In July, 2015, ALM’s Legaltech News last unveiled the winners of the LTN Innovation Awards, an annual recognition of the best legal technology leaders, products and projects in the legal community. Three and a half years have passed and now it's time to once again recognize industry leaders in legal technology innovation. The 2019 Legaltech Product Innovation Competition is underway with 7 finalists having been named in early January.
Erin Hichman, Senior Analyst with ALM Intelligence, is charged with organizing the 2019 innovation competition. We wanted to learn more ... how did this come about? how will the judging work? who applied? and who made the final cut. Let's find out.
IL: What is the genesis of the award? Why launch this now?
EH: Over the past year we’ve really witnessed the continued “explosion” of legal technology, but, more importantly, and interestingly, we are starting to see a new level of sophistication and innovation in product development. The legal technology market and landscape is changing so quickly - and is becoming crowded. We decided to launch the Product Innovation Competition this year at Legaltech to provide a platform for those that are using technology to improve the legal industry and approach traditional challenges and goals in a new way. It’s also a great way to help the consumer and user of legal technology understand what is available to them.
In most firms and legal departments, there are multiple stakeholders who must review and evaluate new technology, and many of those are in NYC the last week of January attending Legalweek. Given the depth and breadth of attendees, including many in-house legal professionals, we wanted to provide a platform for companies to launch new products with maximum exposure.
IL: Please walk us through the judging and evaluation process?
EH: There will be two awards given out - one from the panel of judges we have, and one from the conference attendees (“People’s Choice Awards”). We have a fantastic panel of judges including Catherine Krow of Digitory Legal; Haley Altman of Doxly; Silvia Hodges Silverstein of Buying Legal; Richard Tromans of Tromans Consulting, and Ryan McClead of Sente Advisors. They will all speak with the finalists at their booths, and also take part in the demos or “pitches” each finalist makes. All of the conference attendees are encouraged to check out the finalists and interact with them as well. The judges will evaluate on six criteria, using a scale of one to five:
1. Is the solution distinctive or fundamentally different from existing products?
2. Does the solution enhance efficiency and/or productivity?
3. If there a clear market need?
4. Design
5. Functionality
6. Applicability
Conference attendees will be able to vote via the event mobile app (for iOS devices), on the following criteria:
1. Does the product enhance efficiency and/or productivity?
2. Design
3. Overall Functionality
4. Applicability
IL: What are the judges looking for in a finalist/winner?
EH: Ultimately the judges are looking for products that are unique and differentiated from existing products in the legal industry that solve a particular challenge, and/or take a new approach to something that has been fairly static historically.
IL: Can you touch on the application field, the recently announced finalists and the award ceremony?
EH: There was a broad range of products, 25 in total, who entered the competition, from smaller newer entrants to the legal field to large and well-known names. Some key themes we saw reflected across many entrants was using AI and creating a more integrated, seamless and collaborative experience for the end-user.
Seven finalists were identified after an initial round of scoring by the judges:
- Fastcase Analytics Workbench enables lawyers and librarians to create their own reports using user-defined analytics, rather than pre-defined analytics.
- FRONTEO Patent Explorer 19 uses the company’s AI engine, KIBIT, to perform patent search and analysis.
- H5 PII Identification Solution helps legal and compliance professionals quickly and accurately identify likely PII content within Relativity.
- LexisNexis Context provides AI-powered insight to attorneys on judges and expert witnesses to better prepare for, present and argue cases.
- LexMachina Legal Analytics for Insurance Litigation includes more than 93,000 cases pending in federal court since 2009 to provide insight and trends in insurance case timing, resolutions, damages, remedies and findings.
- OneTrust Privacy Management and Marketing Compliance Software helps law firms better demonstrate regulatory compliance through its privacy management and marketing compliance platform.
- Tikit Carpe Diem Intelligent Time allows attorneys to write or dictate time sheets by using Natural Language Processing and turns them into time records. This tech analyzes and converts unstructured into structured data; attorney’s thoughts are transformed into fully formed time narratives.
The Award Ceremony will be held at 10:40 on January 31 on the Legaltech LITE Stage, which is accessible to everyone at the entire Legalweek event. We encourage everyone to attend!
IL: What does the future hold for the Legalweek Product Innovation competition?
EH: We are very excited about this new addition to Legaltech. The response to the competition has been really good. We had 25 very interesting products enter, and after some close scoring, ended up with seven finalists. We think that this type of competition is the perfect fit for Legaltech and the overall Legalweek event, and are already making plans to include it next year.