In-house legal departments often don't ask the right technological questions when hiring outside counsel, observers say. One sticky area in particular is the use of artificial intelligence because "people aren't there yet, it's still fairly new," notes Christine Kennedy of Major, Lindsey & Africa.

Two e-discovery providers -- Consilio and Xact Data Discovery -- have merged into a single company, operating as Consilio in 11 countries with 4,000 employees. Xact CEO and founder Bob Polus, who is staying on, notes that "when you accelerate scale, it allows you to increase your ability to invest in your people and your technology."

LexFusion, which aims to be a one-stop shop for legaltech products across the spectrum, has added three companies to its roster -- CoParse, Hotshot and Kira Systems -- bringing its total to 10. CoParse has an advanced reading tool for PDF and DOCX files, while Hotshot offers training programs and Kira employs machine learning to evaluate documents.

New Era ADR's goal is to shake up alternative dispute resolution by offering a virtual arena geared to save clients 90% in both time and expenses. New Era is in talks with potential clients and has struck deals with the Judicial Arbiter Group and the National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals to provide professionals to staff its service.

In the spirit of Charles Darwin, Artificial Lawyer website founder Richard Tromans examines the evolution of legaltech. Tromans concludes that "we are many years, perhaps many decades away, from reaching any kind of evolutionary plateau in our sector."

The use of artificial intelligence in the practice of law "is a relatively new and continually expanding concept," writes Shannon Flynn. In this commentary, Flynn outlines five areas of the law in which AI has made its mark already, pointing out that police "have used predictive crime mapping algorithms for years."

Your writing can be effective and concise when you use simple words, tell short stories and refine the message to its essence before sitting down to write, writes Josh Spector. "You can't write clearly until you're clear in your own mind about what you want to say, why, and who you want to hear it," he writes.

Schools are inviting targets for cybercriminals because they often lack resources to improve security and thus tend to use outdated systems, writes Curtis Simpson, chief information security officer at Armis. Attackers also know students often use the same networks as their parents, "a short hop away from sensitive corporate data and access to enterprise networks," Simpson notes.