What is Law New?
Law new is a catchall industry term that includes legal technology, legal ops, alternative legal service providers and other initiatives that have popped up to respond to societal, business, and legal change. The term, however, is often used as a separate nomenclature from other innovative initiatives in the legal industry, such as “legal innovation.” This approach detracts from the value of law new and its potential to produce meaningful change in the legal industry.
The legal industry is in the process of changing from a law-centric paradigm to one that better resembles corporate customers and society at large. The result will be a customer-centric and solution-oriented legal function that is integrated, collaborative, transparent, accessible, affordable, scalable, and data-backed. This will be powered by a multidisciplinary, agile, customer-centric, tech-enabled, empathetic, diverse, and integrated legal workforce.
Increasingly, legal consumers and businesses are demanding that their legal providers understand the broader impact of their work. They want to be able to track the legal services they receive from start to finish. They also want to be able to compare legal providers in the same way that they would compare other enterprise business units or vendors.
Many large law firms and in-house legal departments have expanded through horizontal and vertical integration. However, they still operate from distinct economic models, cultures, remits and technology platforms, which often limit their ability to collaborate. The legal industry is starting to explore a more holistic approach to integration that leverages infrastructure, pools resources, enables cost efficiencies and more.
As the world continues to evolve and become more interconnected, it is important that we as a nation and as a global community be open to all of its diversity and that we work together to find solutions to the challenges that we face. This is why it is so important that we continue to strengthen and support programs like the My Brother’s Keeper Scholarship, which provides financial assistance to help ensure that all students, regardless of their financial status, have an opportunity to succeed in school and beyond.
In this legislative session, New York has passed several bills to protect the privacy of personal information. One bill, Local Law 144 of 2021, requires employers who use automated employment decision tools to conduct a bias audit first before using the tool to make hiring decisions. This helps prevent bias from influencing the decision making process and ensures that all job applicants get an equal shot at employment.
The other bill, Local Law 13 of 2022, amends City law requiring organizations that experience a data breach to disclose this to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. This allows DCWP to share this information with the public, so that the City’s residents can stay informed about potential exposure and take steps to protect themselves. This is another example of how the City, in partnership with businesses and other stakeholders, can find innovative solutions to our most pressing problems.