Five great industry news stories from this week you may have missed.
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Rich Hale of ActiveNav: 5 Things You Need To Know To Optimize Your Company’s Approach to Data Privacy and Cybersecurity
"First and foremost, assume you will get breached. It’s happened to us. It’s going to happen again. You need to put in place mechanisms that ensure that breaches can be handled as part of your business as usual." That's the advice Rich Hale, Chief Technology Officer of ActiveNav, offered in his recent interview with Medium. Read the full article to learn about why he pursued a career in cybersecurity, how he suggests companies should protect themselves against data breaches and why he believes "COVID is bigger than the virus" in the world of online security threats.
Ryerson and U of T Professors are Researching How AI Could Change Refugee Law
While studying improper denials of refugee claims in Canada, Ryerson law professor Hilary Evans Cameron discovered that artificial intelligence (AI) could help avoid making mistakes in the future. A recent The Eyeopener article features Evans Cameron's 2018 book, Refugee Law’s Fact-Finding Crisis: Truth, Risk, and the Wrong Mistake, which proposes the need for a new legal model in refugee decision-making. Most recently, Evans Cameron has collaborated with U of T Professor Avi Goldfarb to explore how AI could assist in the process. With the help of machine learning, AI could play an assistive role in evaluating refugee claims via statistical decisions. Read the full story here.
Surveys Say: COVID-19 Pushed Law Firms Further Into The Cloud
Each year the American Bar Association (ABA) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) release surveys based on interviews with lawyers from firms of all sizes. The surveys are well-known for providing lots of interesting data on how the legal profession is utilizing new technology. Of course, with the need to work from home during the pandemic, 2020 was no exception. A recent Above the Law article has highlighted three key trends from this year's survey: cloud computing adoption, the need for secure communications and remote-working tools. Click here to learn more about the results.
From law grad to legal tech innovator
This week, Legal Cheek shared an insightful interview with Mike Kennedy, law grad turned legal tech innovator. Now an associate in Addleshaw Goddard’s innovation and legal technology team in the UK, Kennedy began his journey as a law student at the University of Kent. To get his foot in the door, he started as a litigation paralegal at the firm. During this time, he began thinking about how he could improve the systems that were currently in place. The self-taught coder then set out to bring his ideas to life. Now a qualified solicitor, Kennedy works to help drive the development, introduction and adoption of technology into the legal sector. Read the full story here.
How AI is changing the legal profession
Fortune has reported that the number of patent applications that concern AI has roughly doubled from 30,000 to 60,000 in the past 15 years. AI-related inventions now account for 15 per cent of overall applications. Meanwhile, some intellectual property scholars are wondering whether it's time to recognize machines as patent or copyright owners. For the time being, authorities have been reluctant to award IP rights to non-human owners but, as AI takes on a greater role in writing software, this could change. The article explained AI could even have the potential to make legal calls, replacing judges and lawyers with algorithms some day, which the author argues, could make the justice system less expensive and possibly more fair.
