With more than two decades of experience at the cutting edge of technology across industries, Sonderegger will explore technology's impacts on the practice of law, and point to similar factors that impacted the accounting industry. The presentation will focus on how the accounting industry transformed as a result of these challenges and opportunities, and what legal markets might learn from that transformation.
"Widespread access to technology for consumers has the potential to disrupt the legal industry; the impact of technology on the accounting industry over the past decade offers a view of what that impact could look like," said Sonderegger. "There are a lot of lessons that legal practitioners can learn from the accounting industry's evolution. Where there is challenge, there is also opportunity."
Sonderegger's insights on the future of legal markets include:
- Ongoing expansion of legal "expert" tools will disrupt the consumer legal market.
- The trend toward the "insourcing" of legal work to in-house counsel will continue with increased availability to efficiency tools.
- Technology embedded into workflow and efficiency tools will continue to transform the practice of corporate law from within law firms.
- While new technology will present some challenges to law firms, it will also offer tremendous opportunity. Those law firms that embrace innovation and become early adopters and experts of new tools are likely to both gain market share and set new gold standards for quality of counsel.
Following Sonderegger's presentation, Ben Snipes, Product Line Director of Tax, will demonstrate Wolters Kluwer's new Standard Fed Plus. This first-of-its-kind solution, recently named a 2017 SIIA CODiE Awards finalist in two categories, provides a centralized location to monitor U.S. federal tax statutory and regulatory changes and features cutting edge point-in-time research capabilities.
Held in Austin, Texas from July 15-18, the AALL Annual Meeting and Conference celebrates innovation and leadership within the legal profession. As the largest gathering of law librarians in the country, AALL brings together legal information experts of all backgrounds for the advancement of legal information and information policy.