Law firms can now assemble a motion faster than some courtrooms can process it. That imbalance, rather than another contest over drafting assistants, is the premise behind Clio’s September 30 acquisition of Learned Hand, a startup developing artificial intelligence for judges and clerks. The transaction moves a familiar supplier of law-firm software into a less familiar market: the institutions that decide when legal work is finished. The Court Becomes the Customer Reuters de

A legal department’s most consequential decision may occur before it calls a law firm. Someone in procurement needs a contract cleared; a manager asks whether a proposed policy is permissible. Whoever controls that first request increasingly influences whether outside counsel receives a matter at all. Two legal-technology companies have now moved to occupy that position, unveiling remarkably similar products within a day of each other. The Same Name, the Same Door On October

An injury can exist for years without becoming a lawsuit. Often, what is missing is not a statute or a lawyer, but an economical way of finding the people entitled to invoke them. On October 15, Chariot Claims, a New York legal-technology company, announced a $10 million financing round for a business that identifies potential consumer claims and connects claimants with law firms. For independent practices, the consequential innovation may be a new source of clients rather th

A law firm's most valuable knowledge is often the part that never gets written down. It resides in a senior partner's instinct for a weak argument, an overlooked contractual risk, or a client who needs to hear something unpleasant. For generations, that knowledge has moved through apprenticeship, revision and conversation. An Ohio law firm is testing whether it can be preserved in software. Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP has developed artificial-intelligence simulations