18 LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
MARCH 2019
Technology aimed at lawyers continues to change
the way law is practised as those with deep subject-matter
expertise recognize there's a better way to service clients
BY JULIUS MELNITZER
B
erating the legal profession as lacking in innovative drive
— particularly when it comes to technology — verges
on the fashionable. But fashion passes, frequently into
myth. And so it may be with the ubiquitous image of lawyers
as technologically challenged, risk-averse Luddites, ill-suited to
the demands of the Information Age.
"If you look at the direction from which change is emerg-
ing, what you're seeing is lawyers with deep subject-matter
expertise recognizing that there's a better way to service cli-
ents," says Mat Goldstein of Toronto, Chief Revenue Officer
and co-founder of DealMaker, whose soware is designed to
streamline legal and financial transactions, particularly in the
private-placement sphere. "It's not really the clients or general
counsel who are driving technological change."
As Goldstein sees it, law firms are uniquely placed to inno-
vate. "ere's no point trying to develop technology without a
Driving
Innovation
deep understanding of how a practice works and the inefficien-
cies in it," he says. "e key is to translate that subject matter
into products or soware that are accessible — and the tools for
doing it are available today."
is having been said, Goldstein is careful to distinguish be-
tween giving advice and executing that advice.
"e practice of law is streamlining between giving highly
valued advice that requires expertise and putting that advice
into action," he says. "What we're starting to see is a collabo-
ration between the lawyers who are providing that advice and
those who are shaping the way clients engage with the market."
Arguably, Goldstein knows whereof he speaks: both he and
DealMaker CEO and co-founder Rebecca Kacaba practised se-
curities law until they decided to devote their full-time energies
to DealMaker.
"We joined Dentons in 2017 when the firm offered us an op-
PHOTO:
SHUTTERSTOCK
