Legal Technology Overview - A Paralegal Skills Course

This lesson introduces the unifying theme for the course centered on efficiency and automation. Before discussing categories of legal technology and associated applications, we emphasize the key point that technology simply is any tool that saves us time and enables us to complete tasks faster. Next, we explain how legal technology addresses the unique needs of law office and law department work.

This lesson goes over the broad categories of applications and software that are used in law offices and law departments. It includes discussion related to desktop writing and publishing applications as well as law office operations, legal research, communication and collaboration, specialized, and advanced and next generation apps, including those that utilize machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).

This lesson introduces writing and word processing applications, shares some examples of popular apps, describes how they can make paralegals and legal teams more efficient, and briefly introduces some advanced features.

This lesson discusses other core applications and software including portable document format files and how they complement word processing formatted files. The lesson also explains how spreadsheet applications can be leveraged for a variety of purposes and automated for use in a law office or law department. Importantly, we clarify that spreadsheet applications do not need to be limited to just accounting uses. The lesson also introduces presentation applications and how they can be effectively used to present complex topics and concepts clearly and with rich visualizations. Finally, the lesson introduces database applications and some of the key elements of a database. It closes by emphasizing how a centrally positioned database in a technology stack of a law office can enable efficiency and fuel automation and other time saving features that reduce redundancy by maintaining a "single source of truth" for key data points.

This lesson explains that office applications have advanced features that can be used in the law office, but these features may not be on by default. This is because most office applications are calibrated for general office work and not necessarily the specialized needs of a law office or law department. The lesson then goes on to illustrate some specific advanced features in word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications.

This lesson describes law practice management (LPM) apps and their central and important role in a law office. It also explains how paralegals and lawyers use LPM applications as part of their case management and substantive work. Next, the lesson introduces productivity software, which include time and billing applications.

This lesson introduces document management and document automation applications. It explains how document management apps enable team members to collaborate and access key documents collected from clients or prepared in the course of working on matters or cases. Next, the lesson describes what document automation applications do and how they are used for common matter types to speed the initial draft preparation of common documents.

This lesson explains how practice areas may have their own unique version of the various different applications discussed in the course. These unique iterations of applications address the specific needs of the practice area. More generally, it also explains how litigation focused, transactional, and administrative practices also have unique needs that influence the features and tools in the software and applications that are catered for those specific practices.

This lesson discusses public agency and court portals and how they enable petitioners, applicants, and litigants to interface with the agency or tribunal, including by providing status updates, summarizing matter dockets, enabling electronic filing and fee payment, and various other features. Notably, the lesson clarifies that each agency or tribunal may have its own unique web portal with some, all, or more than these features.

This lesson presents email, voice, and video teleconferencing applications and explains how they are essential for work in a law office or department. It highlights some of the strengths of each type of communication tool and some best practices or settings in which we might use each one. Finally, it emphasizes how a diversified use of all three types can help improve comprehension, build better rapport, and enable efficient case and matter work.

This lesson discusses some newer communication tools, including instant message and asynchronous communication tools. It explains how instant messaging is informal and can also lack the security features that may be required for sensitive communications. Nevertheless, it provides examples of how it might be used for certain limited uses. Next, it describes asynchronous communication and how it can be a flexible tool for communicating with colleagues or clients across geographic areas or time zones. Finally, it includes caution that it is important to discuss the use of any new tools for communication with the supervising attorney to ensure it meets confidentiality, security, privilege, and other requirements.

This lesson describes what legal research applications are and how they are unique to each legal research service provider or vendor. It highlights some common features that appear in most legal research applications. It encourages paralegals to explore the vendor-specific and on-demand trainings provided by the specific vendor or service provider that services their office. Finally, it emphasizes how advanced searches remain a very powerful way to run precision searches.

This lesson focuses on advanced search strategies, including searches that use logical operators and advanced filtering features. It emphasizes that, despite the availability of many, new innovative and convenient search options, advanced search functions continue to be a powerful and important way in which to conduct legal research effectively.

This lesson defines what a process is and explains how an optimized process can enable teams to be more efficient and assure quality in their work. Next, it introduces the concept of knowledge management and knowledge management systems, which strive to capture and make accessible a team's collective prior experience. This allows everyone on the team to use prior knowledge and research as a scaffold for future similar matters.

This lesson introduces artificial intelligence (AI) and describes the different methods by which AI systems are trained or developed. It next describes specific applications of AI, such as natural language processing (NLP), machine vision, character recognition, prediction engines, and similarity / recommendation engines. It highlights that machine learning (ML) may already be embedded in the features that we already use in many legal applications. It discusses the exciting new applications enabled by the most advanced type of neural network, but also notes that the high stakes in legal work and the exacting standard for accuracy and security make it challenging for the latest technologies to gain quick adoption in the legal industry. Despite this limitation, the lesson encourages paralegals and early-career lawyers to continue to learn about AI and its new applications to stay sharp and be ready to use them when they reach the law office or department. It concludes by anticipating a bright future enabled by the use of AI applications to automate tedious and otherwise time-consuming tasks so that lawyers and paralegals can focus their energy on more engaging and challenging aspects of their work.