PROGRAM CANCELED

Date: Thursday, March 21, 2013

Location: Suffolk University Law School, 120 Tremont St., Boston, MA
Time: 04:00 PM - 07:00 PM

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

According to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, “a lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology…” Current Developments in Legal Document Automation reviews the various forms of document automation available to lawyers and other legal professionals. You will learn about software systems that are used to analyze, create, and manage legal documents, with a special focus on drafting technologies such as document assembly. You will also hear about advanced word processing techniques, such as styles, fields, and macros.

The emphasis will be on how these tools can and should be used in the practice of law, rather than technical details of their implementation. Both in-house and client-facing applications will be considered. We’ll discuss how law offices should approach the selection of software and services in this area.

BENEFITS OF ATTENDING:

By attending, practitioners will:

• Become familiar with the forms of software currently available to assist legal professionals with
• analysis, creation, and management of documents
• Understand the concepts, processes, and vocabulary involved
• Learn about leading products and service providers
• Gain comfort in interacting with vendors and consultants
• Be better prepared to take advantage of document automation in their own practices
• Acquire reference materials and pointers to other resources for continued education

Who Should Attend

Marc Lauritsen
President, Capstone Practice Systems

Mr. Lauristen is a lawyer and educator with over twenty-five years of pioneering leadership in advanced legal software. He earned two degrees from MIT and the J.D. from Harvard Law School.

After practicing and supervising in legal aid offices, Marc returned to Harvard as a fieldwork instructor, director of clinical programs, and a senior research associate. He directed Project Pericles, Harvard’s first major research program in law and computers. He founded Capstone Practice Systems in 1998, Legal Systematics in 2003, and All About Choice in 2006.

Capstone advises and builds systems for some of the top law firms and departments in the world, but is also energetically involved in pathbreaking projects on behalf of nonprofit legal organizations, such as LawHelp Interactive, which delivers smart forms for free to low-income people and their advocates.

Legal Systematics offers ready-to-use practice applications, hosted online document assembly environments, and tools for developers. All About Choice is fielding an online system for collaborative deliberation about important decisions using interactive visualization and crowd sourcing techniques.

Marc has lectured widely and published several hundred articles on the uses and implications of information technology in the legal profession. He is on the editorial boards of Artificial Intelligence and Law and the International Journal of Law and Information Technology. He has trained hundreds of lawyers in the development and use of knowledge-based systems.

Marc co-originated the international SubTech conferences that began at Salzburg in 1990 and that continue to draw law school thought leaders every two years for rich exchanges about the technology of law. He is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management, and co-chairs the American Bar Association’s eLawyering Task Force. The ABA published his Lawyer’s Guide to Working Smarter with Knowledge Tools. He co-edited Educating the Digital Lawyer.