[Note: I’m running a Q&A series all the rest of December on DennisKennedy.Blog (details here).]

Will You Be Writing a 2012 or 2013 Legal Tech Trends Article?

The answer is: No. Well, maybe if someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, I’d think about it, but I still think I’d say no.

I get this question fairly often around the end of the year. It used to be an annual tradition for me to write an article summarizing the most important legal tech trends I found in the preceding year or make predictions about the next year. I’ve drifted away from that practice for a number of reasons:

1. Tom Mighell and I typically cover this topic in an episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report podcast (an example). In fact, we’ve already talked about covering this topic in an upcoming episode.

2. I had gotten into the habit of matching the number of trends to the year (12 Trends for 2012?) and the number of trends simply got to be too large for me to attempt. (See my 2008 article)

3. Too many of the people I respect in legal tech said either that the trends are really the same as the previous year or that there was nothing really eye-openingly new. For example, I’m not sure that saying predictive coding or technology-assisted review in e-discovery is really something that would not have been said for the last several years. It doesn’t really feel new to me. Social media? Cloud? Those topics have been around for quite a while. I’m reluctant to write an article that simply says some things I’ve mentioned before are still around and haven’t made much progress.

4. I don’t really have a regular writing outlet these that makes sense for an article like that, and it would be a very long blog post (even by my standards).

With a couple of possible exceptions, legal tech seems like a sleepy area lately. The agendas for legal tech shows (with the exception of tablets and apps) look a lot like they did a few years back. Those observations, unfortunately, would make for a rather sleepy legal tech trends article. It’s more fun for me, and more interesting for you, that Tom and I cover the topic in the podcast format rather than that I write an article.

I am, however, definitely interested in what others see as the hot, significant trends and whether people disagree with my overall assessment.

If you have a question for me to answer in this series, you may submit it for me through the usual channels – email at denniskennedyblog @ gmail . com, a comment left on the original post about the Q&A series, this post or a subsequent post, or through Twitter (@dkennedyblog), or whatever other way you want to reach me.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

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Facebook in One Hour for Lawyers, the new book from Allison Shields and me, is now available (iBook version here). Our previous book, LinkedIn in One Hour for Lawyers is also available and also can be downloaded as an iBook. Also still available, The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell.