All posts by: Jean Pichon

1001startups recently published an article asking the question of the “Uberization of law” (see article below). This is indeed a question that many lawyers and legal professionals in general ask themselves.

http://1001startups.fr/legaltech-doit-on-reellement-parler-duberisation-du-droit/

There is no uberization of law

The term uberization was created by Maurice Levy, boss of Publicis a few years ago. It designates a process of replacing a profession and its rules by a new actor who frees himself from them. From this point of view, we can state very clearly that there is no Uberization of law, neither in France nor even in the United States.

If we cite players such as Doctrine, Predictice or Mon-avocat, none is a threat to lawyers. They all provide relevant solutions to improve their work. Jarvis Legal is also a provider of added value for the lawyer, so that he can concentrate on his expertise and his client relations and not on the administrative and accounting management of his activity.

Even players like Rocket Lawyer, Captain Contract or Legalstart are not threats. Although they offer end customers the opportunity to purchase documents and contracts online, for a price often lower than those of lawyers, these sites do not offer a service WITHOUT a lawyer. It is a kind of inexpensive access to a first level of legal services, which needs to be supplemented by the expertise and interpretation of a lawyer. They are ultimately more business providers than legal services.

On the other hand, the deregulation of the legal professions is changing the economic model of the various players, particularly lawyers. The legal market is also evolving, with the client (company, individual) taking power and the lawyer becoming a “price maker”. 

This diagnosis is recalled in particular by Kami Haeri, Richard Susskind. David Wilkins ou Rohit talwar also highlight the opportunities that these transformations create.

The good and the bad #Legaltechs

No #Legaltech is bad, all provide useful services to lawyers. The American market, 6-7 years ahead of the French market, sheds light on the possible future of the French market:

• acceleration of growth in lawyers' turnover,
• increase in the number of lawyers
• distribution of avocado prices on a broader scale
• increase in the specialization of lawyers
• optimization of costs and organization of practices

So what’s the difference between good and bad legaltech? It's about as clear as the difference between the good and bad hunter in the famous Unknowns sketch. 

Seeking to “moralize” #legaltechs between good and bad is actually a bad fight!

Happy Holidays to all !

More and more law firms are equipping themselves with computers Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), and not PC. The reliability, ergonomics and aesthetics of the product are arguments to which lawyers are sensitive. In the United States, Mac's market share was more than 60% among lawyers in 2013. The proportion is not so high in France but has increased significantly. Apple's market share can be estimated at around 40%. This then raises the question of choosing software for lawyers on Mac. 

How to choose your lawyer software on Mac?

This change of equipment involves choosing a management software for Mac. Not everyone is compatible, far from it!

First of all, it is worth thinking about organizational and work process issues. Find in detail the 5 questions to ask yourself when choosing legal software. 

But Mac-compatible lawyer software limits the choice. In fact, only solutions hosted in the cloud are now compatible. The various software publishers have all stopped their specific Mac developments. They no longer maintain them on new MacOS versions, forcing their customers to no longer update their machines!

Which hosted management solution for lawyers to choose?

Among the hosted solutions, it is important to distinguish between those that are truly Mac compatible and those that are only partially compatible. Indeed, some tools require an emulator (a Virtual Box or Parallel Desktop) to make their software functional. This software needs to install .exe format files on the machines, a format only compatible with Windows.

You must therefore realize that this implies no longer using your operating system at all and installing Windows on your Mac! 

From our point of view, this is nonsense. What is the point of buying Apple hardware if you have to buy a Windows license, an antivirus and all its software? and use a large part of its machine resources to run this emulator? In this case, it is better to sell your Mac and buy a PC.

However, there are 100% hosted solutions, perfectly compatible with your Apple equipment. These software for lawyers on Mac are of course preferred. Jarvis Legal is of course part of it, since our 100% cloud technology guarantees you not only accessibility from any computer (PC, Mac, Linux, tablets, smartphones), but also perfect security thanks to our dedicated cloud operation. 

Jarvis Legal has been present in Houston since 2014 via its American subsidiary. Anthony, VP North America for Jarvis Legal US, leads our teams and clients there.

During one of the events organized by the French community in Houston, he received the support of Thomas Pesquet, a French astronaut who recently returned from the International Space Station.

Jarvis Legal US and NASA are in Houston

It is indeed because NASA and Jarvis Legal are located in Houston, Texas that Thomas and Anthony were able to meet. The American subsidiary of Jarvis Legal has existed since 2014 and has among Houston's top startups.

It was an opportunity for us to show another technological face of the country, although less publicized than Thomas :o) It is indeed to put French #legaltech into orbit that we work every day! 

Although incomparable, the innovations of ESA (European Space Agency) and those of French startups are participating in the same effort: inventing the world of tomorrow.

So thank you Thomas for your support. Let's keep our feet on the ground and our heads in the stars!

Décideurs magazine ranked software publishers and digital companies in its 2017 edition entitled “Innovation, Technologies & Intellectual Property. In the “Digital solutions and software for lawyers” category, Jarvis Legal is recognized in the “Must-see” category.

Download the ranking here, page 66 of the magazine: [download id=”620″]

Evaluation criteria for each lawyer software

Barely a month after the WannaCry ransomware attack, a new computer attack took place last week. Not Petya fell into the same Microsoft Windows loophole as its predecessor. Here again, the lawyers' cloud is a solution that protects the firm from this type of problem. 

This article is the 2nd part of our study on “The great strategic transformation of law firms”. We are interested here in the shocks that the legal market has experienced over the last 10 years.

Many forces have indeed been exerted on the legal market since 2005 in the United States. Their effects have been really felt since 2015 in the daily practice of the legal profession in France.

First of all, it was a societal change that took place, and which called into question the status, the model and the very exercise of the legal profession. This desacralization of the profession is one of the main sources of market transformation.

The customer has taken the power. From the status of “Price maker”, law firms have become “Price takers”. This paradigm shift is a real revolution.