Technology for law firms and legal professionals is constantly growing and reached a $1bn investment record point in 2019. Business-technology-and-innovation wise, legal tech is following the most important trends worldwide, with Artificial Intelligence and automation in the spotlight. Start discovering which are the most important legal tech trends and how they continue to change our businesses.
AI continues to be one of the most important trends in legal tech. If in 2019 worldwide specialists predicted important growth in the development of solutions using Artificial Intelligence, this technology continues to bring new tools and features to improve work. Even if for many business leaders, 2020 was the year of the “reality check,” when they laid the groundwork for a realistic AI-powered future, as PWC showed in its annual AI Predictions report, legal tech solutions providers have adapted and adopted existing AI tools and transformed them into tools to help legal businesses grow. From AI-powered judges, AI robot lawyers, AI-powered features for contract, matter or team management tools, this trend continues to find its use in day-to-day work and to challenge the legal industry with questions like “will robots take lawyers’ place/jobs?” or “is AI an affordable tool only for the big players?”.
This trend gained significant momentum, with the Law Society Gazette defining a virtual law firm as “a legal practice that operates from the homes or satellite offices of its lawyers, usually delivering services to clients at a distance using technological means of communication. Virtual law firms are formed and regulated in the same way as traditional law firms, but their lawyers may be self-employed consultants rather than partners or employees”.
Since one of its characteristics is that the partners/team members are connected through computer and telecommunications technology such as project management software or a Virtual Law Office (VLO), legal tech tools are indispensable resources for these legal businesses. Most legal practice specialists consider virtual law practice a growing trend because HR trends show that younger generations prefer flexible working hours and want to be able to choose where they work. Modern law firm software makes remote collaboration seamless and efficient.
This continues to be a key trend in the following years, since PWC and McKinsey studies show that almost 25% of lawyers’ time can be automated. From business process automation to document automation, this is one of the most important ways to improve efficiency and profitability in every legal business. Legal tech solution providers are “automation-oriented” and have created many solutions to help lawyers and law firms in their daily work: from matter management solutions, billing, and financial management solutions to contract automation solutions, there are solutions already used all over the world. The industry continues to develop more sophisticated automation tools and platforms to integrate different types of automation.
Document automation is one of the easiest legal tech trends to apply – there are many document automation tools fit for any type of legal business. Some solutions are complex, including document management and document assembly, while others offer a straightforward approach, as anyone working with Microsoft Word can transform daily documents into templates, to easily use them when needed.
In 2019, Forbes wrote that “9 out of 10 Americans believe that the cost of legal services is extremely high. Most of them agree that alternatives to ‘traditional lawyers’ are needed. This especially relates to a new generation of young entrepreneurs that are used to living in the ‘digital world’ that has no borders and no longer ties one to a single country. Such entrepreneurs are not fascinated by lawyers in suits working out of fancy offices. They need cost-effective legal solutions”. In the same article – “What Happens When Legal Tech Meets Blockchain”, they analyzed platforms created all over the world using blockchain technology, which plan to “redefine the interface of legal services provision and become a humanity solution by gradually harmonizing legal services, lowering their costs and triggering more access to justice”. On the other hand, Jonathan Emmanuel, a partner in a British law firm, declared for Law365.com that “organizations have begun to understand the specific benefits of particular blockchain platforms and the use cases they can be appropriately deployed towards. For businesses, the future of blockchain appears to be private or permission blockchain networks focusing on practical use cases around better data transparency, exchange and identity management”.
The legal tech and blockchain intersection continues to evolve, bringing new tools and features using blockchain to help lawyers in their daily work.
Focus on client needs is a message that has resonated across the legal industry and business, becoming an essential trend. Each law firm and legal professional must have their own answers for questions like “how can technology help the relationship between me/my law firm and my clients?”, “How can I add value in this relationship with technology tools?” or “what tech tools do I need to better resolve my client’s problems?” if they want to stay relevant for their clients, who are increasingly technology-oriented.
After getting their answers to these questions, law firms and individual lawyers can find and adopt products with features to answer these needs, technology tools to better help their clients and, of course, their business. Because more efficient lawyers and better legal business processes can and will make a more profitable law firm.
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