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Legal Tech by Qudsia Shah


What is legal tech?

Legal Tech essentially refers to the use of software and technology to aid, improve, and provide legal services. Originally, this term referred to technology that helped law firms with accounting, billing, document storage and document retrieval. However, the term has progressed to include more sophisticated technology that aims to improve all aspects of the legal industry. The work of law firms and practices, such as handling M&A deals, drafting documents and creating contracts, can be quite repetitive and time consuming. Legal tech can easily be applied to optimise these processes, thus providing more time-and-cost effective solutions.

Uses of Legal Tech

The current uses of legal tech are wide-ranging and diverse. Some of the most useful and notable examples include:

Legal Research and analysis: Most legal professionals are now using electronic databases that can perform research, verify case law, and track data such as Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis. AI powered applications can intelligently flag and summarise the cases that the lawyer should focus on. This allows lawyers to easily access a wide range of cases without visiting different libraries, and reduces time spent on research from hours or days down to minutes or even seconds.

Automated document review: This software automatically processes, reviews and tags documents online. The software can read and understand legal documents such as contracts or wills in any language. It can automatically and accurately find specific clauses, significant information, or anomalies. An example of this software is Luminance which was trained by legal experts, and it allows lawyers to conduct document review around 400 times faster.

Automated document drafting: This software analyses documents such as wills, NDAs, or contracts, and then it can create accurate automated templates. These templates can be further tailored by completing questionnaires, enabling the software to select and insert specific clauses based on the lawyers’ needs or clients’ answers. This can dramatically reduce human effort-and-error and is a time-and-cost effective manner of drafting documents. Examples include software such as Clio and Clifford Chances’ Dr@ft.

Self-service legal chatbots: These are applications that can rapidly and accurately answer questions clients may have without a cost/fee. Legal questions and answers can be programmed into decision trees and delivered via chatbots to the public. This can be through a website or even a smartphone application. Currently these can help to solve quite simple, straightforward, and one-dimensional issues. Examples include DoNotPay to dispute parking tickets, and Robot Lawyer LISA which creates confidentiality agreements and non-disclosure agreements tailored to the needs of the parties.

Evidently, there are numerous benefits of implementing legal tech such as increased efficiency, productivity, and growth, as well as better client management.

Barriers to legal tech


Ø Manual processes: Law firms currently rely on many outdated manual processes, such as ‘wet-ink’ signatures, and requiring ‘original’ contracts and documents. Legal tech will introduce automated processes to replace this, however this can be difficult to implement as it requires restructuring the way work is done at a law firm or practice.


Ø Billable Hour: For firms using the billable hour as a method of calculating costs or with billing targets, it can be problematic to introduce legal tech as it disrupts this manner of working and may mean lawyers needing to accept fewer working hours due to an increased efficiency.


Ø Partnership Model: The money needed to invest in legal tech generally comes from the partners’ profit pool and thus needs support from all partners to introduce new technologies. Moreover, it is difficult to ask individuals that have been working in the legal industry for the majority of their professional lives to adopt new technologies and learn to use new tools, especially if they already see their work and workplace as an efficient working environment without adding legal tech to it.


Ø Security and Privacy Concerns: Firms and practices are concerned about maintaining client confidentiality and GDPR compliance thus it can be difficult to introduce new, online technologies, or to rely on external providers for services. Any perception of risk will pose a threat to the introduction of legal technologies.

Reasons for implementing legal tech


Ø Clients: Law firms are starting to adopt legal technology as it aids in optimising the work of lawyers and law firms and clients want to reap these benefits. Thus, to retain and gain new clients law firms and practices need to adopt legal tech. Legal tech can help clients to receive a better quality of advice quicker and at a lower cost, e.g., using Luminance software for document review. Clients can also benefit from cost transparency as legal tech has catalysed the move away from the traditional ‘Billable Hour’ model, towards fixed fees depending on service. Moreover, self-service tools can provide legal aid at minimal rate or at no cost, and e-billing systems such as Clio’s BillerAssist feature can provide a clear, more accurate invoice by removing human error and flagging up ‘problematic’ entries. Evidently the adoption of legal tech is beneficial and thus attractive to clients, and law firms require clients to survive.


Ø Increased flexibility for lawyers: Implementing legal tech can easily facilitate incorporating remote and mobile working patterns. This increased flexibility allows lawyers to use their time productively and produce a better quality of work without being overwhelmed or overworked. Moreover, increased flexibility and autonomy also means a higher retention rate of employees.


Ø Improved access to legal services: Implementing legal technology, such as chatbots or online based services, can help firms and practices to provide their legal services to various jurisdictions and across countries. Clients will benefit from an easier access to service and will ultimately be able to utilise the legal system regardless of their socio-economic status, or nature of problem due to the wide range of self-service legal tools and match-making services available.

Ø Future ready: The generation of lawyers currently entering the workforce are adept at using technology and expect a certain level of technology use within their professional lives. Plus, there is now an increased focus on Legal Tech within legal education with many universities choosing to add Legal Tech modules to their LLB courses. Law firms are also recruiting graduates with experience in technology and have even set up legal tech focused training contracts.

Implications of legal tech

The growing interest in legal tech has significantly affected the dynamics of the contemporary legal market. Independent, regional, or smaller ‘high-street’ firms that struggle with growing cost constraints and greater competition can utilise legal tech to produce an excellent standard of work at a lower cost, thus giving them a competitive advantage within the legal industry. Similarly for in-house counsel, the adoption of legal tech means that rather than focussing on securing clients, they can produce an excellent quality of work without outsourcing to law firms or practices. Legal tech has even led to the creation of a whole new set of alternative legal service providers. Over the last decade, there has been an increase in corporations developing and choosing in-house counsel, increase in tailored, niche start-ups and self-service legal aid. Clients have started using the growing options available, rather than simply relying on law firms and practices for legal advice and solutions. Law firms and practices will need to modify their historic strategies and structures and fully utilise technology to meet the needs of their clients and to remain relevant within the extremely competitive legal industry.

Future of legal tech

As legal tech continues to grow and attract interest and funding, there will be a change in the role and nature of legal jobs. It is likely that trainees and paralegals will not be required to carry out time consuming, administrative tasks. Instead, law firms and practices can make a better use of their resources and ensure the skills, knowledge and expertise of lawyers will be utilised more efficiently, as lawyers can spend more time with clients rather than completing monotonous tasks.

Although implementing technology means the ‘‘conventional’’ duties of lawyers will be less in demand, it is inevitable that a new range of roles and responsibilities will take their place. Firms and practices are already looking for graduates with experience in technology. Many firms have also started implementing legal tech in the workplace and have set up legal tech start-up incubators. Clifford Chance for example have set up their ‘IGNITE’ training contract to further facilitate this. We will see new job titles within the legal sector to accommodate the growing need for utilising technology.

Nevertheless, this does not mean that eventually the role of a lawyer will be completed by tech graduates or computer software or robots. They will still be needed! Lawyers are essential for giving advice and advocating for their clients; thus, they need exemplary communicative skills and empathy. Technology lacks the ability to replicate these skills, or to advise clients with the same professional judgement that lawyers possess. Moreover, although clients may value automated advice or chatbots for some issues, they prefer ‘human’ contact when needing advice for more personal, sensitive, or important matters. Furthermore, as time passes there will be new precedent set and more legislation created, thus the role of lawyers will never disappear. Evidently, Legal tech does not necessarily compete with the role of lawyers but rather works to complement, and work alongside professionals within the legal industry to provide optimal results.

The covid-19 pandemic has already ​​accelerated the use of technology and changed the way lawyers think about using technology. 76% of lawyers surveyed by legal tech company MyCase in 2020 agreed that the covid-19 pandemic will have a lasting impact on the way their firm uses technology. The legal industry is on the cusp of an important transformation, and the future of the legal industry brings exciting and new developments that will be created by the experiences and ideas of current law students and graduates.

Resources:

Join our society UoS Legal Hackers for information and events related to law and technology!

Books: ‘Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future’ by Richard Susskind and ‘Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future’ by Martin Ford



 
 
 

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