FUTURE OF LAW

2018 REPORT OF THE NORTH CAROLINA BAR ASSOCIATION FUTURE OF LAW

COMMITEE
 FUTURE OF LAW
FINAL REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE FUTURE OF LAW FOR 2018
Disclaimer

The contents of this Report are intended to convey general information only and
not to provide legal advice or opinions. The viewing of the information in this
Report should not be construed as, and should not be relied upon for, legal or tax
advice in any particular circumstance or fact situation. The information presented
in this Report may not reflect the most current legal developments. Further, this
presentation may contain technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. No
action should be taken in reliance on the information contained on this
presentation. No attorney-client relationship is established by viewing this Report.
An attorney should be contacted for advice on specific legal issues.
Contents
Disclaimer........................................................................................................................................iv
Forward ........................................................................................................................................... 1
Technology’s Impacts.................................................................................................................. 2
Information ............................................................................................................................. 3
Big Data ................................................................................................................................... 5
Self-Organization..................................................................................................................... 5
The Future Work of the Committee ........................................................................................... 7
Acknowledgements..................................................................................................................... 7
Report of the Subcommittee on Artificial Intelligence ................................................................... 8
Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 8
Potential benefits to legal practice ............................................................................................. 8
Potential Hurdles ...................................................................................................................... 10
Professional Responsibility ................................................................................................... 10
Broader ethical issues ........................................................................................................... 11
Access to legal service........................................................................................................... 12
Legal training......................................................................................................................... 12
Legal market/employment issues ......................................................................................... 12
Report of the Subcommittee on Blockchain ................................................................................. 13
Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 13
Legal Contexts ........................................................................................................................... 13
Rationale ................................................................................................................................... 15
Summary ................................................................................................................................... 15
Report of the Subcommittee on Legal Operations Mangement .................................................. 16
Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 16
Background ................................................................................................................................... 16
Representative Services ................................................................................................................ 17
Strategic Planning ..................................................................................................................... 17
Project Management ................................................................................................................ 17
Benchmarking ........................................................................................................................... 18
Risk Mapping ............................................................................................................................. 18
 Compliance ............................................................................................................................... 18
Goals ............................................................................................................................................. 18
Education .................................................................................................................................. 18
Interoperable technology ......................................................................................................... 18
Liberalization ............................................................................................................................. 19
Innovation ................................................................................................................................. 19
Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 19
Report of the Subcommittee on Legal Education ......................................................................... 20
Campbell Law School ................................................................................................................ 21
Duke Law School ....................................................................................................................... 22
Elon Law School ........................................................................................................................ 22
North Carolina Central University School of Law (NCCU) ......................................................... 23
University of North Carolina Law School .................................................................................. 24
Wake Forest University School of Law...................................................................................... 24
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 25
 Forward

Kevin P. Lee
______________________________________________________________________________

Every new project has its own unique challenges. During its inaugural year, this Committee
focused on organizing its work for the future. The rapidly evolving technology that is the subject
of its work requires attention from a wide range of theoretical and practical perspectives. This
work builds on studies, and in particular the VISION 2020 Report,1 which recommended that the
NCBA “should continue to be the leading source of information and training about
technology….” Its guidance suggests that this Committee’s work should be very practical,
calling the NCBA to “identify[] worthwhile technology products, vendors and service
providers….”2 But, it also calls for the theoretical exercise of “identify[ing] emerging trends,
technological and professional that impact the members of the NCBA and their practices.” The
Report repeatedly stresses, “It is imperative that the NCBA identifies emerging trends and their
impact on the profession.”3 Taking these twin objectives for guidance therefore demands that the
Committee understand its work as both (i) surveying emerging technologies for their immediate
value to the practice of law and (ii) recognizing and assessing the forces of change that new
technologies are unleashing on the practice of law. To meet both of the goals, this Committee
must be both practical and theoretic: It is charged with developing market surveys of emerging
technological products. But, it must also seek to understand and explain the new technology in
terms of trends that will be significant to the future of the legal profession.

Identifying significant trends caused by technology is imperative because today’s Information

and Computer Technology (ICT) has the potential to transform the socio-cultural foundations of
the law and legal practice. The impact on the profession will result in new ways of practicing
law, but of greater importance will be ICT’s impact on the institutional structures of law and
society. These impacts are much broader and deeper than is typically realized. The consequences
of ICT are not limited to particular new products, or even to social goals like providing legal
services to those with unmet need. To understand the trends, we need to grasp how the ICT is
changing our self-understanding as a profession and the role of the profession in society. ICT
has the potential to evolve much more rapidly than it has in the past and with greater social
impact. Therefore, understanding the context of technological change is necessary and of vital
importance, both to serve clients better, and also to be the learned “public citizen with a special
interest in justice,” which is the description of the work of the lawyer set out in the Preamble to
the Code of Professional Responsibility.

1
NCBA, Vision 2020 Final Report and Recommendations of the Strategic Planning & Emerging Trends Committee
(June 18. 2015). Available at https://www.ncbar.org/media/659320/vision-2020.pdf
2
Id. at 14.
3
Id. at 27 (emphasis added).

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To meet these goals during its inaugural year, the Committee took a broad look at the new
technologies and concepts that ICT have created as a means for assessing the socio-cultural
forces driving change in the profession. This Report responds to the VISION 2020 Report’s
goals with a short, readable report that provides an overview of the subject matter, realizing the
need for deeper studies that will be its work in the years to come. Our hope is that the readers
will find it to be an insightful, concise, and informative introduction that can appeal to every
member of the profession, regardless of practice area or location. It is a snapshot in 2018 on the
brink of a future which has not yet been written.

Technology’s Impacts

Technology impacts law in two dimensions. One dimension has to do with the law’s role in
governing technology; the other, with technology’s role in the shaping the practice of law. Our
concern is with the latter. We are not focused on new laws to regulate things like drones or
autonomous vehicles or internet-based platform business models. The concern of this Committee
is with the impacts that ICT is having on the practice of law. The plural, “impacts,” is used here
because there are many ways that the practice of law is being touched. One might even liken the
situation to saturation bombing, where the impacts of bombs overlap and produce a widely
distributed effect. The metaphor of a bombing attack is also intentional. The feeling of
apprehension that accompanies that metaphor should be acknowledged at the outset. To many
lawyers, the comparison to an attack might seem apt on first observation. After all, popular
media has served up a vision of lawyers being displaced by robots and society becoming
subservient to automated artificial super-intelligence. And, there are too many references to
malevolent robot overloads. So, at the outset, let us recognize that these visions of a dystopian
future are substantially over-hyped. So too are the overly optimistic visions of perfect social
systems where cheap and easy legal services are available to all. The reality is that legal
technology offers the means to serve some clients better, to cut some costs, and to spread legal
services to some people who otherwise would not have access. It can solve some problems, but
not others; it holds promise for some, but also poses certain risks. It needs to be viewed with a
critical eye, but not the panicked vision of robot overlords and other overly wrought nightmare
scenarios. Changes are coming, but not the end of the profession. In fact, this may be the dawn of
a new golden age. Time, patience, and serious reflection are needed to see how the future
develops and to understand our place in it.

What has caused the changes in technology at this point in time? This is a reasonable question
that often goes unasked. Of course, computers have something to do with it, but what precisely is
new? As far back as the 1980s some tech-forward lawyers had dreams of hyperlinked documents
that would make legal research easier and expert systems that could guide a lawyer through the
analysis of a complex legal problem. These ideas have been around for a long time. But, things
seem different now. The changes that are occurring now well-exceed what we dreamed of in our
wildest techno-fantasies thirty or forty years ago. A part of the reason for this is the steady
developments in computer science captured in the much-discussed Moore’s Law. Computational
power has been improving steadily on an exponential pace of growth for over 50 years, which
means that changes have been coming at an ever-increasing rate for a long time. We have now
begun to feel that exponential change in the rate of growth in computational power as dramatic
new capabilities are added year-by-year.
2
Technological change drives cultural change as well. A significant part of the lived experience of
cultural change that we are undergoing today is derived from the rapid evolution of ICT. It may
be beginning to exceed the limited ability of culture to adapt because the adaptive strategies that
helped past generations cope with comparatively slow cultural change may not be successful
during the current period of explosive change.4 The changes are coming faster now as year-by-
year becomes month-by-month, then weekly, daily, hourly. There is a serious question as to
whether the capacity of our culture to cope with change can meet the technological advances.
When it does not, there will be a gap between what technology can do and the cultural resources
for adaptation. For lawyers, a pervasive risk of socio-cultural change brought on by ICT will be
the potential to “flatten out” the distinctiveness of individuals by treating unique, complex social
relations as standard “off the rack” legal problems. The temptation will be, at least for those who
cannot afford customized legal representation, to allow the technology to obscure the
distinctiveness of each matter, by force-fitting the client’s needs into categories that machines
can manipulate. It will be the task of lawyers to advocate for the distinctive rights of their clients
and for the uniqueness of the goods clients seek to obtain through the legal system. Clearly, a
purposeful understanding of the driving forces of cultural change allows the legal profession to
better anticipate future developments. It will remain the work of this Committee to anticipate the
socio-cultural trends that ICTs are creating

Toward the goal of understanding the socio-cultural changes that are occurring, it is helpful to
think of three related concepts:

Information
The technical concept of information that exists today is part of a mathematical theory of
communications that did not exist prior to 1948, when it was developed by a researcher at
Bell Labs named Claude Shannon.5 The technical concept of information is the foundation of
all digital technology. It is so culturally powerful that today the technical concept is referred
to in common usage. To grasp this, consider that before the mathematical theory was
developed, information was a term that applied only to human psychology. Information
existed only as a feature of a human mind. After Shannon Information Theory was
developed, it refers to a phenomenon that exists in electronic systems. In common usage
today, when someone says “information” they usually mean something to do with digital
technology. And, thus, a part of the cultural meaning of the information revolution is the
displacement of human beings from a place of uniqueness as information users.

The new concept of information has penetrated every area of our culture. But, the cultural
dimensions of the concept are not fully understood and are probably still evolving. Today we
can speak of information devices, information structures, bioinformatics, and exotic things
like quantum information. That law is information and that legal practice is an information
business are relatively new ideas that are only slowly emerging in some corners, and yet the

4
For an introduction to cultural evolution, see ROBERT BOYD AND PETER J. RICHERSON, CULTURE AND THE
EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS (1998).
5
Siobhan Roberts, Claude Shannon, the Father of the Information Age, Turns 1100100, THE NEW YORKER (Apr.
30, 2016) http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/claude-shannon-the-father-of-the-information-age-turns-
1100100

3
 realities and consequences of the technical concept of information in law have been
developing for some time. It has permanently altered some areas of the humanities, including
philosophical ethics, and the potential of informational approaches in other areas of the
humanities are nascent but promising. Experts in digital ethics, like Oxford University’s
Luciano Floridi, now speak of living in an “infosphere”,6 which means the totality of the
information environment—the data and devices that shape our lives.

Most legal thinkers (lawyers, judges, or academics) have not turned their attention directly to
understanding how the new concept of information is relevant to understanding their work or
to the nature of law. Although, this is beginning to change, more effort in this area is needed
because a better understanding of law’s informational nature will aid in the design and
development of better socio-legal systems. But, the development of informational re-
interpretations of traditional legal concepts is already taking place. For example, the
development of smart contracts has led to some legal scholars who are reinterpreting contract
law from a computational perspective.7 In an influential article, Mark Flood and Oliver
Goodenough (respectively, an economist and a professor of law) trace the flow of
information through a standard loan agreement using a computational modeling technique.

Reinterpreting traditional legal concepts as informational structures will likely occur in other
areas as well. In many cases, this will result in better understanding of the traditional legal
concept. For example, consider the concept of “fiduciary duty,” which is foundational for
understanding many legal doctrines in areas as diverse as corporate law and government
responsibility. Despite being ancient, it is notoriously under-theorized.8 Although there are
many laws that depend on a firm concept of fiduciary duty, the structure and nature of the
duty are undefined. For that reason (at least in part) there is a good deal of disagreement
about the fiduciary duties owed by parties to Distributed Autonomous Organizations
(DAO). A better understanding of the informational structure of the fiduciary relation would
lead to better understanding of these new entities.9

6
LUCIANO FLORIDI, THE ETHICS OF INFORMATION 14 (2013).
7
An outstanding list of resources is maintained here: https://github.com/LegalRobot/Algorithmic-Awareness
8
For a discussion for the state of the theory of fiduciary duty, see Andrew S. Gold and Paul B. Miller, Introduction,
in PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF FIDUCIARY LAW (Andrew S. Gold and Paul B. Miller eds. 2014).
9
For an introduction to DAO entities, see Seth Bannon, The Tao of “The Dao” or: How the Autonomous
Corporation is Already Here, TECHCRUNCH (May 16, 2016) https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/16/the-tao-of-the-dao-
or-how-the-autonomous-corporation-is-already-here/

4
 Big Data
The second concept is Big Data. Information and data are separate (though closely related)
concepts. Information usually refers to knowledge communicated, but data is simply raw,
unprocessed, collections of symbols that represent something else. What makes data so
relevant today is that it is accumulating more rapidly than is conceivable. A few years ago,
reports claimed that more data has been collected in the past two years than in all of the
preceding human history.10 And, the emergence of smart devices, from cell phones to light
switches to personal assistants, are already creating a data sharing network in which we live.
The result is a blurring of distinctions between virtual and real, human and machine, entities
and actions.11 We might say that today we live in a data environment, in which human beings
are the sources of a “data exhaust” that becomes information as it is communicated and
interpreted by automated systems.

The sudden development of this vast amount of Big Data is also changing the way we
understand ourselves as human beings. Beliefs about free will, autonomy, and the uniqueness
of persons are challenged by data that demonstrate that human beings too are information
processing systems (whatever else we might be). Rather that fully-formed minds exerting
mastery over the world, the view that is emerging is of a complex consciousness that
achieves awareness and struggles to cope in an environment that it comes to understand
through the information it can gather.

The work of lawyers and the lives of their clients also take place within the infosphere. Using
this Big Data to better serve the needs of clients and the needs of the profession is a
fundamental challenge. It offers substantial benefits as it allows for better navigation of the
social terrain. A significant part of the future of the profession will involve coming to terms
with the new awareness that clients and the lawyers who represent them live in and are part
of the infosphere. Legal rights are shaped by how we understand this. Consider privacy
rights, which are today guided by metaphors of space and time. This metaphor is challenged
by ICT, which has the effect of compressing space and time to irrelevancy. This is leading to
fundamental questions about who owns data: the one who collects it (often a corporation) or
the person who generates it? Different approaches are taken today in the United States and
the European Union. These differences have significance for the quality of the infosphere and
the ability of the legal system to support and sustain human dignity and liberty. The ability to
predict and accommodate the needs of their clients and to reconcile those needs with the
demands of law will be greatly enhanced by Big Data. It is a key to offering better service to
clients. Those who have the insights needed to take advantage of Big Data will gain
competitive advantage in the marketplace for legal services. Those who resist might find that
the business model of their practice is no longer workable in the new market environment.

Self-Organization
One of the most important concepts for understanding the future of the infosphere, and
therefore the future of our lives—including our professional lives—is the concept of self-

10
Bernard Marr, Big Data, 20 Mind Blowing Facts that Everyone Must Read, FORBES (September 20, 2015).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/09/30/big-data-20-mind-boggling-facts-everyone-must-
read/#7af4d84c17b1
11
Compare, THE ONLIFE MANIFESTO, BEING HUMAN IN A HYPERCONNECTED ERA (Luciano Floridi ed. 2015).

5
 organization (the technical term is “autopoiesis” from the Greek “auto,” meaning “self” and
“poiesis” meaning “creation”).12 The concept is quite recent and is itself the result of ICT that
allows for the detection and mapping of complex systems. The most significant fact that will
become evident in the near future is that the infosphere is now self-organizing. The current
state of machine learning is influencing many sectors. In the near future, advanced machine
learning will allow a computer program to autonomously sort through and learn from Big
Data. That means that a machine learning program can come up with answers to questions
that no human being has asked, and then develop new capabilities that no human could
imagine. Some aspects of software development are already self-creating in this way.
Applied to law, the concept of self-organization has led to some attempts to find
complex, self-organizing structures within legal systems, particularly in the interplay
between regulatory entities and the objects of regulation.13 Such models may one day allow
for predictive estimates of the future needs for regulation and socio-cultural response. More
immediate, however, will take place in the not too distant future when automated devices
take greater control of actions in the world, making more significant decisions without
human directives; but based instead on their own calculation. Increasingly, we find ourselves
peering into dashboard portals that give us only a glimpse of what is going on with an
automated system and allow for only limited human interaction. Consider how a smart home
works now: control systems for lights, music, temperature, door locks, security alarms, and
so on “talk” to each other and allow only some input from authorized users. We live within
the system they create and unfold. This is a recent development in ICT, but one that will
rapidly grow in significance over the next decade. The inescapable fact is this: the infosphere
is no longer something external to our lives. We live in it, and it makes demands on us, even
as we struggle to cope with our new lives online. Understanding the significance of living
within a self-organizing technology that includes socio-legal systems and administrative
agencies will be one of the greatest challenges that the legal system will face. We will need
lawyers who understand the technology to assist society in coping with the future.

All of these factors collectively suggest new, broad trends that may influence the development of
law and legal practice in the future. These concepts are useful because they give some insight
into the tremendous forces at work in ICT that may result in substantial socio-cultural change.
Although the full impact of the new understanding of information has not fully penetrated into
our culture, we already find that ICT is entering nearly every aspect of our lives.

12
“Autopoiesis: the property of a living system (such as a bacterial cell or a multicellular organism) that allows it to
maintain and renew itself by regulating its composition and conserving its boundaries.” Merriam-Webster.com (May
12, 2018) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autopoiesis
13
See, e.g., J.B. Ruhl, “Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Legal Complexity,” (forthcoming in Vol. 100 IOWA
LAW REV.) Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2566535

6
The Future Work of the Committee

The work of this Committee may become one of the most important committees to the members
of the Bar Association. As the distance between technological reality and cultural understanding
grows, there could be occasions for considerable confusion and disarray in the profession. Some
lawyers will never understand the cultural changes they are encountering; some will have limited
understanding, but fail to adapt; and some will understand the change and try to adapt with
varying degrees of success. This is all to say, a new and more competitive time is coming in the
legal services industry. In the future, the work of this Committee will be necessary to guide the
profession into the complexities of choosing wisely which areas of technology to embrace, and
which to reject. It will require wisdom to do this, borne of a sound understanding of the social,
political, and moral dimensions to the challenges posed. Fundamentally, it cannot advise about
the how the evolution of technology ought to proceed, without acknowledging the need to make
educated political and ethical choices.

We made a sound start on that work this year by describing the field of study and identifying
some of the most relevant and skilled thought leaders in our community. Our work has been
divided, somewhat artificially, into four categories: Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Legal
Process Management, and Legal Education. The original justification for this structure was that
each area seemed to aggregate concepts that related to types of work that lawyers do.

Acknowledgements

I am thankful for the dedication, knowledge, and wisdom that the Committee members shared
this year. I would like to thank Tom Brooke (Vice Chair) and Jeff Kelly (Secretary). Erik
Mazzone (Senior Director of Membership Experience) was essential to the completion of the
Committee’s work.

I am profoundly grateful to the subcommittee chairs, whose diligent work is reflected in this
Report. They are as follows:

Subcommittee on Artificial Intelligence

Jeff Ward, Director, Duke Center on Law & Technology
Associate Clinical Professor of Law

Subcommittee on Blockchain
Saad Gul, Partner, Poyner Spruill

Subcommittee on Legal Operations Management

Jeremy Temple, Director and Senior Counsel at LexisNexis

Subcommittee on Legal Education

Simone Rose, Associate Dean for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Professor of Law

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 Report of the Subcommittee on Artificial Intelligence

Chain: Jeff Ward, Director, Duke Center on Law & Technology

Associate Clinical Professor of Law

Introduction

We are all familiar with the ways in which the machines of the Industrial Revolution
supplemented human muscle in the endeavors of human production. The provinces of the human
mind have long felt out of the reach of machines, however, and thus far legal professionals have
had to devote little attention to machine-driven disruption.

Recently, that has changed. Modern artificial intelligence tools are assisting with sophisticated
research, decision-making, judgment, and prediction in ways that are meaningful for the law. As
Richard Susskind, the author and thought leader quoted by other subcommittee reports, suggests:
“AI and other technologies are enabling machines to take on many of the tasks that many used to
think required human lawyers and that’s not plateauing. It seems to be happening at quite a rate.”

What does this mean for the current and future bar?

This subcommittee was charged with an introductory answer to that question. While the hope is
that Future of Law Committee and the members of North Carolina’s bench and bar continue
robust discussions around and involvement in these topics, the information set forth below aims
to encourage and provide some initial shape to these engagements.

Potential benefits to legal practice

The reasons for deploying artificial intelligence in legal practice are numerous. And while many
have visions of robot-lawyers replacing human lawyers right at their desks, almost all current use
cases serve to supplement and enhance the capacities of human lawyers.

So, what are these reasons? Why deploy AI? To start, the amounts of data involved in modern
day legal practice can be overwhelming, while—at the same time—court calendars, deal
closings, regulatory obligations and client demands create service expectations incongruent with
these vast amounts of data. Smart machines can assist with these data-intensive demands,
helping where humans might tire, make mistakes, or even have too limited vision.

Therefore, artificial intelligence is being used in legal practice because:

 AI can assist with massive data demands
 AI can save human lawyers time
 AI can reduce the human toll of more mundane tasks of lawyering
 AI can reduce errors, elevating the quality of legal work
 AI can save labor costs and, therefore,

8
  AI can provide high-quality legal services at more affordable price points
 AI can enhance our capacities to make predictions, identify and assess risk
 AI can analyze and present information in ways that make obscure data more accessible
to humans
 And much more.

Of course, artificial intelligence is not magical. Several of the many potential pitfalls of AI are
noted below. Nonetheless, the potential benefits of using AI in law are many. As such, a growing
number of practitioners are using AI for a broad range of legal tasks:

 For legal research assistance

 For technology-assisted review (TAR) of documents to determine relevant and
discoverable information
 For contract analysis and creation and document editing
 For assistance with diligence tasks
 For case selection and valuation
 For predictive analytics of judicial or regulatory decisions
 For extraction of various other insights from big data sets
 For practice management assistance
 For sentencing decision assistance
 And much more.

With such potential benefits and use cases, it is not a surprise that institutions dedicated to
fostering legal technology are growing in number, such as Denton’s NextLaw Labs, Allen &
Overy’s Fuse, the Duke Law Tech Lab, and the ABA Center on Innovation. Each of these
institutions is helping to bring legal technology providers like those listed below to market.
There are far too many emerging companies to provide comprehensive coverage of the tools
available to legal practitioners. Nonetheless, a sample of some of the tools available to assist
with these tasks may help those reading this report to gain a better sense of the state of AI-
assisted legal practice. Please note that the inclusion of any particular tool in no way represents
an endorsement of the Future of Law Committee or the report’s author.

 Along with many other tools, CaseAssist by Casepoint uses artificial intelligence to
review documents and share potentially important information related to relevance,
suggest alternative search terms, highlight key chronological data, etc.

 An AI-powered tool called CARA by Casetext allows users to upload a legal brief or
complaint to find customized legal research results based on the specific context of the
case at hand.

 ROSS by ROSS Intelligence is a machine-learning AI system that allows for natural-

language search, so lawyers can ask a question as they would with normal speech and get
relevant cases, citations, and resources returned to them.

9
  Ravel Law helps lawyers determine how specific judges are likely to rule on matters
based on case law, court info, and specific past rulings of judges. Its website notes that it
helps to “[u]nderstand how judges think, write, and rule” to assist with litigation strategy.

 Another tool built to assist with legal strategy is Lex Machina, which offers several tools
to do the following, as its website notes, “[w]ith data driven insight, Lex Machina enables
law firms and lawyers to pitch and land new clients and win lawsuits.” Further,
“[c]orporate law departments use Lex Machina to select and manage outside counsel and
set litigation strategy and tactics.”

 Apogee Legal, based in Charlotte, offers “custom Contract AI solutions designed to assist
procurement, regulatory, and legal professionals to assess risk and compliance issues in
their current and ‘under negotiation’ contracts for a wide range of enterprise use cases.”
Its website notes M&A transactions and GDPR compliance among others use cases.

 Kira Systems also assists with due diligence contract review by finding and presenting
relevant information for analysis among large sets of contracts and documents.

 Skopos Labs uses AI to predict what Congress with do—when a bill will pass the first
chamber and when a bill will be enacted into law.

 Durham-based Growpath uses AI to help plaintiff’s firms determine case value and when
to take a case as part of its more comprehensive intake and case management software
service.

 TM TKO uses AI to search and provide graphical analysis of the confusion and
descriptiveness risks of trademarks to help customers make better trademark decisions.

Potential Hurdles

The use of AI in legal practice offers benefits but also potential dangers or—at the very least—
issues that our professional community must confront. This report notes five priority areas that
ought to receive attention: (1) professional responsibility; (2) broader ethical issues; (3) access to
legal service; (4) legal training; and (5) legal market/employment issues.

Professional Responsibility
As we invite a broader range of tools into various aspects of our legal work, decision-making,
and counseling, we must work to ensure both that we can adhere to the rules of professional
responsibility and that our rules keep pace with changing practice. Artificial intelligence-driven
tools may test several core tenets of professional responsibility.

For example, already North Carolina and dozens of other jurisdictions have adopted
technological competency requirements under Rule 1.1; The NC rule reads at 1.1, Comment [8]:

10
 “To maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of
changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated
with the technology relevant to the lawyer’s practice, engage in continuing study
and education, and comply with all continuing legal education requirements to
which the lawyer is subject.”

To be sure, this puts new burdens on attorneys of all stripes to—at the very least—maintain
awareness of technological tools that change legal practice. A good example in recent years in
North Carolina has been guidance offered regarding the benefits and risks of cloud computing
resources. Artificial intelligence will heighten this challenge. This competency challenge is
perhaps exacerbated in some practice areas by Rule 1.5, which requires that “[a] lawyer shall not
make an agreement for, charge, or collect an illegal or clearly excessive fee or charge or collect a
clearly excessive amount for expenses.” Insofar as AI technology may offer faster and cheaper
solutions for clients, lawyers who stick to the old ways may subject themselves to scrutiny under
this provision.

Artificial intelligence tools often require substantial amounts of data to operate successfully,
which suggests that we must carefully navigate our Rule 1.6 duty of confidentiality. Where AI
tools may be deployed on huge data sets and, even more, may be provided by third-party
vendors, confidentiality concerns are paramount.

There are many other ways that AI may present professional responsibility challenges, but one
last way that looms particularly large is its potential to push the boundaries of Rule 5.5’s
prohibition against the unauthorized practice of law. As AI tools gain capacity, the role of the
licensed lawyer in connection with the machine outputs will deserve careful attention.

Broader ethical issues

Of course, professional responsibility is only part of the ethics story. The use of AI to support
legal and judicial decision-making could raise a host of additional promises and concerns. So far,
this summary has focused on the ways in which artificial intelligence is being used by lawyers.
Of course, many of our clients and our communities are using artificial intelligence in ways that
may be relevant to our counsel. For example, lenders are using AI to assist with credit
determinations. Police departments are using AI to predict where their policing resources are best
located at specific times. And even courts are using AI to help predict criminal recidivism and
therefore to make sentencing determinations.

On the one hand, these tools may offer opportunities to expand access to resources, to use
resources more efficiently, or to limit human biases. On the other hand, these tools may
introduce new biases or crystalize the biases of the data sets on which they were trained. They
may rely upon data proxies for protected categories. And they may do so in ways that are more
difficult for those affected to ascertain. As such, calls for transparency of AI tools and
explainabilty of results are widespread and present challenges both technological and legal. The
need to understand why a decision was made, for example, is likely fundamental to our
conceptions of due process. There is a substantial and growing literature on these issues, and the
goal here is only to note their important place within this broader discussion of AI in legal
practice.

11
Access to legal service
AI technology is developing rapidly, and this rapid development has the potential to expand
access to legal services significantly. Sadly, civil legal needs too often go unaddressed. Fewer
than 20% of low-income North Carolinians successfully secures representation in any civil legal
matter, and out of the 23 highest-income nations in the world, the US ranks 20th in accessibility
of civil justice. Expansion of access will not be inevitable, and it seems incumbent upon
members of the practicing bar to ensure this expansion benefits the communities we serve. We
should work to ensure that artificial intelligence is used to help address these needs and offer
expanded and even higher-quality access to services.

Legal training
For many, the prospect of automating the more mundane and routine elements of legal practice
sounds like a dream come true. And indeed AI-driven tools may serve to free some lawyers’ time
to focus on higher-order aspects of their jobs, to build relationships with clients, to provide
service to their communities, etc. Yet, in a profession where deliberate practice has been the
foundation of much of the skill and professional judgment that allows an attorney to be
successful in a particular area of law, tools that automate repetitive tasks may require new
training approaches.

Elsewhere, the subcommittee on legal education has addressed some of the changes happening in
law schools. Workplaces, too, will need to continue to be thoughtful about how to mentor and
train new lawyers in increasingly automated practice areas.

Legal market/employment issues

Though it is rarely a favorite topic among members of our profession, the prospect of a changing
job market as a result of artificial intelligence in our workplaces is real and likely. There are
wide-ranging views on this issue—from the ambivalent to the somewhat apocalyptic. Certainly,
a full review of marketplace economics in the case of AI is beyond the scope of this report.
Instead, this report aims to encourage North Carolina’s legal community to get out ahead of this
issue and ensure that both our employers and our professionals are versatile and well-prepared
for the changes to legal practice that are picking up steam with the entry of AI-driven tools.

12
 Report of the Subcommittee on Blockchain14

Chair: Saad Gul Partner, Poyner Spruill

Raina Haque, Alexandra Portaro, Jon C. Mayhugh, James Wudel
_____________________________________________________________________________

Introduction
A blockchain is a decentralized database with two key features. First, it is continuously updated
to reflect the current status of data or assets. Second, it has no central authority such as a bank or
a government. It relies instead on distributed ledgers: duplicate record sets that are regularly
synchronized with each other over the Internet. Network members then validate the entire group
of transactions.

At its core, blockchain technology is software that enables transactions on a publicly accessible,
immutable, distributed ledger. Blockchain technology has the potential to severely curtail the
need for intermediaries such as financial institutions, title registries, and a host of other “trusted
agents”, at least in their current form.15

Legal Contexts
Blockchain technology is already being used in multiple legal contexts. This report illustrates the
potential implications of blockchain by examining five illustrative use cases. These limited pilots
are harbingers of future, larger scale applications that will significantly affect the practice of law.

For instance, in trademark law, determining the rightful trademark owner is a complex exercise
that frequently turns on proof of first use. Given its immutability and time-stamping
characteristics, blockchain is already being used as a digital registry to establish such evidentiary
matters. Cognate, a blockchain-enabled trademark use recordal service is one such service;
others will certainly follow.

Second, blockchain’s association with smart contracts lends itself to enforcing property contracts
and even transmitting payments in real time. For instance, blockchain start up Mycelia in the
music industry uses the blockchain to create a peer-to-peer music distribution system.16 “Mycelia
enables musicians to sell songs directly to audiences, as well as license samples to producers and
divvy up royalties to songwriters and musicians — all of these functions being automated by
smart contracts.” This functionality can be used far beyond music; any complex contractual
scheme, from agriculture to taxation, may soon rely on blockchain enabled smart contracts.

14
* The analysis in this article represents the collective assessment of the authors. The views expressed here should
not be attributed to the North Carolina Bar Association, the individual authors, their clients, or affiliated entities.
15
Christine Lagarde, Central Banking and Fintech—A Brave New World?, INT’L MONETARY FUND (Sept. 29, 2017),
https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2017/09/28/sp092917-central-banking-and-fintech-a-brave-new-world.
16 Id.
13
A third potential application involves the billions of dollars of counterfeit products produced
every year.17 Blockchain technologies are being used to document the pedigree of goods. For
example, blockchain applications such as Everledger record the details of the provenance of
diamonds. VeChain is a similar application that tracks any item by adding scannable tags or
chips to garments. VeChain has obvious implications in the fashion industry. Similar
applications could expedite Customs processes and clearance while improving counterfeit
detection.

A fourth powerful potential application lies in corporate law. Delaware now allows companies to
maintain their shareholder lists by means of a blockchain.18 Online retailer Overstock.com has
already begun to trade a class of its shares via blockchain.19 Farther afield, France is examining
the possibility of allowing blockchain trading of securities.20

The potential implications are revolutionary. In contrast with the current system of beneficial
ownership by brokers, blockchain recordkeeping would permit direct and timely communication
between companies and shareholders.21 If companies implement blockchain records to directly
identify shareholders, the list would be subject to shareholder information requests, and therefore
be accessible to acquiring companies.

The fifth and final use case involves real property. Property records, largely unchanged since the
Domesday book, are ripe for change. At least five countries have either actively considered
implementing some form of blockchain property recording system or launched pilot programs.22
The rationale for such a system includes cost reductions, time savings, protection against
corruption, and increased accuracy and reliability.23

17
ANDREA STROPPA, DANIELE DI STEFANO, & BERNARDO PARRELLA, SOCIAL MEDIA AND LUXURY GOODS
COUNTERFEIT: A GROWING CONCERN FOR GOVERNMENT, INDUSTRY AND CONSUMERS WORLDWIDE (May 2016),
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/files/2016/05/IG_A2016_ST2.pdf.
18
Jeff John Roberts, Companies Can Put Shareholders on a Blockchain Starting Today, FORTUNE (Aug. 1, 2017)
http://fortune.com/2017/08/01/blockchain-shareholders-law/. Other states have passed blockchain legislation, but no
other states seem to have enabled corporate recordkeeping on blockchain. Nevada, for example, has prohibited
counties and municipalities for taxing companies for use of a blockchain. Keith Paul Bishop, Nevada Precedes
Delaware In Blockchain Legislation, ALLEN MATKINS: CALIFORNIA CORPORATE AND SECURITIES LAW (Sept. 13,
2017), https://www.calcorporatelaw.com/2017/09/nevada-precedes-delaware-in-blockchain-legislation; Alexis
Kramer, More States Eye Blockchain for Records, Businesses, BLOOMBERG LAW: BIG LAW BUSINESS (Feb. 22,
2018), https://biglawbusiness.com/more-states-eye-blockchain-for-records-businesses/
19
Cade Metz, Overstock Begins Trading Its Shares Via the Bitcoin Blockchain, WIRED (Dec. 15, 2016),
https://www.wired.com/2016/12/overstock-com-issues-stock-via-bitcoin-blockchain/.
20
Jones Day, Blockchain Distributed Ledger Technology Approved for Nonlisted French Securities, JDSUPRA (Nov.
2, 2017), https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/blockchain-distributed-ledger-74554/.
21
Cf. Nathan Schneider, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and The Case Against Philanthropy As We Know It,
AMERICA: THE JESUIT REVIEW (June 12, 2017), https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/06/12/bill-
gates-mark-zuckerberg-and-case-against-philanthropy-we-know-it.
22
Maksymilian Ewendt, Leveraging Blockchain Technology in Property Records: Establishing Trust in a Risk-
Filled Market, 19 N.C. J. OF L. AND TECH. ONLINE 99 (2017) (Australia, Brazil, the Republic of Georgia, Honduras,
and Sweden).
23
UCC Article 9 filings and corporate records could benefit in very similar ways. See Joshua Ashley Klayman,
Geoffrey R. Peck, & Mark S. Wojciechowski, Why The Delaware Blockchain Initiative Matters To All Dealmakers,
FORBES (Sept. 20, 2017),
https://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2017/09/20/why-the-delaware-blockchain-initiative-
matters-to-all-dealmakers/#144d00897550. Delaware has passed legislation allowing corporate record

14
 Rationale
Studies show that the ownership of almost 75% of land parcels worldwide are not formally
documented in any legal system. Blockchain could rectify this, unlocking new markets for
mortgage lending. In the United States, increasing the accuracy and verifiability of property
records through adoption of blockchain could diminish the need for intermediaries such as title
insurance, together with associated transactional costs.24

Ultimately, however, blockchain is the next step in a technological evolution that has taken the
legal world from a paper based record system to an electronic paperless one in the span of a
century. Instead of an alien technology, it should be viewed as part of the same incremental
process that introduced lawyers to PACER, electronic signatures, and PDF documents. Each is
now an indispensable and familiar part of modern practice.

Summary
To summarize, blockchain’s chief potential lies in the reduction of transactional costs, enabling
transactions between strangers across the world that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
To the extent that lawyers view themselves as a simply another transactional cost, this is a
negative development. But if they reposition themselves, as they have before, to roles that add
value in this new world, they have nothing to fear. The world of blockchain may look less
familiar. But it will hold ever more potential.

keeping by means of blockchain. Jeff John Roberts, Companies Can Put Shareholders on a Blockchain Starting
Today, FORTUNE (Aug. 1, 2017) http://fortune.com/2017/08/01/blockchain-shareholders-law/.
24
Joon Ian Wong, Sweden’s blockchain-powered land registry is inching towards reality, QUARTZ (April 3, 2017)
https://qz.com/947064/sweden-is-turning-a-blockchain-powered-land-registry-into-a-reality/.

15
 Report of the Subcommittee on Legal Operations Mangement

Chair: Jeremy Temple, Director and Senior Counsel at LexisNexis

Kevin P. Lee

Introduction

Legal operations (a.k.a, law department management) is an emerging field that is having a
significant impact on some areas of practice, particularly in-house counsel and larger law firms.
For students, it is emerging as a hot career path. Due to its newness, a part of the challenge in
describing it is coming up with a good description of what legal operations managers actually do.
An important step in formalizing this area as a new field legal service professional was achieved
with the organization of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), which held its first
large-scale conference in 2016. The CLOC Leadership Team describes its mission as “help[ing]
legal operations professionals and other core corporate legal industry players (e.g. tech providers,
law firms, LPO's, law schools, etc.) optimize the legal service delivery models needed to support
the needs of small, medium and large legal departments."25 Some analysts believe that Legal
Operations will be a “game-changer” that will help legal departments align their operations with
the goals of the company. There are always non-legal matters that have to be done in the course
of managing a legal department or a law firm. Legal Operations professionals are allowing
lawyers to focus on legal work by externalizing the management functions to experts with those
specialized skillsets that fall between legal practice and corporate management.

Background

For many years now, there has been growing awareness of the impact that technology has on the
profession in terms of disaggregating and commodifying legal services. Disaggregation refers to
the unbundling of services from the traditional model, in which the law firm provides for all
legal needs of a client (except on the occasions when special expertise is needed), to a model that
intentionally divides the legal service needs of the client into specialty areas. For example, a
transactional firm might divide up the process of contract drafting into jurisdictional or subject
specialties. These different components can then be sold as commodities to those consumers of
legal services who are in need of them. An early example of this that has had continued impact in
the litigation practice areas has been the growth of e-discovery as the preferred practice in most
cases today. This combination of disaggregation and commodification has led to the birth of the
legal process management profession.

On March 4, 2015, the Association of Corporate Counsel announced the formation of a new
membership sector for Legal Operations. In a press release, it explained: “This section will
partner with existing groups to advance the burgeoning position of legal operations executive by
providing legal department management resources, benchmarking opportunities, conferences and

25
Mary O’Carroll, “Doing it Better: Legal Operations,” ACC DOCKET, available at
https://www.acc.com/accdocket/onlineexclusives/doing-it-better-legal-operations.cfm

16
forums that foster collaboration and accelerate innovation regarding how law departments are
run.”26 Later that year, CLOC held its first Annual Meeting, featuring Google’s Mary O’Carroll,
who described Google’s Legal Operations department as focused on “standardizing and
automating manual processes, improving workflows, improving knowledge-sharing and
collaboration, and gaining visibility into the information we have, so that we can leverage the
data to make stronger business decisions.”27

The VISION 2020 Report makes note of local impact of Legal Operations. It states:
The explosion of digital data and the success of such digital and technological
solution firms as United Lex, which has a “global integrated delivery center” in
Durham, North Carolina, and provides broad technologically based services
including e-discovery and other types of litigation management, have displaced
the usage of law firm associates for document review, potentially reducing the
demand for litigation associates. The Report goes on to suggest that “United Lex
has hired more graduates of North Carolina law schools than any other single
employer in North Carolina.”28
The Report also mentions Thomson Reuters and Huron Consulting Group. Since 2015 many
additional Legal Operations firms have opened.

Representative Services

While the services provided by Legal Operations professionals are quite diverse, there are some
commonalities that are emerging as standards. Some of the most common services are:

Strategic Planning
Legal Operations Management can help firms and legal departments to establishing clear goals
and develop plans for achieving them. This is often best accomplished by using a structured
process that relies on data. The strategic planning process typically covers several areas
including marketing, professional resource development, compensation and incentives,
recruiting, progression and admission criteria, capacity planning, transition compensation,
technology, financial management, leadership, and management training. Legal operations
managers assist in analysis and reporting on relevant data to make informed information-driven
decisions.

Project Management
The demand for legal project management has grown dramatically with the market demand for
fixed price and alternate fee arrangements. Today, many law firms are in a very competitive
marketplace, in which clients look for firm budgets and fixed price quotes for the schedule of
services that they need a law firm to provide. Delivering on those demands is essential to

26
https://www.acc.com/aboutacc/newsroom/pressreleases/acclaunchesmembershipsectionforlegaloperations.cfm
27
Id.
28
Id. at 22.

17
effectively maintaining law firm profit. Technology and algorithmic processes can guide firms to
the best practices. Today, legal project management is being used to combine project practices
together with technology enablement and process improvement techniques. Together, they offer
higher productivity for the law firm, and ultimately greater profits.

Benchmarking
By looking at metrics on matters such as annual revenue, profit-per-partner, number of hours
billed, key client contact, collectables, realization, and annual expenses, legal operations
professionals can give a firm a competitive advantage by giving them a 360-degree analysis of
their location in the market place for the services they provide.

Risk Mapping
Legal risk management fall roughly into three categories: client risk, attorney risk, and risk
mitigation. Using data, Legal Process professionals can help firms make quantifiable
assessments of claims risk, departure risk, credit risk, and conflicts risk for clients; assess the
risks of particular lawyers in handling particular issues and develop risk mitigation strategies by
developing policies and systems that address the known concerns.

Compliance
Legal operations professionals can assist law firms and legal departments in developing and
maintaining compliance programs. They develop systems and activities that help to ensure
organizational awareness of and adherence to the rules, regulations, and policies relevant to the
practice area.

Goals

Legal operations is a quickly developing field that looks to have a significant impact in the legal
services industry. CLOC has identified four goals that are particularly useful to note in assessing
the significance of this area in North Carolina.

Education
CLOC advocates for new educational programs designed specifically for developing legal
operations professionals. Neither traditional management education nor legal education
adequately prepares a student to enter the field. New educational programing is needed to bridge
the gaps for entry and development in this fast-moving profession. Given the number of job
opportunities in the field, this sort of educational programing could be a significant factor in the
future.

Interoperable technology
Another goal identified by CLOC is the need for more and better interoperability among
technologies. This seems obvious given the nature of the work, and the need will grow as
Machine Learning allows for the detection of subtle patterns across vastly different data sets.

18
The phrase, “get out of the silos,” takes on new meaning when the data can be as diverse as legal
text, economic data, and photographic images.

Liberalization
The need for regulatory liberalization will continue to be pursued by the Legal Operations
specialists. The ability of these professionals to provide legal information and services will grow
substantially over time, and the need for paraprofessionals to provide services that become
ancillary will grow as well. The VISION 2020 Report noted this and the Washington State
experiment with Limit Licensed Legal Technicians. The need for liberalizing practice rules to
allow for the growth of the Legal Operations professions is a goal for CLOC.

Innovation
In a related issue, CLOC advocates for reforms that would promote law firm innovation.
Particularly, the permission to have non-lawyer equity, which has been implemented in the
United Kingdom.

Summary

Legal Operations Management is a significant development in the legal services industry. It will
most likely continue to grow and develop in the State and have increasing influence in the areas
outlined. Substantial opportunities exist to manage risk, cut cost, and develop more professional
approaches to the management of legal operations.

19
 Report of the Subcommittee on Legal Education

Chair: Simone Rose Associate Dean for Innovation

and Entrepreneurship Professor of Law
Kevin P. Lee, Jeff Ward, Raina Haque, Jon Mayhugh

It is clear to me that law schools cannot ignore future practice…What kind of

defense can be launched in favor of turning a blind eye say, to online courts and
document automation? Accordingly, I suggest that we should provide law
students in law schools ...at least with options, first to study future and current
trends in legal services; and second, to learn some key 21st -century legal
[business and technological] skills that will support future law jobs.29

Richard Susskind, in his ground-breaking book, Tomorrow’s Lawyers, posits that law schools
can no longer limit their pedagogy to training lawyers to become “consultive advisors who
specialize in black-letter law of individual jurisdictions and who charge by the hour.” Instead,
today’s law students must be trained to become “technologically-sophisticated, commercially
astute, hybrid professionals.” Next-generation lawyers must be leaders who can adapt to the
ever-changing technological landscape, and can transcend legal and professional boundaries and
even jurisdictional borders, while remaining committed to increasing access to justice for the
poor and underserved in our communities.

Today, entrepreneurial start-ups are the primary source of economic revitalization. These
businesses use disruptive technologies to increase overall productivity and empower consumers
with astounding levels of information. Such disruption is so foundational that new markets and
risks are emerging. For example, automated and robotic systems now have regulatory codes and
contract terms embedded in their design and operations. At the same time, consumers,
businesses, and governments are confronting increased existential data security risks. Software
platforms now provide legal service management, marketing, legal research, contract drafting,
electronic discovery, and predictive analytics to enable legal practitioners to serve clients
effectively at lower costs and earlier in a client’s business life cycle. These developments also
hold the potential to increase access to justice and provide affordable legal services to small
businesses. The legal services industry faces an epoch change as it adapts and responds to the
reality of new markets that raise novel regulatory issues, services that democratize information
and automate execution, and systems that are vulnerable to data security threats.

To produce lawyers equipped to lead and handle this technology-driven revolution, law schools
must educate legal minds with a new dimension of rigor. Law schools must develop innovative
teaching pedagogies that train students who can engage in multidisciplinary, dynamic, and
entrepreneurial thinking. The new generation of legal minds must be prepared to become
disruptive innovators, and to skillfully and strategically utilize technology to democratize legal
access and adapt to law and business markets that are constantly changing.

29
RICHARD SUSSKIND, TOMORROW’S LAWYERS, AN INTRODUCTION TO YOUR FUTURE (2017).

20
Our subcommittee was charged with the task of exploring the state of technology in Legal
Education. Are North Carolina law schools embracing the latest technological tools for
classroom design, teaching and research? Are we training law students to embrace new
challenges such as Design Theory, Computational law, and New Practice Tools and Methods?
Are law students graduating with the skill-set needed to embrace new models of Legal
Operations and Process Management? Are schools building bridges with the burgeoning legal
tech industry that has rooted itself in Research Triangle Park?

As aptly put by subcommittee member Jeff Ward-Director of Duke’s Center on Law &
Technology, we are at a watershed moment regarding law and technology, and law schools must
rethink legal education with the following three imperatives: 1) we must demand an
enhancement rather than replacement perspective regarding emerging technologies; 2) we must
demand lawyers be leaders; and 3) we must democratize access to legal services.

We are pleased to report that North Carolina law schools have fully embraced this watershed
moment and are working towards meeting these three critical imperatives. We are utilizing
technology to enhance teaching, legal research and clinical services. We are creating “virtual
clinics” and holding hackathons to generate computer applications designed to democratize legal
access. We are educating law students to think like entrepreneurs and embrace technology and
the modern legal practice. We are engaged in multi-disciplinary collaborations to explore the
legal, ethical and regulatory issues surrounding technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, the
Internet of Things, and blockchain networks.

For our annual survey, the Technology and Legal Education subcommittee requested that each
law school provide highlights on how their law school is preparing the next-generation of legal
professionals to become not only astute jurists, but also dynamic leaders and innovators. These
statements are listed below by school in alphabetical order.

Campbell Law School

The Campbell Law School curriculum stems from our commitment to a genuinely professional
legal education, combining theoretical inquiry with practical skills development. It focuses on
analyzing the law, constructing and evaluating legal arguments, resolving legal problems, with
the goal of graduating “practice ready” lawyers. Education in technologies influencing law are
currently viewed as ancillary to this mission, supplementing traditional legal studies. However,
the school hopes to expand its courses that directly address technological advances.

Currently, Campbell Law School offers a class on Computational Law taught by Professor Kevin
P. Lee. The class surveys the technologies changing the nature and practice of law. It covers
major artificial intelligence and blockchain uses cases, their economic impact, and the
implications for the nature and practice of law. Campbell also has an Information Privacy Law
course that surveys the legal fields associated with data gathering, retention, and sharing. There
are some additional courses in development, such as a course on the uses of “big data” in legal
practice and a course on managing and licensing digital intellectual property.

Campbell also has a co-curricular offering—the Campbell Legal Hackers Club. This newly
organized student organization is part of the global Legal Hackers movement, which brings
21
lawyers and non-lawyer together to understand and develop the tools at the interface of law and
technology.

Duke Law School

In direct response to the changing shape of legal practice, Duke Law has founded the Duke
Center on Law & Tech (DCLT), directed by faculty member Jeff Ward, which aims to power
Duke’s leadership in legal technology. Specifically, the DCLT aims:
 to bolster the depth and interconnectedness of Duke’s offerings at the intersection of law
and technology;
 to understand, re-imagine, shape, and lead the next generation of tech-enabled legal
practice;
 to employ the tools of the law to ensure that rapidly emerging technologies empower and
ennoble people.
A key program of the DCLT is the Duke Law Tech Lab, a first of its kind university-affiliated
legal innovation program aimed at providing companies creating legal, compliance, or policy
technology tools with key connections and development insights, all while giving Duke students
immediate access to these new tools. Another key program is the Access Tech Tools initiative,
which is a collection of tech-development projects—driven by human-centered design
principles—housed in Duke Law’s legal clinics that aim expressly at empowering under-
resourced communities and expanding access to legal services. Students from almost every clinic
(and also from several Duke Law-sponsored pro bono groups) who take part in the program
receive workshop instruction on human-centered design and guided consultation—often with
industry collaborators—on tech tool development to address legal service delivery needs. The
DCLT also hosts DCLT Fellows, who offer essential connections to key disciplines of emerging
technology and offer thought leadership where law meets tech. Current DCLT Fellows come
from Ph.D. programs in Computer Science, post-doctoral appointments in Neuroscience, and
international law and often present at leading conferences in the United States and Canada on
cutting-edge issues of legal technology. The Duke Center on Law & Tech also sponsors
hackathons, legal tech innovation presentations, and emerging technology academic workshops.

Students at Duke Law can take a wide range of courses at the intersection of law and technology,
including (but not limited to) Law of Robots and Exponential Technologies, Frontier Tech of
Legal Practice, FinTech and the Law, Writing: Electronic Discovery, Science Law & Policy,
Introduction to Technology in the Law Office, Frontier AI & Robots: Law & Ethics, Data Breach
Response and Cybersecurity Due Diligence, Trademark Protection and the Changing Landscape
of the Internet, Law & Policy: Blockchain, etc. Outside of the classroom, students get involved
with various extra-curricular legal technology opportunities, including EDRM at Duke Law,
which creates practical resources to improve e-discovery and information governance; the Duke
Law & Technology Review, an online legal publication that focuses on the evolving intersection
of law and technology; the Tech Hub in the Goodson Library, a collaboration, discussion,
exhibition, exploration, learning, and planning space for technology advising and support; etc.

Elon Law School

Elon Law’s curriculum empowers students with knowledge and skills essential to excel in the
rapidly evolving legal profession. For example, our Small Business and Entrepreneurship Clinic
manages clients using a cloud-based, paperless case management system, giving students access
22
to files from devices that include their phone; our trial advocacy courses use a similar software
program. Elon Law’s full-time, course-connected residency-in-practice program gives students
valuable experience, deepening their knowledge, skill and judgment. Our residency program
utilizes Cisco’s WebEx telecommunications platform to bring students into Elon Law classrooms
from destinations around the world; student take part as both participants and presenters in the
synchronous classes.

Elon Law’s faculty recently adopted a distance education policy and are offering several online
courses during the summer when students are away for internships but are interested in earning
academic credit. Select faculty use the Kaltura platform to record and screen capture lectures.

North Carolina Central University School of Law (NCCU)

The North Carolina Central University School of Law NCCU) continues to provide a wide-range
of experiential and classroom learning opportunities in intellectual property, entrepreneurship
and emerging technologies. NCCU Law has been at the forefront of Virtual Legal Education
with the launch of its Virtual Justice Project in 2010. The Virtual Justice Project is an innovation
in legal education and technology. Initially funded with a BTOP (Broadband Technology
Opportunity Program) Grant, NCCU School of Law pioneered this approach to address the
underrepresentation of African American lawyers and lack of access to justice for low income
and marginalized communities. Virtual pre-law courses prepare students, wherever they are, for
the rigor of law school. The Know Your Rights series offers legal information sessions that
empower participants to understand the law and promote self-advocacy. NCCU Law also offers
virtual clinics in the areas of Tax, Financial Literacy, Power of Attorney and Wills,
Environmental Law and Child Support.

In 2017, the NCCU Law Intellectual Property Law Institute, launched a Post Grant Pro-Bono
Project, with the assistance of Fish & Richardson and Jones Day law firms, to provide minority
law students with immersive, hand on training in prosecuting post grant patent matters. This first
of its kind program was created to encourage true innovation, support a more diverse bar, and
provide our law student with valuable skills that have broad applicability for today’s employers.

23
 University of North Carolina Law School
To prepare students to address the issues and questions of today’s dynamic, ever-evolving
industries, particularly in areas of growth and influence in North Carolina, Carolina Law is
developing the Carolina Institute for Law and Entrepreneurship. In partnership with UNC
Kenan-Flagler Business School, the institute will give students the opportunity for hands on
experience with aspiring entrepreneurs — initially on the UNC campus and later in their practice
careers—in areas such as business organization and intellectual property.

Carolina Law also continues to offer classes and experiential learning opportunities for students
interested in the intersection of law, technology and entrepreneurship. Among the classes and
experiential opportunities offered are: Cybersecurity, Privacy Law Survey (in addition to Privacy
Law Seminar), Media Law (focusing on online speech and social media), Cyberlaw (focusing on
intermediaries); Law Practice Technologies; and an expanded IP clinic. Carolina Law also
continues to offer various IP courses (Trademarks, Patents, IP Survey, Patent Prosecution
Seminar, and Trademark Practice Seminar).

Wake Forest University School of Law

The overarching goal of the Wake Forest law school is to graduate lawyers who are rigorous yet
agile ‘pluripotent’ jurists and innovators who: 1) effectively engage across professions and
disciplines; 2) embrace the New Models of Legal Practice and utilize disruptive technologies to
sustain a competitive advantage in any size law firm or solo practice; 3) communicate more
effectively with the growing number of entrepreneur, startup, and small business clients; 4)
enable clients to achieve their goals in a dynamic business and technological landscape and 5)
utilize methodologies such as lean principles, design thinking and analytics to provide greater
access to justice and become global thinkers in the legal, technology and business markets.

Wake Forest School of Law is blending classroom and experience-based learning. We are the
first law school to hire an attorney leader in blockchain technologies to teach a course in
Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, & Smart Contract Technology and the Law and help students learn
the leading Ethereum smart contract language, Solidity, to develop distributed applications. The
course will be designed for students who may not have had a computer science or quantitative
background. Wake is also partnering with smart contract industry leaders located in North
Carolina to give students a real-time sense of the market and industry. We will have an
intellectual property attorney with a machine learning and deep neural network software
development background teach courses related to Artificial Intelligence, Law, & Ethics and
Legal Analytics. Our courses will be cross registered with Wake Forest’s Computer Science
Department and Center for Entrepreneurship.

In keeping with cutting-edge advances in neuroscience and the power of mindfulness, we have
the celebrated attorney and professor Mark Rabil (who defended Darryl Hunt for nearly three
decades before Hunt’s exoneration) partner with neuroscientists and psychologists to teach about
techniques he has learned and employed over his career for mindfulness in legal practice, to help
future attorneys stay healthy and ethical when confronted with critical and stress-inducing
circumstances that arise in many important areas of legal practice. Wake Law prioritizes holistic
development of the next generation of attorneys who will embrace advances in technology and
research to inform their careers.

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The Wake Forest Community Business and Law Clinic provides counseling to a wide range of
small businesses, including technology start-ups. The Community Law and Business Clinic is the
experiential platform for our newly created Innovation Hub (I-Hub)- a collaborative project
between the Law School, Engineering Department and the Center for Entrepreneurship that will
serve entrepreneurs and innovators from across Wake Forest University and the wider
community. In the I-Hub, a multi-disciplinary team of students will engage in innovative project
development from ideation to launch. The training and the projects will be multidisciplinary and
dynamic, while remaining rooted in human-centered design thinking and entrepreneurial
engagement. I-Hub students’ exploration of ethical issues as they develop projects in the lab
setting will distinguish the I-Hub from similar entrepreneurship labs. No other university has an
entrepreneurship education platform with this mission, and Wake Forest University is uniquely
situated to develop the first. The first I-Hub project is scheduled for Fall 2018.

The Wake Education is not just for law students; the school is also planning Master of Laws
Courses in emerging legal technology subjects for students who are primarily in other
disciplines. Wake is also responding to the call to create Continuing Legal Education Programs
to bring practicing attorneys up to date on these emerging fields of law and technology.

Conclusion
We are confident that North Carolina law schools will continue to increase their
entrepreneurship, experiential learning and technology offerings so that our graduates will thrive
in this ever-evolving legal landscape. We will continue to share ideas and learn from our fellow
Future of Law Committee members who practice in law firms, serve as corporate counsel, are
insurance providers and members of the judiciary. Next year, the subcommittee hopes to
encourage each law school to adopt Professor Daniel Linna’s Innovation Index 30 as a tool for
measuring how well we are educating students in the areas of legal-service delivery innovation
and technology.

30
https://www.legaltechinnovation.com/

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 Appendix

RECOMMENDED READINGS

General Background

Luciano Floridi, Information, A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University, 2010).

Richard Susskind, Tomorrow’s Lawyers, (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Daniel Martin Katz, The MIT School of Law? A Perspective on Legal Education in the 21st
Century, 5 Univ. of Illinois L. Rev. 102 (2014)

Commission on the Future of Legal Services, Report on the Future of Legal Services in the
United States (2016), available at http://www.abafuturesreport.com/

Final Report: Recommendations for Strengthening the Unified Court System of North Carolina,
available at:
http://wwwcache.wral.com/asset/news/state/nccapitol/2017/03/15/16586686/uid1489618093383
6/nccalj_final_report.pdf

Artificial Intelligence and Law

The House of Lords, “AI in the UK: Ready, Willing, and Able?” (2018), available at :
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldai/100/100.pdf

Danielle Kehl, Priscilla Guo, and Samuel Kessler. “Algorithms in the Criminal Justice System:
Assessing the Use of Risk Assessments in Sentencing” (2017), available at:
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33746041/2017-
07_responsivecommunities_2.pdf?sequence=1

Blockchain and Law

Primavera De Filippi and Aaron Wright, Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code (Harvard
University Press, 2018).

Legal Operations Management

Edward J. Walters, Data-Driven Law: Data Analytics and the New Legal Services (Auerbach
Publications, Forthcoming July 2018).

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