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Weekly Readings and Assignments: Legal Tech for Small Firms

caution

This class is subject to change! Please check readings at least the week before something is due and double-check whether a class is remote or in-person by monitoring the Microsoft Teams channel.

Week 1, August 23: Course overview and Introduction​

Before class:

  1. Create a Clio Academic Access Program account (https://www.clio.com/partnerships/academic-access/) and poke around the site for a few minutes

  2. Read Troman's short article, "Law Firms Are Inefficiency Factories, Automation is the Cure" (https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2018/06/11/law-firms-are-inefficiency-factories-automation-is-the-cure/), perma.cc. Be prepared to discuss it.

  3. Read the 2020 Clio Legal Trends Report, perma.cc

Dicussion questions for Troman:​

  • What is the author's main point?
  • What do you think of the author's main point? How different is a law firm from a restaurant?
  • Can you think of a better metaphor than "inefficiency factory"?
  • Do you agree that automation will cost law firms money?
    • How much room is there for law firms to expand business?
  • Why do people outsource things anyway?
  • Do people hire lawyers for the same reasons that they hire a painter or go to a restaurant?
  • How has automation shaped the rest of society?

Discussion questions for Clio report:​

  • The Clio report introduces several frameworks for thinking about business growth:
    • VUCA
    • Marginal gains
    • MAXDIFF
    • Which of these were helpful?
  • The report states that "legal services have been delivered in a way that's been unaffordable, inconvenient, and difficult for potential clients to know whether they have a legal problem worth pursuing in the first place— all of which function as critical barriers to hiring a lawyer." Do you agree? Why or why not?
  • Why do lawyers only earn 15% of their day?
  • What is the product-market fit problem?
  • Do you agree that there is a vast latent legal market?
    • What are some reasons why that market may or may not exist that are not explored in the report?
  • What aspects of technology did the report say are most underused by lawyers?
    • Did anything surprise you in this list?
    • What do you think would be the biggest advantage for a lawyer to learn?
  • What surprised you about how lawyers spend their day?
  • Based on what you learned from the report, how would you work to get clients?

Week 2, 8/30: (In person) Hello, World in Docassemble​

Before class, read:

Optional viewing:

In class discussion​

  • The access to justice gap
  • What is document automation?
  • What is it good for?

In class hands-on work​

In-class exercise: Hello, World.

For a recording of this in-class exercise for later reference, you can view:

Assignment

After class: do the stretch goals for both the Hello, World and the Logic sections of the training.

Turn in a hello_world.yml and logic.yml file by week 3.

If there is time during class: Start working on the Clio University (16 mini "courses", CPE01-16). The completed Clio coursework is due by the end of week 5. It should take between 5-10 hours to go through all of the exercises. You will be very busy at the end of the semester, so please start it early.

9/6 Labor Day, no class​

Enjoy the holiday! After Monday, this may be a good week to get started with the Legal Tech Assessment, which is due on the final day of class.

Expect to spend a few days working through the training and assessment portions. You can retake the assessment portion as needed.

Before class:

Explore:

Focus questions​

  1. What obligations does an app have that a paper form does not?
Due

Turn in Docassemble exercise from week 2

Week 4 9/20: Plain language, Guest Caroline Robinson​

Due
  • Clio University learning modules
  • Final project proposal

Before class:

Slides

  • In class exercise: reviewing plain language on mass.gov
  • Getting started on the final project. Review of rubric, suggestions on outlining
Due
  • Schedule a one-on-one meeting with Professor Steenhuis
Milestone

Narrow down ideas for your final project.

See guidance here.

Before class:

Take 20 min to review the Syntax page and work through a few of the examples found in the Quick Start Guide.

Open THIS file for our class activity.

Week 6 10/4: (CHANGE to In person class) Introduction to ALWeaver; Guest Joshua Lenon, Lawyer in Residence at Clio​

Zoom

Before class, read

Milestone

If you haven't yet, start outlining your final project. Start thinking of a natural way to ask the questions, information that your user will need to complete the interaction, and follow-up steps that they will need to take.

Form groups

Form groups for week 8's Free Tool Fiesta

Week 7 10/12: (Remote class? TBD) Project Management / Trello; Class meets at regular time on Tuesday, Guest Ivy Grey, Wordrake​

Zoom

Before class:

Monday schedule, class meets at regular time on Tuesday

Due
  • draft question order and user instructions for your form. (15% of final project grade)

Recommended further reading for those interested, only:

Week 8 10/18: Introduction to GitHub; Microsoft Office 365 for small firm practice​

Before class,

You have access to Microsoft Power Automate and Microsoft Forms through the Suffolk Office 365 portal.

To access Microsoft Flow, go to https://portal.microsoftonline.com and click on the "All apps" arrow, and then the "Forms" and "Power Automate" links, respectively.

After class:

Milestone

Your form (if using a form) should be properly labeled. You should request a review from another student to ensure labeling is correct.

Start work

Choose an app for the "app teardown" exercise due Week 10. See description here.

Potential starting places:

Week 9 10/25: Free Tool Fiesta​

Due

Presentations for Free Tool Fiesta

See instructions here

Milestone

You should be able to run your form through the Weaver at least once. Correct any form errors or mislabeled variables.

Week 10 11/1: The Intersection of Design Thinking and Legal Work (Guest Nicole Bradick)​

Due
  • App "teardown" and extended reflection

Before class:

Discussion prompts for "Nothing About Us Without Us"​

Think through the following excerpts and paraphrases from the primary source.

There is nothing wrong with making things people want. It's just that too little attention is being paid to the things people need.

Yet if, for broader reasons of structural inequality, the universe of real-world users falls within a limited range compared to the full breadth of potential users, then UCD reproduces exclusion by centering their needs.

Designers tend to unconsciously default to imagined users whose experiences are similar to their own.

  1. What are some ways that lack of user input can harm product quality?

  2. What are some ways that it can harm users?

Information asymmetry between manufacturers and users is one of the underlying forces that supports lead user innovation. In a nutshell, when the cost (in time and energy) of communicating a specific kind of user need to the manufacturer is high, it often makes more sense for users to modify products on their own than to attempt to convince manufacturers to do so.

  1. Do you think that user-led innovation of the kind described above is positive or negative? What does it signal about a product?

Many design approaches that are supposedly more inclusive, participatory, and democratic actually serve an extractive function.

  1. What do you think the author meant? How do you think designers can avoid an "extractive" relationship with users? What alternative models can still include users?

We funded an earned income tax credit tool [because] … unfortunately billions of dollars each year go unclaimed by the working poor because they don't know they're entitled to it. So, we built a system like that, and it got a lot of usage in English, but when we built it in Spanish and Vietnamese almost nobody used it. … So either we don't understand how to deliver technology to these special language groups, or we're not doing the right outreach, or it's not culturally appropriate, I don't know.

  1. What are some ways the EITC designers could have avoided the problem?
Milestone

Your form should be a package in your Docassemble playground. You should be able to start editing question text and adding refinements.

Week 11: 11/8: Ethical and regulatory considerations in legal technology​

There are a number of ethical concerns that center around the use, misuse, and lack of use of legal technology. Which threads do you feel are the most central? How if at all do they conflict?

Reflect on the primary sources and articles linked above. You may also want to think back to the Gillian Hadfield "Legal Markets" journal article, Lauritsen and Steenhuis "Substantive Legal Software Quality A Gathering Storm, and "Nothing About Us Without Us".

  1. Closing the access to justice gap.
  2. Protecting consumers from fraud and incompetent service providers.
  3. Technology competency.
  4. Risk of technology failure or misleading information.
  5. Inclusion and representation.
  6. Free speech.
  7. Competition and the protection of legal monopolies.

What arguments are there for the lack or excess of legal regulation addressing each of the topics listed above? Draw from the articles and sources shared in class.

Milestone

Your form should run through to the end, although it may not have a logical question order and a lot of information may still be missing.

Due

Come to class prepared to troubleshoot specific problems in your final project.

Before class, read

Week 13 11/22: Presentation of student projects.​

Due
  • Legal Tech Assessment
  • Final project presentation (but not the final project)

Please come prepared to deliver a 5 minute presentation of your work. See final project guidelines for more information about how to structure your presentation. Slides are welcome, but not required.

You do not need to have your final project finished. Be ready to demonstrate what you have, explain your process, and tell us about the work that is still to come. A working prototype will be able to get more constructive feedback, but your grade will not be based on how complete the work is, but rather the quality of the presentation.

Come prepared to present/provide constructive critique of classmates' work.

Milestone

Your form should be in the final refinement stage now. Questions should be in roughly the right order. You should be ready to send it to a peer or a subject matter expert for feedback.

November 29th: No class, Thursday Schedule.​

Milestone

You should have feedback from 2-3 peers or at least one subject matter expert to triage and start implementing.

During the week, get started incorporating feedback on your final project.

Friday December 10th, 5 PM​

Due

Final project is due. Turn in through link in Teams.

Milestone

Your form should meet at least a "useful prototype" by this stage. Write down any goals that you did not have time to implement, especially feedback from a subject matter expert.