It’s been a lucrative year for legal tech. We’re closing in on $1 billion in investment for 2018 with significant capital contributions from high-flying investors like Mark Cuban (undisclosed investment in pro bono facilitator, Paladin), Kobe Bryant ($500 million financing round in LegalZoom from his fund and others) and Justin Kan ($65 million raised for legal start up, Atrium).
That’s just naming a few.
These are big, financial wins for the legal entrepreneurs building the companies now set to reshape the legal services industry. They’re also equally big wins for those “misfit” lawyers and law school graduates increasingly finding themselves disillusioned with traditional practice – veering towards a new category of “J.D. Advantage” jobs for which a law degree is strongly preferred, but not necessarily required.
Might the future be in fact filled with J.D. Advantage jobs?
Here are a few worth pondering.
Director of Legal Technology Sales
Starting Salary: $110,000 + Commission
Venture firms wouldn’t be going in on legal tech to the tune of millions of dollars if they didn’t expect see 5x to 10x returns on investment. The pressure to “sell, sell, sell” solutions is now on and will lead to the rise of the new J.D. preferred Director of Legal Technology Sales role.
Increasingly, legal tech sales are driven by demand from lawyers as opposed to non-lawyers. This is especially true in B2B markets and belies the conventional headline that technology will replace lawyers by selling solutions to those without law degrees. More and more solutions are being consumed by law firms and in house counsels looking to boost competitiveness. Who better to sell legal tech to lawyers than other lawyers?
Enter the Director of Legal Technology Sales role, responsible for legal tech solution selling and strategy. Tasks for this role include presenting sales materials to potential legal client customers, leading product demonstrations, Q/As and providing critical feedback to internal engineering teams for product enhancement. A J.D. is preferred for the Director Legal Technology Sales who must properly evaluate the practicality of tools designed to improve some aspect of legal services and establish credibility during product pitches to potential customers.
Ethical A.I. Designer & Manager
Starting Salary: $250,000
Artificial Intelligence solutions have entered the legal market and are being deployed to automate many aspects of practice. Roughly half ($355 million) of the almost $1 billion in new legal tech investment raised this year has gone to Legal A.I. development.
Legal A.I. is busy becoming competent at many traditional legal tasks (like contract review, document drafting and due diligence). However, it still requires an experienced attorney to program, manage and correct it along the way. There also remains a legitimate question as to whether a software system can ethically practice law outside the supervision of an attorney or legal expert. For these reasons, we’ll need to recruit, hire and train for a brand new, highly specialized role tasked with designing and watching over Legal A.I. systems.
The Ethical A.I. Designer & Manager will advise and supervise machine learning teams working on Legal A.I. projects. They will act as subject matter experts, helping engineers identify the proper inputs and workflows to ultimately apply automation technology to practice. Post deployment, they will work with customers on A.I. implementation and practice integration, managing and correcting any errors made by the Legal A.I. system to ensure its continual learning and development.
Public and private entities will be tempted to apply A.I. to dispute resolution, leading to the emergence of “Smart Judges” and “Automated Arbiters” issuing A.I. supported legal opinions and formal dispositions. This is why it’s especially critical for Ethical Legal A.I. Designer & Managers to be well-versed in the ethical rules of legal practice.
Chief Innovation Officer (Law Firm or Law School)
Starting Salary: $180,000
Recent investments in legal tech will rapidly accelerate innovation, as well as the need for both law firms and law schools to undergo both “digital” and “cultural” transformations to keep pace with the new legal market.
No law firm will be immune to disruption. As pointed out by legal futurist Richard Susskind in Priori’s recent interview, smaller firms will “struggle for survival” in the short term unless they “radically change what they do.” Medium and large firms also face brutal competition against alternative legal service providers, like Priori, and the Big Four accounting firms. The pressure on law schools to evolve or go extinct is similarly intense. Law schools failing to adequately prepare students for the future through innovative coursework and technical work-study programs will watch their employment figures decline, followed by applications.
The crucial role of the Chief Innovation Officer is to ensure needed organizational transformations take place, including both digital and cultural changes. This demands critical examinations and development of strategic projects designed to ensure long term success. Examples on the “digital” side may include implementation of enhanced knowledge management and work collaboration platforms. On the “cultural” innovation side, it may include a new talent acquisition strategy, promoting diversity efforts, and social media engagement. Chief Innovation Officers must also be intimately familiar with the latest products and solutions offered by competing organizations to ensure strategic competitiveness in the rocky years ahead.
Virtual Courtroom Designer
Starting Salary: $90,000
Lastly, the future of justice is looking virtual. Online dispute resolution platforms and courts are on the rise.
We recently learned that online courts are the subject of Richard Susskind’s next book. Susskind predicts that 15 years from now our courts will be “changed beyond recognition.” We’re already seeing legal tech start ups attacking the larger social problem of the high cost of dispute administration and resolution. Take for example, FairClaims, the downtown LA based start up offering a vastly cheaper means to resolve small claims disputes through an online portal. The ability to one day integrate virtual courts with legal practice dashboards like Practice Panther and Clio will further reduce the need for physical congregation in actual reality (“AR”) courts, providing compelling incentives for public and private institutions to experiment with and implement online dispute resolution portals.
Designing our virtual courts of the future will not be left entirely to user-experience (or “UX”) designers and “VR artists” without law degrees. Virtual Courtroom Designers with law degrees will be responsible for ensuring online dispute resolution platforms retain the essential characteristics of due process, including proper evidentiary and civil procedure rules. They will also be tasked with collaborating with VR artists directly on re-creating a virtual court system consistent with modern legal norms and advising on any applicable State or Federal requirements.
A Future Full of J.D. Advantage Jobs?
The influx of legal tech investment we’re seeing in 2018 is likely to continue for many years to come, accelerating the advent and adoption of many new types of law jobs. I predict many of these new jobs will be in the form of J.D. Advantage opportunities.
The more I think about it, the more plausible it seems that the legal services industry will soon see more law school graduates working in J.D. Advantage jobs as opposed to practicing as traditional licensed attorneys.
The end result may be an advantage to all of us.
Ian Connett, Esq. (@QuantumJurist) is the Founder of QuantumJurist, Inc., a LegalTech consulting and technology venture dedicated to improving and creating efficiencies in the legal services industry. Ian is also a Contributing Editor to the EvolveTheLaw.com Legal Innovation Center and Host of the Evolve the Law Podcast. Ian resides in New York, where he has served as an in-house counsel to numerous technology companies. You can connect with Ian on Twitter and LinkedIn and you can reach him by email at ian@quantumjurist.com (for story ideas, personal correspondence, media inquires or speaking engagements).
