Episode 7: How Evolving Technology Changes the Practice of Law

Gone are the days of rooms filled with dusty legal tomes and yellowing binders. 

Like most industries, the legal profession has gone digital, streamlining tasks and making information sharing easier than ever. 

From floppy disks to AI, legal technology solutions have exponentially evolved, especially in recent years. 

On this episode of the IT’S a Tech Podcast, Scott Geer, Deputy Chief Legal Technology Officer at ITS, and Lauren Holupko, Director of eDiscovery, talk about this rapidly growing toolset that is geared specifically to the legal profession. 

Scott and Lauren shed light on how these ever-evolving software tools are empowering both state agencies and New York residents, as well as sharing how these cool tools make legal challenges at ITS much less challenging and much more efficient. 

Thank you for listening to the IT’S a Tech Podcast. For more information about ITS, visit our website at its.ny.gov. Follow us on X, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Transcript

0:01
 You're listening to the It's a Tech podcast, an engaging conversation about game-changing technology solutions being advanced by the state's Office of Information Technology Services.

 0:11
 Learn how we make IT happen for 53 state agencies and 20 million New Yorkers while helping government leaders deliver for New York.

 0:22
 Gone are the days of rooms filled with dusty legal tomes and yellowing binders.

 0:27
 Like most industries, the legal profession has gone digital, streamlining tasks and making information sharing easier than ever.

 0:34
 From floppy disks to AI, legal technology solutions have exponentially evolved, especially in recent years.

 0:41
 On this episode of the It's a Tech podcast, Scott Geer, Deputy Chief Legal Technology Officer at ITS, and Lauren Holupko, Director of eDiscovery, talk about this rapidly growing tool set that is geared specifically to the legal profession.

 0:56
 Scott and Lauren shed light on how these ever-evolving software tools are empowering both state agencies and New York residents, as well as sharing how these cool tools make legal challenges at ITS much less challenging and much more efficient.

 1:11
 Lauren Scott, welcome to the podcast.

 1:13
 So first, tell us how you came to work for the legal team in New York State government, especially at an agency that supports technology.

 1:21
 Lauren, let's start with you.

 1:23
 Well, I always knew I wanted to be a lawyer, you know, Legally Blonde, Law and Order, but I never really knew what type of law I wanted to practice.

 1:32
 So after, you know, what a lot of young lawyers do, we bounce around from firm to firm.

 1:37
 I landed at a nonprofit and I really enjoyed working in the public sector.

 1:43
 It actually had a similar structure to ITS, it was an umbrella that provided a lot of different services to other nonprofits: legal, finance, strategy.

 1:54
 So from there I decided I liked public service and I came to the state where I focus mainly on Labor Relations and Freedom of Information law, which naturally you need electronic discovery to handle those topics.

 2:11
 So wouldn't you know it, all things led to electronic discovery and then now legal technology.

 2:19
 Very good, Scott?

 2:22
 I started my career as a traveling hardware tech, so I started in the private sector, which led to the ultimately the foundation of my IT career.

 2:33
 There was a lot of traveling, 10s of thousands of miles a year, so I quickly made the shift to public sector.

 2:41
 When I started it was the Office for Technology.

 2:43
 I joined the customer networks help desk, so I quickly learned how a multi-agency support model was being leveraged at that time. Through a couple different restructures, reorgs and some promotional opportunities, 

 2:58
 I landed in counsel's office for ITS, which is when we formed the non e-mail data collection team.

 3:07
 The team was meant to preserve native files.

 3:10
 So Word documents, Excel, things like that.

 3:13
 And then you know, nine years later, the eDiscovery team has now been rebranded.

 3:17
 So we are the Division of Legal Technology supporting our client agency, council investigations and Labor Relations needs.

 3:26
 It sounds like each of you is coming from a different background, so legal and technology.

 3:30
 So it's just collaboration at its finest.

 3:33
 So what does a typical day look like for each of you?

 3:35
 You do your morning routine get a cup of...are we coffee people or are we tea people?

 3:40
 Definitely coffee. We're coffee people. Right there with you.

 3:43
 We go get a cup of coffee every day together.

 3:45
 Love it.

 3:45
 Talk about what we need to do each day, what's coming up.

 3:48
 Well, the best we can actually forecast that.

 3:51
 And I mean the the best any of us can do.

 3:53
 Right.

 3:54
 So then take us through like, you know, you set up your day, you're talking about like what the day is going to look like.

 4:01
 Yeah.

 4:01
 I mean, there really is no typical day anymore.

 4:04
 There's there's days we're doing training, whether it's our mandatories or if we're doing certifications or, you know, just prepping for meetings or, or policy writing.

 4:14
 So it could be anywhere in between.

 4:17
 From my side, it could be forensic extractions or supporting my staff on the technical perspective, perhaps prepping for a testimony if we get to that point as well.

 4:28
 Wow, fantastic.

 4:29
 Yeah, I'd like to piggyback off Scott.

 4:32
 Every day is different.

 4:33
 We spend a lot of time supporting our client agencies, whether it's policy guidance or off-boarding best practices.

 4:41
 We also spend a lot of time in our new role researching, reviewing and sometimes demoing new products that we can roll out to our client agencies, 

 4:51
 and ITS. So a lot of different tasks and it's always new and exciting.

 4:56
 Never, never a dull moment.

 4:57
 Never a dull moment.

 4:58
 So even in just the last few decades, technology has evolved so quickly.

 5:03
 I mean, I still remember using zip discs and burning CDs Yes, I am dating myself, and yes, I know a large chunk of our audience is right there with me.

 5:11
 I know you're both still fairly early in your professional lives, but I would imagine that even over the course of your careers, including your time with ITS, legal technology, has evolved dramatically.

 5:21
 What challenges and what opportunities has that rapid sea change ushered in for the legal profession?

 5:28
 I'll take this one first.

 5:30
 I think evolved dramatically is almost an understatement.

 5:33
 In 2008, the first law firm I worked for, we still did not have Internet.

 5:39
 That is crazy.

 5:40
 It was nuts.

 5:42
 So I actually had to go to an office next door to use Internet for legal research and to send emails.

 5:48
 That's wild.

 5:49
 So now electronic discovery has its challenges because it seems with every new product there's a new discovery issue, whether it's retention or production, legal holds.

 6:06
 So every new product brings a new challenge, but we really stay current on our research articles, newsletters, trends and just industry best practices.

 6:16
 So cool.

 6:21
 Yeah I mean I'm, I'm certainly no lawyer.

 6:23
 I I barely play one on TV.

 6:26
 But we have seen technology change in in the benefits and risks to those advancements as well.

 6:32
 Something as minimal as an iOS update for a lot of our state devices.

 6:36
 The emoji changes and being able to prove that in your testimony, if we have to get to that point.

 6:44
 And there's an AI for everything now.

 6:46
 So it's, it's trying to adapt and learn those different things and prove, you know, deepfakes, you know, proving it was an individual that actually did those actions.

 6:57
 Those are some of the, some of the few things that keep me up at night.

 7:01
 Absolutely, absolutely.

 7:03
 So technology evolves for a reason, addressing pain points in our lives and ostensibly making things easier, though people do tend to resist even positive change.

 7:13
 How do you get this message across to legal professionals and encourage them to adopt these tools?

 7:19
 I'll take that one first.

 7:20
 So we, some lawyers are resistant to using technology as I just mentioned, not all, but you know, it's not necessarily something lawyers study.

 7:31
 It's not necessarily a strong suit for everyone.

 7:34
 So we try to engage lawyers from different agencies to see what they need, see what they want, see what might be a frustrator, and we show them how user friendly these products can be.

 7:46
 They're made for lawyers, the legal technology products.

 7:49
 So we can really show them how they can use the products to work in their power zone and fulfill their agency mission as opposed to getting bogged down with clunky technology or manual processes.

 8:00
 And Scott is the best at this.

 8:03
 Yeah, I've I've built the, you know, let's say the past 10 years of my career trying to translate legalese to IT-ese. I guess you would say.

 8:14
 So having the ability to really humanize the conversation helps see both perspectives of of tech and legal. Meeting people where they are. Correct. Setting them up for success.

 8:24
 That's that's a great approach.

 8:27
 So some of our listeners already know ITS is in the midst of a transformation to a dedicated service model. On top of what that means for customer service,

 8:35
 we've seen a shift in emphasis from projects to products, which you've mentioned products a few times already.

 8:41
 Tell us about how your department is leaning into that transition.

 8:45
 Yeah, we we've certainly transformed on the shared services side, as well.

 8:50
 We're trying to reclassify a lot of our different solutions or or services that we had provided in the past into their own product, as well.

 8:58
 So one of the topics that I typically go to my team with is, you know, providing a forensic extraction.

 9:05
 That's just a piece of some of the data collection that you may have to do.

 9:09
 It could be from somebody's home drive, their OneDrive, their e-mail, you know, a lot of different locations.

 9:16
 That equipment, the training, the certifications.

 9:18
 It's not cheap.

 9:19
 So let's try to package all that up.

 9:21
 We'll figure out how much time it takes and then we'll present that as a product.

 9:25
 Once we determine that product, we kind of move forward on a rate and that's ultimately how we've been handling it from from our perspective.

 9:36
 Fair enough.

 9:38
 Yeah.

 9:38
 I'd also like to add that we're really leaning in on a holistic approach.

 9:42
 So we kind of handle every piece of rolling out a new product for these legal technologies across New York State between research to purchasing, which creates spending efficiencies through implementation, roll out.

 10:00
 We also provide a centralized training.

 10:02
 So we're training...we have one training team that's training all agencies on one product.

 10:09
 So it's really a unified experience where we can really reduce duplicative roles and again, like just the spending efficiencies alone. Streamlining.

 10:21
 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

 10:22
 One product for all of New York.

 10:23
 I love it.

 10:24
 I love it.

 10:25
 So you as mentioned, you've talked about some really cool new product offerings.

 10:29
 What are they?

 10:30
 How will they assist our client agencies and by extension all New Yorkers?

 10:35
 Yeah.

 10:36
 So when I joined the eDiscovery team, I've heard of this product that's going to help us review both e-mail and non e-mail related things.

 10:46
 After quite a few years, you know, COVID and and some other things, we finally were able to purchase that product and then, you know, make it our own.

 10:56
 It is our legal document review platform, which is also going through its own rebrand.

 11:03
 So today we're proud to announce that this product will be known as the eDiscovery Ecosystem or Edex for short.

 11:12
 I love it.

 11:13
 So that product is going to allow agency legal teams to import, index, search, review, redact and produce any documents that are directly associated with their cases, as well.

 11:25
 It's going to take a lot of the manual effort out of things.

 11:28
 It's going to do automatic de-duplication and and some redaction and really kind of significantly reduce any additional effort that was going to be taken from a manual perspective in the past.

 11:44
 Our overall suite of products in addition to Edex, we're starting to refer to as our legal tech LawBoost because it is boosting the practice of law for a lot of the things that we support as well. Clever.

 11:59
 So some of the other things that we're kind of working on a little bit is a premium legal hold offering.

 12:05
 So you can place your holds, but it's also going to streamline notifications.

 12:09
 And we have a couple other products coming soon as well that that Lauren will.

 12:13
 Yeah, cool.

 12:14
 I'd also like to add that our legal team has used Edex and it is awesome.

 12:21
 Nice cuts review time in half, probably more.

 12:25
 So again, like these products we're offering really let attorneys and their staff and whoever else, you know, anyone working in Labor Relations investigations, really focus on their mission and their power zone instead of, you know, manually reviewing these documents and reviewing the data and producing the data from say, you know, older products, say Adobe, whatever.

 12:49
 It's just it's really creating more of an automated workflow that's just getting things done at a faster speed.

 12:56
 Brilliant, wonderful evolution.

 12:58
 Love it.

 12:59
 Yeah.

 12:59
 So I'd like to introduce our new legal case management platform, which we are calling BriefCase.

 13:07
 Cute.

 13:07
 Yeah.

 13:08
 It's one platform where you can put all of your cases and it provides automated workflows.

 13:16
 It can sync with your calendar with Outlook. It can generate automated letters.

 13:22
 So if you have a template letter you use over and over again, it'll generate that letter for you.

 13:27
 You can leave comments for other attorneys or other staff that may be working in the platform.

 13:33
 So that's in the pipeline.

 13:37
 Anyone out there listening from the State, certainly get a hold of us if that's something you're interested in.

 13:40
 We're really excited to get that rolled out across New York State.

 13:44
 Fantastic, great things on the horizon.

 13:46
 Absolutely.

 13:47
 So it sounds like these tools are fantastic for tracking and retrieving data, which I don't think people realize as you mentioned is a huge challenge until you know you have to do it, which is part of the reason AI is sort of a hot topic right now.

 14:02
 What part does or will AI play in this sphere?

 14:05
 Or if nothing currently, what role can you see it playing?

 14:10
 Yeah.

 14:10
 So with Edex in in particular, it is, AI is something that we can layer on to it.

 14:16
 Now it's not something that we currently have, but we are in the process of testing and and going through that review, making sure that it's going to meet all of our security requirements and and also make sure that we're getting the the best bang for our buck here.

 14:32
 We don't want to go out and just buy AI just because it says AI. Responsible roll out. Correct.

 14:39
 And Edex already does do some LLM type things.

 14:45
 Formerly it was called Technology Assisted Review, which is kind of the early stages of AI.

 14:51
 So Edex definitely has it available.

 14:54
 We are moving in that direction as well as BriefCase.

 14:57
 You know again we want to kind of step into that roll out.

 14:59
 So we want to go without the AI piece first, really understand that product and then layer on the additional capabilities.

 15:06
 Brilliant.

 15:06
 Yeah.

 15:07
 So that's another thing that we try to do for attorneys is not bombard them with all these technologies at once.

 15:13
 We want everything to be user friendly and as Scott said, like implement some features and roll out others slowly.

 15:20
 So yeah, stay tuned.

 15:21
 A lot of AI coming up.

 15:24
 So our legal teams been staying current, as you said, on the responsible use and implementation of AI.

 15:29
 So we'll be ready.

 15:31
 Brilliant.

 15:33
 Let's change tracks.

 15:35
 What advice would you give to a young lawyer or technology professional with an interest in legal tech starting out today?

 15:42
 Building on that, why would you recommend a career in legal tech? From a technology perspective,

 15:50
 this is like the CSI type thing where you are doing the technology from a computer perspective.

 15:57
 We're we're not going out and doing, you know, placing the little flags and seeing where the bullets landed, stuff like that.

 16:02
 But and we can't play the music.

 16:03
 We don't have the licensing, unfortunately. Right.

 16:06
 But this is, you know, a piece of that and it doesn't really get you into like the criminal side of things.

 16:11
 We, we do specifically civil litigation within the state.

 16:16
 We also do, you know, labour relations and things like that.

 16:19
 So anybody who's really looking at from an investigatory side of things, you know, that's definitely the path that you want to start in at least.

 16:29
 Cool.

 16:30
 Well, from the legal side, I mean, I to be honest, I never thought I'd be practicing in this area of law, but it's very exciting and it actually encompasses many areas of law besides electronic discovery and legal technologies.

 16:45
 Honestly, it's something new every day and there are endless opportunities.

 16:50
 So highly recommended.

 16:52
 Very exciting.

 16:53
 And yeah, I look forward to what it brings next.

 16:56
 Brilliant.

 16:57
 Sounds like fun.

 16:58
 So we're just about out of time, unfortunately.

 17:01
 And it has been a true pleasure talking to you both.

 17:03
 But before you go, I ask this question of all our guests.

 17:07
 Tell us about something you're looking forward to this year.

 17:09
 And it does not have to be work related.

 17:13
 We're really looking forward to new products.

 17:15
 I'll, I'll stick with the work theme for for the moment at least, you know, BriefCase rolling out and and again, AI, everything's AI at this point. Non-work related?

 17:27
 I love the summer, but I am certainly looking forward to watching some football soon.

 17:30
 So, go Bills. Go Bills!

 17:34
 Yeah, you know what I'll, I'll leave work behind us.

 17:37
 I have some great travel plans coming up. Exciting! And I'm looking forward to fall golf.

 17:43
 I'm ready for that cooler weather and getting out there.

 17:46
 Very nice.

 17:47
 Well, on my end, I hope summer sticks around just a little bit longer.

 17:50
 But yes, fall will be a very enjoyable break from the current heat wave.

 17:56
 Scott and Lauren, thank you both so much for joining me and for sharing some very interesting insight about the power and possibilities of legal technology.

 18:06
 Wonderful.

 18:06
 Thank you for having us.

 18:08
 Thanks.

 18:09
 Thank you for listening to It's a Tech Podcast.

 18:12
 For more information about ITS, visit our website at its.ny.gov.