When it comes to how our jobs in legal and legal technology will evolve, it pays to look ahead at what’s coming (or at least may be coming) and often, it’s what we imagine that can eventually become reality in the future. That seems true with the metaverse, and the future may be sooner than we think.

When it comes to imagining the future, the detective in the cartoon strip Dick Tracy in the 1940’s used a two-way wrist radio – now many of us can conduct phone calls on our Apple Watches or Fitbits. And how much different is “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that” from HAL 9000 in 1968’s 2001, A Space Odyssey than “I’m sorry, I don’t know that” from Amazon Echo’s Alexa? OK, maybe it’s a difference between won’t do it and can’t do it, but I’m just saying. 🙂

Regardless, many people are talking about the Metaverse today, what it is and what it means to us. Heck, Facebook even changed the name of their company to “Meta” to point to the future (after all, the present isn’t so great for them lately). The idea of a 3D virtual world with Virtual Reality (or at least Augmented Reality) may seem far off, but it may be closer than we think (and we certainly have been imagining it for years, with the 2018 movie Ready Player One a terrific recent example).

But since this is a legal technology blog, what impact does it have on legal tech? Nitin Kumar, who is the CEO of Ligl has a terrific article in Thinkers360 titled Metaverse: The Legal Tech Impact. In the article, Nitin introduces the concept, discusses the potential range of use cases, aspects of litigation management, immersive collaboration and marketing, and (importantly) barriers to adoption and the “dark side” to the Metaverse. It’s a very interesting look at where the Metaverse may eventually impact our jobs from a legal standpoint, sooner or later.

Check out Nitin’s article here for more on the Metaverse and legal tech – this is a topic that will certainly come up again here soon. You might wish I would say more here in this blog today, but “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”.  😉

So, what do you think?  Are you thinking about how the Metaverse may eventually impact legal tech?  Maybe you should be! And please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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