1. The Cloud will be more than just about the cloud. The shiny object syndrome will wear off and users of technology will truly care about the location, access and duplication of their data.

2.  Strong growth for windows based tablets/convertibles. All my laptops have been touchscreens –so I get why non computer people “get” tablets – I just don’t think they understand just how fast/useful a touchscreen is … when you have the power of a computer behind it.  (Fingers crossed Santa brings me a Surface Pro 3!!!) 😉

3. Office365 will dominate email – especially small business/corporate  – easily keeping email/calendar/contacts sync’d … (without scanning/indexing) – across all manner of devices.

For over 13 years Andrea has been helping practicing attorneys, law firm administrators, consultants and business owners with the selection and integration of processes, systems and technologies to get the paying work done. She answers questions regarding telephone/reception, client, file and email administration, time and billing; achieving and maintaining a professional web presence; getting paid; and setting up/maintaining many web based services and technologies aimed at attorneys and “legal”. Andrea is recognized as the CEO of LegalTypist, Inc. a NY based legal transcription and secretarial service and founder of The Legal Connection Community. You can learn more about Andrea at: http://www.andreacannavina.com and the Community at: http://www.thelegalconnection.com

Garry Wise

The Courts

2015 is bound to be a very interesting and busy year for Canada’s courts.

After the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Hryniak, we can expect to see increased reliance by Canada’s litigants on summary judgment procedures, and increased willingness by the courts to make final determinations on such motions. The civil trial may well be on its last legs, in most circumstances, in our nation.

We can also expect to see increasing openness in our courts to electronic filings and digital evidence. In Ontario, this week’s appointment of Mr. Justice David Brown to the Court of Appeal marks the ascendance of the Province’s most outspoken judicial champion of technological advance in the courts. We can expect genuine progress and continuing demand from the bench for technological modernization of Court administration and procedures.

Access to justice and the influx of self-represented litigants will continue to be themes of ongoing debate by the bench, bar and public.

Our courts will tackle a number of key policy concerns, from the constitutionality of assisted suicide and the nation’s new prostitution legislation to concerns regarding citizen’s privacy and the protection of the environment.

Law Societies

Our Law Societies will have their hands full in 2015, as the continuation of self-governance and the transparency of disciplinary proceedings become increasingly controversial issues in the media.

The slow drive toward alternative business structures will pick up speed in Ontario and elsewhere, but the time may not yet have arrived for non-lawyer ownership of law firms in the nation.

Our law societies may also find themselves busy with litigation of their own, as the status of the proposed Trinity Western University law school begins its long wind through the courts.

Lawyers

The legal profession will continue to find itself under serious competitive pressures in 2015.

Technologies will continue to emerge that automate services historically provided by lawyers. Large firms will continue to suffer from disruptive changes and we may see a few additional large firms implode unexpectedly.

Lawyers will continue to use social media with increasing effectiveness and the role of the Internet in facilitating legal research, delivering legal information, and providing a platform for online legal services will see a further spike in growth.

We will see more new lawyers starting their own solo practices, and the profession will find it necessary to provide increasingly formal mentorship programs and services to facilitate their transition to practice. 

Garry J. Wise was called to the Ontario Bar in 1986, and practices with Wise Law Office (www.wiselaw.net), a Toronto litigation firm with focus on Employment Law, Family Law and Civil Litigation.

He is primary contributor to the award-winning Wise Law Blog, and is also developer of WISELII, Canada’s Mobile Legal Research Tool, a free iPhone application enabling users to research Canadian case law, statutes and regulations via CanLii.

Garry has contributed to Bar-eX News, SlawTips, Huffington Post, CCH Labour & Law Newsletter, Canadian Bar Association’s Solo and Small Firm Addendum, Divorce Magazine and CCH Canadian Family Law Guide.

He has been a Continuing Legal Education presenter for organizations including the Law Society of Upper Canada and the Ontario Bar Association on social media, legal ethics, Web 2.0, cloud-related security issues and legal innovation.

Garry has been featured in the National Post, Toronto Star, LawPro Magazine, Lawyer’s Weekly, Canadian Lawyer Magazine, CCH Student E-Monthly and Toronto’s Now Magazine.

In addition to his professional and blogging activities, Garry dabbles as a writer and musician.

Garry can be reached by email at gwise@wiselaw.net. Follow Garry J. Wise on Twitter: @wiselaw

John Tyrrell

#1    Continued economic and geo-political uncertainty will be the business story of 2015 resulting in businesses coming under increasing pressure to review the costs of doing business, and … OMG even the costs of legal services, both internal and external.

#2    Another shoe (NOT the “other shoe”, this is more like a centipede) will drop and another large Canadian law firm will go the way of Black and White TV, perhaps fondly remembered but gone none the less.

#3    The Canadian legal market place will see the expansion of existing “new law” alternatives and the addition of a number new players and different models in the market.

#4    This time next year we will still be waiting for the governing bodies of the profession to decide whether or not allowing law firms to seek “investors” or adopt more “business” oriented structures is a “good thing”.

#5    About September 1 I will be pulling out this list, shaking my head and wondering where I can take my crystal ball for a tune up.

These are interesting times … enjoy the ride. All the best in 2015.

John is a Corporate Commercial lawyer who has ridden the rollercoaster of energy prices and the Calgary legal market for over 30 years. He currently practices in association with Cognition LLP. jtyrrell@Cognitionllp.com

Mitch Kowalski

How does one even begin to make predictions in a legal industry that has continually defied prediction – in a bad way? Nonetheless, here goes:

1. The Law Society of Upper Canada will continue to dither on Alternative Business Structures and will make no decision on this creature in 2015;

2. One Canadian law school will create a Centre for Legal Innovation, similar to the Centre for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown University, and will start collecting data on the state of the Canadian legal industry;

3. The Federation of Law Societies of Canada will float a proposal for one regulator across all common law provinces – Benchers across Canada will be furious;

4. Trinity Western University Law School will be successful in its court challenges – Benchers across Canada will be furious;

5. One Toronto law firm will fail – lawyers will lament the passing of a “great firm” and completely forget about the support staff;

6. IBM will work with a law firm somewhere in the world to further enhance Watson’s capabilities gained from the University of Toronto experiment. This will reduce the need for law firms to scale up through the ancient practice of hiring more lawyers;

7. Canadian undergraduate students will continue failing to undertake any due diligence on job prospects in the legal profession before applying to law school;

8. The bar outside of Canada’s urban centres will continue to “grey” and many practices will simply close down for due to inflated valuations and lack of purchasers;

9. Clio will go public; and

10. Loblaw will seek to replicate Axess Law by creating PC Lawyers.

Mitch was recognized as a Fastcase 50 Global Legal Innovator in 2012, and he is the author of the critically acclaimed American Bar Association best-seller, Avoiding Extinction: Reimagining Legal Services for the 21st Century. The American Bar Association will be publishing his forthcoming book, The Great Legal Reformation, in the Summer of 2015. Mitch is a principal of Cross Pollen Advisory which redesigns how in-house counsel deliver and buy legal services. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Calgary Law School where he teaches worldwide trends in the legal services market, and what they mean for lawyers and clients.

Stephen Gallagher

Since I left the New York State Bar Association ten years ago, I have been trying to hold conversations with senior lawyers about how the aging of the workforce is something that the legal profession can no longer ignore. According to Census Bureau estimates, nearly 80 percent of the baby boomers say they want to do some kind of work in retirement. So, instead of viewing retirement as an end-point in itself, law firms and their senior partners will be far better served by treating retirement as a series of developmental steps taken by individuals over an extended period of time. Put differently, retirement today needs to be seen as more a journey than a destination.

I am beginning to see results from these conversations. Law firms everywhere are slowly beginning to focus on finding the balance to keep key people at every stage of development. This will include discussing how the years leading up to retirement should be a period of time when senior lawyers can experience new growth opportunities for themselves—and properly handled, this process should benefit the broader law firm community in many other ways. The senior lawyers that many law firms are now looking to sunset may be the untapped resources firms need to lead the talent pool of the future.

I hope these conversations will continue.

Stephen P. Gallagher, is a principal at LeadershipCoach.us, an executive coaching consultancy that works with senior lawyers, practice group leaders, and other “high potential” individuals.  Stephen is an Organizational Development professional that provides lawyers and law firms with a broad range of coaching services directed at facilitating positive change.

Stephen holds a Master of Science degree in Organizational Dynamics (MSOD) from the University of Pennsylvania. He has more than 30 years of experience in working exclusively with lawyers.

Stephen is also certified as a Retirement Options coach, and as such, he helps individuals focus on the critical aspects of non-financial retirement planning.

Based in Philadelphia, PA, Stephen’s practice is committed to partnering with clients in a creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential and at the same time enhancing professional and personal satisfaction in achieving a more balanced life.

Stephen has conducted strategic planning programs with the American Bar Association, state and local bar associations, as well as The Law Society of England and Wales, and The Law Society of Scotland. In addition to coaching lawyers, Stephen is an adjunct faculty member in the Marketing department at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

Stephen has written extensively in areas as diverse as The High Performance Lawyer, Yesterday’s Strategies Rarely Answer Tomorrow’s Problems, and Winding Down the Law Practice, Planning for Retirement  He has designed and facilitated numerous bar association and law firm retreats dealing with the changing nature of law practice. The National Association of Bar Executives (NABE) published Stephen’s two part articles, LPM Programs: an Inside Look and Bar Associations in Transition II.  In December 2014, Bar Leaders, a publication of ABA Division for Bar Services published another of his articles, The rise of the laptop lawyer? Senior members, lonely bowlers, and a way forward.

Stephen P. Gallagher: sgallagher@leadershipcoach.us

Joseph Kashi

Roger Smith OBE

2015 is likely to prove a significant tipping point in the development of web-based assistance on law. We are likely to move decisively beyond the notion that the internet is like an electronic book and to start to mine its interactive potential. Investment will be facilitated by government ministries seeking to save on running costs of conventional legal aid schemes and, in the private sector, from consolidation among providers allowing greater capital investment plus – in those jurisdictions. like England and Wales, that allow it – external cash associated with external ownership. Specific predictions associated with different elements of the process are as follows. Notice how well British Columbia fares in the vanguard of change.

Diagnosis, referral, triage and information

Various jurisdictions will seek to hit the bar raised by the Dutch Rechtwijzer 1.0 and re-engineer websites so that they are interactive and user-focused. Among the leaders will be the transformation planned for the MyLawBC.com and trailed in its accompanying blog. Back home, our own citizens advice bureau are following a similar path in revamping their adviceguide.org site, also happily followed by a blog at alphablog.citizensadvice.org.uk. These sites will set off a virtuous competition among similar providers in which various US jurisdictions will also participate, no doubt with many funded through the Legal Services Corporation’s Technology Initiatives Grant programme (tig.lsc.gov) for which the provision of initial sites of this kind was agreed as a priority at a technology summit in 2013. The most ambitious sites will be in jurisdictions, like my own, where the profession exerts no restriction on the provision of legal advice by non-lawyers. These will take the lead in developing the various different pathways through which a user may be directed to resolve their problem. By the end of the year, initial advice websites that simply give information in linear form will begin to look old fashioned. Users will be well on the way to expecting legal advice tailored to their needs just as they now do in relation to queries about a flight with their favourite airline.

Virtual legal practice

Private practitioners in all developed jurisdictions will explore ways of delivering services over the net. This will facilitate jursdiction-wide brands and lead to further wastage among what we in England would call the ‘High Street practitioner’. Some will fight back with distinctive, niche or personalised service but there will be a move towards what future guru Richard Susskind has called the ‘latent legal market’ ie those who will pay for legal services if they are cheap enough.

            Look for developments such as more loss-leading advice on websites; more use of video and visual; more integration of video communication between lawyer and client; more use of fixed fee ‘unbundled’ services; more integration of discussion communities with legal practices; and some possibly questionable referral arrangements between what are presented as not for profit organisations and associated for profit providers. Again in jurisdictions that allow it, look for third party legal advice providers in mass areas like will-writing, probate and conveyancing. They will use centrally located lawyers using a combination of document assembly software and video to undercut private providers – as they already do in the field of legal expenses insurance.

Digital Determination

Interest in online dispute resolution (largely forms of mediation) and determination (actual binding court decision-making) will continue to expand. Any number of jurisdictions, like my own in the form of a sub-committee of the Civil Justice Council, will set up committees to study how courts and tribunals might save money by moving online. They will all  think that it is a good idea but wonder how the capital start-up costs might be met. A few brave jurisdictions will get started  – notably British Columbia and its Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) and the Dutch Rechtwijzer 2.0 programme (see below). A lot more will wait to see how well they do.

End to end services

Both the CRT and Rechtwijzer 2.0 promise end to end services that will commence in 2015. Users will contact the system with a query and end by being taken through to determination – in the CRT’s case in small claims (and strata disputes) and in the Dutch case divorce. These are immensely ambitious programmes that are paradigm-busters in the sense that they transfer a search for legal advice on a problem to a search for determination of that problem. There will be problems along the way in terms of getting the pathways right; operating a workable fee structure; dealing with opposition from lawyers and judges; integrating independent legal advice; and handling the changing relationship that a user has with the system as their case progresses.  So, the year may be dominated by consequent rows but the possibilities are really exciting.

Skills-related training

The use of internet-provided skills training to help users proceed through difficult processes will expand. Assistance in advocacy by self represented litigants is an obvious area and examples like lawassist.lawaccess.nsw.gov.au/lawassist/lawassist_index.html or the Alaskan assistance in family cases at aklawselfhelp.org will be built upon. Other jurisdictions will follow the  BC’s Justice Education Society in providing online parenting after separation classes and in devising interesting ‘gamifications’ of assistance to those affected by litigation who are not themselves litigants such as children of a divorcing couple. JES’s ‘Changeville” has already been bought by the California Courts to join their suite of provision.

Co-operation and convergence

One of the features of 2015 will be the growing convergence one separate worlds with an interest in assisting people with legal problems. Legal aid will meet the advice sector in jurisdictions where these are traditionally separate. Court libraries will meet both in places like BC where they have a public role. Public Legal Education folks will work more closely with legal aid providers in jurisdictions like those in Canada where they have a strong presence. Profit and not for profit providers will fit co-operate in patterns of access to justice provision. The courts will link with anyone willing to help out with what they will see as a crisis of self representation.

            Not only will there be convergence, there will be co-operation (or, in some cases, simple theft of ideas) as people realise that law may be supremely national but technology is global and knows no boundaries. So, you can (actually, you have) developed programmes in BC which show the way for England and Australia. And, at least for the moment, the Dutch have a moment in the sunlight as their commitment to legal aid and technology puts them in a lead position. They are also inveterately entrepreneurial. If you are interested in this field, 2015 could be the year when you could not go to a conference without meeting a Dutch salesperson. Good for them. It should also be a similarly good year for those behind innovation in BC – which, in my view, rightly shares top spot in the field.

Roger Smith is a London-based researcher, journalist, activist and consultant on access to justice and human rights. Editor bimonthly newsletter on latest developments for International Legal Aid Group. Author of  the global survey, ’Digital Delivery of Legal Services to People on Low Incomes (thelef.org). Former director of JUSTICE and the Legal Action Group. Visiting Professor, London South Bank University. Awarded an OBE in 2009.

Andrew Clark

Darin Thompson is a lawyer with the Ministry of Justice in British Columbia, Canada. He has helped to initiate multiple projects using online dispute resolution (ODR) and is a member of the Canadian delegation to the United Nations Working Group on ODR. 

In 2014/15, Darin will be co-instructing new Legal Information Technology courses at two law schools.

Darin also sits on the board of the Vancouver-based Justice Education Society.

Darin has BA and JD degrees from the University of Victoria and an LLM (Innovation, Technology & Law) from the University of Edinburgh.

about.me/darint 

Colin Rule:

Colin Rule

I work at the intersection of conflict resolution and technology.

I am the Chairman and COO of modria.com, an online dispute resolution service provider in Silicon Valley, building ODR tools like the Mediation Room and the Gebruikersjury. From 2003 to 2011 I was Director of Online Dispute Resolution at eBay and PayPal. I am a Fellow at the Gould Center for Conflict Resolution at Stanford Law School and I work closely with the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution at UMass-Amherst.

I’ve written a book on the subject: Online Dispute Resolution for Business.

I am @crule on Twitter, on Facebook and LinkedIn, and I blog at novojustice.com. Some of my writing and recent presentations are available at colinrule.com/writing/.

Zbyněk Loebl

Here is my prediction:

In 2015 there will be a breakthrough in Internet in relation to empowering customers. Customers will receive first mass-market tool which will start becoming popular in 2015 and will start a new industry. It will change completely the current ways of doing business on the net by making customers free and decisive in defining terms regarding privacy, customer dispute resolution etc. The tool will be extremely simple, very different from the current theoretic discussions on VRM (vendor relation management), yet implementing the ideas of VRM.

Next year will be extremely exciting, I feel it in the air, sg. like a year when the impressionists started to sell their paintings to the galleries…

Have a great Christmas time and best personal wishes for the next year, we will have fun.

I founded Youstice as a globally available tool for buyers and sellers to resolve their shopping issues easily and efficiently.

Previously, I was a member of Rowan Legal, a regional law firm in Central and Eastern European region, where I specialized in advising clients in technology-related projects.  Prior to that, I managed an international team which prepared and implemented a new ADR Center for .eu related disputes attached to the Czech Arbitration Court. This ADR Center has become a sole ADR Provider approved by the European Commission. The ADR Center started its operations in February 2006 and so far has received over 1,000 complaints. The ADR Center is capable of administering .eu related disputes in all but one official languages of the EU (the exception being Maltese).

Euan Sinclair

Predictions for 2015:

Bob Denney

Shannon Salter

Shannon Salter is the Chair of the Civil Resolution Tribunal.  She earned her BA (2001) and LLB (2005) from the University of British Columbia, and her LLM from the University of Toronto (2011).  Ms. Salter clerked with the British Columbia Supreme Court, practiced litigation at a large Vancouver law firm for several years, and has served as a vice chair of the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal .  Ms. Salter is also a commissioner of the Financial Institutions Commission, vice president of the British Columbia Council of Administrative Tribunals, and a past board member of the College of Registered Nurses of British Columbia.  She teaches administrative law at the UBC Faculty of Law as an adjunct professor and has been actively involved in providing pro bono legal advice and representation throughout her career.

David J. Bilinsky

With everyone’s great predictions, coming at the end of the post is a bit of a challenge!  However, there is a theme to my predictions and they are breaking barriers. Here goes:

1. The courts and judges will further appreciate the change that technology hath wrought and is continuing to make in the legal arena and that they will not be immune to these changes.  This is only enhanced by the powerful voices calling for increased access to justice and affordable justice for all. By way of breaking barriers, there will be an ever-growing realization that part of this solution will be for greater implementation of technology at all points in the court process from e-filing all the way to seeing Online Dispute Resolution as an alternative method to resolving matters in court.  Certain members of the judiciary will oppose these changes while other members will see this as a necessary first step or series of steps that need to be taken to modernize and bring the civil and criminal dispute resolution process into the present and provide more affordable justice to all.
2. That law school application numbers across North America will continue to decline as increasing numbers of bright young minds realize that better opportunities lie elsewhere.  Some law schools will resist any changes to how they educate while more enlightened schools will break out of the black letter law barrier and start addressing the growing voices that law schools incorporate technology, business, entrepreneurship and innovation into their programs.
3. A Law Society or two in Canada will break the barrier on non-lawyer ownership of law firms and allow Alternative Business Structures in Canada.  The UK experiment will flourish here in Canada and as a result, there will be the emergence of new entities that provide legal services on different points on the price/demand curve.
4. The biggest law firms in Canada realize that the playing field has dramatically changed and that there has been a gradual power shift in favour of the clients that will rework the economic model of these firms.  Furthermore the latest generation of lawyers will increasingly reject climbing the pyramid hierarchy with its uncertain path from associate to partner and venture out into smaller more nimble niche practices (and into ABSs).
5. Watson will not only be a barrier-smasher, the reverberations will reach deep within the legal profession.  “Disruptive innovations are innovations that transform products that are complicated and expensive into things that are affordable and accessible” per Clayton M. Christensen at Harvard Business School has stated.  Once Watson has emulated lawyers and can do what we do better than we can (computer can already play chess better than the best of the best) then whomever owns that technology will forever change the legal landscape.
6. Online Dispute Resolution will continue to expand into new tribunals and forums, both private and public.  ODR’s ability to resolve disputes quickly, easily and inexpensively will keep breaking down barriers once different entities realize that eBay’s ability to resolve millions of disputes using ODR techniques can be replicated in different settings.
7. In another barrier-smashing exercise, in order to address access to justice issues, the proposed merger of the Society of Notaries Public of British with the Law Society of British Columbia will occur and the joint entity will create new niche providers of discrete legal services with qualifying examinations and designations. This will be looked at carefully by other jurisdictions seeking to promote access to justice.

Thanks to everyone for chipping in and providing their best predictions for 2015 and beyond. However as well all know no one knows the future…we just have to be patient and live it!

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Part 1 of the Predictions can be found here.