Pratik Patel is a leader and an innovator. In his own words, he is a “forward-thinking entrepreneur, consultant and business advisor with deep experience in legal department and law firm spend, strategy, technology and operations.” Pratik is the Head of Innovation at Elevate and I asked him about a range of topics related to his work and his experience within the legal innovation space.

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Let me tell you a story. An ambitious and optimistic young man is thrilled to learn that he has been accepted to his top choice of law schools. The young man through the course of the first few weeks of law school learns that he has a lot to learn, yet he remains engaged and excited for the challenges that are ahead.

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Dr. Roland Vogl is a pioneer within the legal informatics space. Dr. Vogl is currently Executive Director of CodeX – the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics and a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School. Dr. Vogl also was named to the American Bar Association 2017 Class of Legal Rebels, a highly-regarded group of legal innovators and he was previously selected as one of the 2016 Fastcase 50. Dr. Vogl also serves on the advisory boards of LexCheck, IPNexus and LegalForce.

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Innovation is a word that is everywhere. Innovate this, innovate that, innovation will make you rich, innovation is the present and the future, etc. In the legal world, this incessant use of the word has become a way for some legal startups and law firms alike to market themselves and try to make the case for being forward-thinking. Books about innovation also tend to reflect this trend. There are, however, a few that do not fall into this category. One of them is the book Legally Innovative: How to Maximize Your W. O. W.

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Much of what I am about to say is likely well-known by readers of this blog. However, having read it before does not make the information any less salient. The legal profession has long been one that has adhered to seemingly rigid rules, processes, and practices.As this blog and many others have noted, this is becoming no longer the case. New technologies, new processes, and new players have entered the field. These new players include ones offering legal analytic services to those offering bespoke solution development services. Moreover, the number of types of legal jobs has increased as well, if you know where to look. Legal departments have often been at the forefront of these changes due in part to their closeness to the business and because of their historic reputation as a cost center.

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Today’s post is a love story. It involves unrequited love. It involves seduction. It involves money. It involves legal technology. I call it the technology seduction.

Before getting to the story, a little background information in the form of three facts. Fact 1: Legal technology continues to attract a lot of attention. Fact 2: Legal technology continues to attract large investments of money. Fact 3: There continues to be a lot of hype about legal technology. Unfortunately, this hype also distracts attention away from the reality of legal technology.

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Ed Sohn seeks to “advance change in the legal industry by delivering practical scale and quality through legal technology and managed services.” He and Pangea3, now a part of EY, has a longstanding “record of pioneering legal managed services and now, with the global reach and power of the EY platform, is uniquely positioned to lead our clients into the next legal working world.”

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I had the pleasure of speaking recently with Kevin L. Miller, the CEO of LegalSifter. He had a lot of useful insights regards the relationship between lawyers, technology, and the future of the practice of law.

Tell me a little about the impetus behind starting LegalSifter.

LegalSifter was born of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a city at the heart of the artificial intelligence evolution. The company knew a few things when it got started:

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