from startups to the Fortune 100. In 2014, Dan joined Avvo, where he is the Director of Industry Relations and frequently speaks to lawyers and Bar Associations. Dan has been mentioned, featured, or published in The ABA Journal, Law Practice Today, Law Technology News, NWLawyer, Above the Law and other legal industry press. Ava Chisling: You have a few university degrees, including a BA from Brigham Young University. Tell me a few surprising things about your time at BYU. Dan Lear: Ha! Here are two related, hopefully surprising, things. First is that I played soccer at BYU. While the team was a “club� team and not NCAA sanctioned, we played at a very high level. We regularly won the national collegiate club championship and in the summer of 2001, we traveled to Europe and played teams in Spain (including a team in the FC Barcelona program at Camp Nou) and the Netherlands. I helped
spearhead the efforts to raise money for the trip. At the time I thought I was just doing something to help the team, but picking things up and starting them “just because” has become a theme in my career. AC: You’ve been writing about the legal profession for the better part of 15 years now. What has changed the most, in your opinion? DL: I think there are two things that have dramatically changed the discussion or the outlook for the legal services sector over the last decade. The first is the passage of the Legal Services Act in the United Kingdom in 2007. The Act made clear to US lawyers and regulators that a failure to address access and consumer issues may ultimately lead, just as it did in the UK, to a loss of self-regulation. The second is the great recession. It laid bare some of the fundamental problems of the legal pedagogical industrial complex. That, in turn, caused a lot of young lawyers to challenge some of the basic tenets of being a lawyer and providing legal services. The result was grassroots groups like Legal Hackers (now with thousands of members and chapters on nearly every continent), more sophisticated syndicates like Evolve Law, and Law Made, and, of course, companies like ROSS Intelligence. AC: How do you think it will change over the next 15 years? DL: Moving forward I see a number of trends that are going to shape the future of legal and regulatory systems: The first is the increasing power and influence of marketplace communities like Uber, AirBnB, or even Amazon’s third party marketplace. I’d be willing to bet that an Uber driver is much more concerned about his or her reputation on the
platform than they are about the specific laws or regulations that govern being an Uber driver or AirBnB host. Second, geographic boundaries will be increasingly less relevant. As many of us continue to freely interact and transact across national, let alone state, boundaries through technology the associated geographic boundaries for some types of interactions will become less central in our minds. Finally, I’m bullish on blockchain, the technology that underpins BitCoin and other crypto-currencies. This is a much longer conversation but suffice it to say that blockchain enables digital trust and creates “digital scarcity.” It has significant potential. AC: How do you see technology like AI fitting into the future of law and other professions? DL: I’ve been pointing people to this article in The Atlantic that discusses how the previous vision of the future contradicts the fact that highly educated top wage earners, like lawyers, are working more today, not less. I think there will be plenty for lawyers to do for the foreseeable future. There is no question that AI, just like trade, will make human existence better in the long run. But, it’s important to consider the short-to-medium-run effects of automation and to make the necessary political and social adjustments.
“Back in 2005, when international legal outsourcing was still a crazy dream, my group [at Microsoft] started outsourcing some of its patent prior art searches to India. We had to be one of the first legal departments to do something like that.”
AC: I am on the Avvo website now and I’d only have to wait eight minutes to speak with a lawyer. What are the most common kinds of calls you receive via this instant service? DL: We’ve heard lots of examples of people who have used the service for urgent legal issues, but there are many more situations in which talking to a lawyer for even a few minutes is invaluable. That’s what this service does. It democratizes quick, inexpensive, legal advice. We’re proud of the fact that the service is responsive but we’re far more bullish on its “on demand” and flexible nature. AC: Your website says that it has “Avvo-rated profiles for 97% of practicing lawyers in the United States.” Is that true? DL: It is absolutely true. 97% is actually low but it’s hard for us to say 100% because we know we’re probably missing somebody. I don’t know exactly how many profiles there are but you’d be hard-pressed to find a lawyer in the US who doesn’t have an Avvo profile. For the rating, we’ve built a complex algorithm that takes disciplinary actions, time in practice, and something we call professional recognition (which is comprised of a bunch of stuff) into account to generate the rating. One of the funny facts is that there are still a few lawyer regulators who don’t offer this information online. We get a CD-ROM every year with a list of the lawyers in that state.
AC: Obviously Avvo is a new way to offer and receive legal services. Do you think traditional law firms will be able to compete with companies like Avvo, moving forward? DL: Avvo’s strength in the legal sector is the consumer market: everyday people with everyday legal problems looking for legal help. It’s not our intent to “compete” with law firms, but lawyers who ignore the ability of technology or the internet to transform how work gets done today and in the future do so at their own longterm peril. AC: You co-founded the Seattle Legal Innovation and Technology MeetUp, with almost 500 members. What’s the one thing you could do as a group that you’d consider an out of the park homerun?
DL: I love the MeetUp group and I’ve recently been thinking about what we could do with the group to take it to the next level. We’ve succeeded in finding and connecting an amazing, innovative group of legalpassionate folks in the Seattle area and they have some great discussions. The next step is pushing the group to do or to act. I’m not sure what this looks like but I’m looking at motivating the group to take up local legal technology projects or even raising money for micro-loans or micro-financing of local legal tech projects. It’s all in my head right now, but that’s the vision. AC: Tell me about your time at Microsoft, most definitely synonymous with Seattle. What did you do there and what was the office/corporate culture like? DL: Interestingly, my legal tech/innovation journey started at Microsoft. My first gig there was in the patent group helping to manage a massive slew of patents Microsoft was filing. Back in 2005, when international legal outsourcing was still a crazy dream, my group started outsourcing some of its patent prior art searches to India. We had to be one of the first legal departments to do something like that. I also provided legal support for Microsoft Games Studio and got my name in a couple of video game credits. That impresses my kids. AC: Aside from Microsoft, other things that are synonymous with Seattle are coffee, 1990s grunge and the Space Needle. Tell me about your relationship to all three. DL: Unfortunately, I’m a miss on nearly every one. I’ve never been to the top of the Space Needle. It’s one of those things tourists do but people who live here don’t. I don’t drink coffee so that’s a miss, but I’ve definitely had my fair share of coffee meetings in some of Seattle’s finest
coffee spots. As far as grunge, I’m not really a fan but I do love Seattle’s music scene. Grunge overshadows the amazing bands that Seattle has produced since Nirvana: Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, The Head and the Heart, and my personal though slightly-less-well-known favorite The Long Winters (to name just a few). Back to grunge, however, I do live on Seattle’s Capitol Hill just a few short blocks from the apartment building used as the main set for the classic grunge movie Singles. AC: And finally, here’s something I ask everyone: What is the one nonwork related thing not yet invented you’d like right now? DL: I want Hermoine’s time-turner from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s not really time travel so that seems like a pretty reasonable request. AC: Sounds completely reasonable to me, although I hope you don’t attract those death-eaters or whatever they were. They freaked me out. Thank you for your time and for mentioning ROSS as a changemaker!
By Ava Chisling on June 14, 2017. Canonical link Exported from Medium on August 18, 2017.