Legal Tech – technological innovation in the service of the law
Nowadays lawyers are living in an information noise-filled world in which technology is a frequently recurring term. Increasing regulatory pressures mean that legal departments must adapt at the speed of light to the rapidly changing regulatory and legal environment while dealing with shrinking budgets and resources. In reality, only a tiny number of entities have separate budgets for technological investments, and more and more of them are choosing to optimize work and costs by outsourcing technology projects to external partners.
13 April 2021 | Reading Time: 3 minutes | Share:What is Legal Tech?
All technological solutions used by lawyers in their daily activities, which help them provide legal services and work with regulations, are called Legal Tech. They are intended for clients, lawyers, law firms, and legal departments, and their main purpose is to improve the quality of broadly understood legal services and implementation of new regulations.
What areas could be supported by Legal Tech?
- Access, storage, and integration of personal data.
- Search, analysis, and management of information.
- Servicing existing clients and acquiring new ones.
- Process management.
The intersection of technology and law
Three directions are going to remain priorities for legal departments. These are digitalization and introduction of new technologies, personal data protection (GDPR), and compliance.
Although digitalization and the introduction of new technologies are proving to be essential, they are not at all simple. As Wolters Kluwer’s research indicates, many factors limit the use of IT tools in lawyers’ work every day. These are primarily:
- lack of access to tools specifically designed for the needs of the organization,
- lack of possibility to translate English-language tools available worldwide into Polish,
- lack of adjustment of global solutions to local context and conditions,
- a significant amount of time required to implement and learn new technological solutions,
- lack of easy access to information about functionalities of technological tools designed for the legal industry,
- reluctance to change and learn new solutions.
As the legal industry struggles each year to work with ever-increasing amounts of data, the pressure to improve efficiency and productivity, and the pressure to meet changing client expectations, it is becoming increasingly aware that it simply must invest in new technologies to remain competitive.
The need to take the right technological path
There are really a lot of innovative solutions in the field of Legal Tech and their number is still growing. Which of them should the legal industry pay particular attention to and what can they guarantee?
- Bockchain – blockchain technology-based tools make it possible to keep property records, tokenize legal services, use smart contracts, manage intellectual property rights, and securely transfer and contract. All this without any intermediaries.
- Big data – large and often dispersed collections of data typical for the legal industry are very difficult to analyze and process. To manage them properly and draw useful conclusions, it is recommended to rely on big data technology. Thanks to it, collecting, harmonizing, and analyzing data becomes easier than ever before, and companies are able to improve their decision-making processes.
- Chatbots – the growing number of inquiries received by legal professionals results in longer response times. Modern clients do not like to wait. That is why chatbots are gaining popularity. They free lawyers from handling simpler inquiries so that they can focus on the most important issues.
- Machine learning – is one of the most important areas of artificial intelligence development, based on learning algorithms using accumulated experience, that is, available data. Algorithms continuously optimize their actions so that the work they do brings the best possible results. In the legal industry, this technology is particularly useful during cases requiring thorough verification of extensive documentation.
- Process automation – modern technologies allow for automation of almost all business processes occurring in the legal industry. In addition to bots that read electronic documents and catch specific issues, tools that go through databases of legal acts in search of specific queries, automating the process of creating documentation and enabling sharing and collaboration on documents or automatic generation of agreements are also gaining popularity.
- Language processing (NLP) – a combination of linguistics and algorithmics that enables natural communication between humans and devices such as computers, phones, and tablets. It is a technology that allows you to analyze thousands of documents per second, draw conclusions and spot risks, and as a result, make the best decisions.
According to the “Future Ready Lawyer” report prepared by Wolters Kluwer, more than half of lawyers are expecting a significant impact of artificial intelligence, big data, predictive analytics, and machine learning on the legal market. This shows that the whole aspect of legal tech has not only firmly established itself in the practice of law but is slowly becoming an integral part of it. However, since the specific nature of the industry means that one size fits all solutions rarely serve their purpose here, it becomes necessary to implement dedicated tools.
By using our Legal Tech support, you get an opportunity to discuss your innovative ideas, implement them effectively, and, if necessary, get technological support for the outdated systems you are using. Discover how, through modern technology, we can shape the future of the legal industry by supporting you in responding to the challenges you face every day.
