Creating Windmill Technology for the Legal Industry

This week at LegalTech, as you might expect, there is a lot of talk about technology and innovation. On Wednesday, February 5th, we hosted a session titled: Finding the Human Factors in New Technology.

The session looked at the various technologies that surround us and how they fall into two basic groups – windmill technologies and treadmill technologies. Windmill technology provides value with little effort, while treadmill requires a lot of effort to get the same amount of value.

Our own Krista Fuller explained that technology is measured by the ratio of effort that goes into a technology versus the value a user derives from that technology. We will typically adopt the technology that is easy to use and provides a high level of return. Think about an easy technology, such as Apple iPad. Known for its simplicity, the iPad takes very little effort, while the value it provides is great.

The question for legal technologists is how do we starting focusing more on the human factor of technology and apply a windmill technology mindset to solve legal industry challenges. For instance, how we can create software that predicts our behavior and prompts us with what to do next, a la Amazon.com or LinkedIn.

Can windmill technology propel this industry into the future?

Photo credit: Flickr via Creative Commons

Here are the slides from the session: