Based off the interest from the other post, I thought it’d be good to begin writing up some information on this area. This is a project of passion rather than expertise, so I’d recommend, if anything does interest you, to read around the subject yourself.
This post is meant merely as a rough introduction to the world of LawTech, with more specific posts to come in the future. Apologies for it being a bit long but I thought it'd be better to have these simple introductory paragraphs in one place.
What is LawTech?
Often when the term LawTech (or LegalTech) is used it’s followed up by liberal use of buzzwords such as AI or Machine Learning. LawTech, however, doesn’t necessarily mean androids walking to client offices and interfacing with their IT system. A lot of the changes taking place right now are relatively simple automations to digitise processes that previously would have required a lot of manual labour to complete to make it easier and quicker to complete tasks.
It remains difficult to predict what is going to happen in the legal sector. Currently we’re seeing the automation of tasks within it but have yet to experience the innovations that will be the driving force behind the major changes. It is this automation v innovation that is key as the latter will be the one that truly changes the legal sector.
An easy example of the difference between the two being seen in communication. Automation of a process to make it easier to communicate between parties can be seen with mail v e-mail. Clearly, the latter has taken over as a far more efficient and faster communication process but it isn’t innovation in itself, despite being an innovative automation. Innovation can be seen in the social media networks which have completely changed how people communicate. Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc are revolutionising how we stay in touch with people and how we make new connections with people.
It’s that level of innovation that the legal world is ripe for, but it isn’t here yet, so for now we can talk about what is here and speculate on what may come in the hope that the spark will grow from that.
LawTech is coming
Lawyers are not, by their nature, a technologically advanced bunch. A sector proud of it’s traditions combined with a conservative professional who looks to minimise risks doesn’t often to lead to tech innovation and it isn’t unfair to suggest the legal sector is behind the curve on modern day technology.
You don’t have to try very hard to hear stories from other professions about how, when they went to a meeting with their iPad or Laptop containing all they need, they were met by a lawyer with reams of printed documents.
A further anecdote can be heard from Richard Susskind (an important academic in this area) about how in 1996 The Law Society fundamentally rejected the idea of e-mail taking over from mail as the primary source of communication with clients. They did so on the grounds of client confidentiality – they couldn’t see how it could be possible to ensure sensitive documents could remain secure. Clearly with the bias of hindsight, we can look back to 22 years ago with amusement over this, but I also find it quite helpful to reflect on this as an example of the importance of keeping an open mind on technology within the profession.
There is no denying an overhaul is currently taking place worldwide. Richard Susskind, Bruce MacEwen, Steven Harper, Daniel Susskind, Mitch Kowalski, George Beaton and Jordan Furlong are among the notable authors and academics who predict the law sector will change more over the next two decades than the previous two centuries. Already we’ve seen shifts away from the traditional law firms with companies such as AA and BT looking to move into providing everyday legal services and Co-Op bank looking to offer legal services for customers from its bank branches. Law firms have created freelancing arms such as ‘Vario’ from Pinsent Mason or ‘Lawyers on Demand’ from Berwin Leighton Partners and MDPs (e.g. PwC) have begun to offer legal services alongside complementary ones such as accountancy or IT consultancy. The legal sector is changing rapidly and technology is going to magnify this.
Where are the needs for LawTech?
The two major areas of LawTech both revolve around the same central theme – saving money.
The first area, the commercial area, is focused on developing and selling software to law firms that will enable them to increase efficiency and productivity to react to an ever-increasing client driven pressure to perform at the lowest price possible.
Technology in this area includes systems such as technology-aided review (e.g. intelligent search analytics that allow for complex and thorough reviews of large sets of documents to select the most relevant) and smart contracts/document creators. Many companies (start-ups and established) are involved in developing competing products in this area with examples such as ThoughtRiver, RAVN and Luminance.
Law firms are also actively getting involved at early stages by investing money into inhouse technology focused research and development programs e.g. Allen & Overy’s Fuse, Denton’s NextLaw or Mishcon de Reya’s Labs. The latter works by welcoming applications from start-ups before selecting the most interesting, inviting them inhouse to work for months with the department that matches their idea most closely before finally having a presentation day to showcase the finished product. MDR then choose which start-ups to invest in.
The second major area of LawTech is focused on access to justice. Whilst I’m sure some of these companies would also look to commercially sell their products to law firms, they’re predominantly aimed at trying to ease the issues of legal aid cuts and spiralling legal costs. High expense isn’t a new thing for the law sector, Lord Bingham's favourite quote on the subject is from the 1650s; “the law is beyond remedy. It costs £10 to recover £5”. It is, however, a problem that may be addressed with better functioning technology.
Legal services such as LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer offer commercial legal products at lower prices – contract automation tools can be accessed for low prices (either one-offs or subscriptions) and easy to use search functions allow individuals and small businesses (their primary customers) to access lawyers on fixed-rate or lower fees. The market is huge in this area; around 83% of small businesses (less than 50 employees) state they’ve had a legal problem and sought solutions to it outside of the legal industry due to the high cost otherwise involved. Evidently, figures such as this show large swathes of potential work previously going missed can now start to be accessed by companies such as those mentioned above.
Other tech solutions to Access to Justice problems have been provided in the other forms:
CrowdJustice is a simple crowdfunding website to raise money for litigation that doesn’t fall under Legal Aid.
DoNotPay, a rules-based chatbot, helps people to challenge parking tickets or helps refugees with asylum applications.
Elexirr (previously known as Lawbot), a company focused around chatbots that assist in other areas (including case prediction).
How does it affect you?
I mentioned this elsewhere recently but realistically, the partners and senior lawyers at the firms are not going to be the ones embracing this technology. They’ll benefit through you, the younger lawyers of the firms. You’ll be the ones learning how to use the technology and becoming well-versed in it now and embracing the many free events ongoing around London (and other locations) to demo software will only help you in the long run.
From a student’s point of view, it’ll only be of help to know as much as possible about the firm you’re applying to. To be able to talk about Linklaters’ investment in LawTech (such as long-standing partnerships with RAVN, trials of Kira Systems, Leverton and working with Neota Logic to mention but a few areas of investment) in any depth will be of great assistance in helping your application/interview with them to stand out and it’d be another avenue through which you can express your interest.
The last major reason for you to get into LawTech as a topic and start thinking about it is you’re where its future lies. As I mentioned before, it’s the innovation that will truly change the industry, not the automation. Before the ATM was created, customers could access their money from banks during opening hours. Now it’s a 24 hour service – that’s an example of an industry changing innovation.
Currently, we’re seeing a lot of great people creating a lot of exciting and interesting technology but it is an industry very much in its infancy. Companies are focusing on one strong idea and developing it as well as they can but the vast majority of it appears to be innovative automation. The more minds that begin thinking of possible future solutions and changes, the more likely a new and exciting legal sector will develop from it.
Tomorrow I'm going to start creating a thread surrounding current resources available for you to use to start to brush up on this area (e.g. books, websites, podcasts etc) and then in the future I'm going to begin writing up a guide to some of the tech out there. Let me know if there are any particular areas you might want to read about and I can cater the posts in that direction.
This post is meant merely as a rough introduction to the world of LawTech, with more specific posts to come in the future. Apologies for it being a bit long but I thought it'd be better to have these simple introductory paragraphs in one place.
What is LawTech?
Often when the term LawTech (or LegalTech) is used it’s followed up by liberal use of buzzwords such as AI or Machine Learning. LawTech, however, doesn’t necessarily mean androids walking to client offices and interfacing with their IT system. A lot of the changes taking place right now are relatively simple automations to digitise processes that previously would have required a lot of manual labour to complete to make it easier and quicker to complete tasks.
It remains difficult to predict what is going to happen in the legal sector. Currently we’re seeing the automation of tasks within it but have yet to experience the innovations that will be the driving force behind the major changes. It is this automation v innovation that is key as the latter will be the one that truly changes the legal sector.
An easy example of the difference between the two being seen in communication. Automation of a process to make it easier to communicate between parties can be seen with mail v e-mail. Clearly, the latter has taken over as a far more efficient and faster communication process but it isn’t innovation in itself, despite being an innovative automation. Innovation can be seen in the social media networks which have completely changed how people communicate. Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc are revolutionising how we stay in touch with people and how we make new connections with people.
It’s that level of innovation that the legal world is ripe for, but it isn’t here yet, so for now we can talk about what is here and speculate on what may come in the hope that the spark will grow from that.
LawTech is coming
Lawyers are not, by their nature, a technologically advanced bunch. A sector proud of it’s traditions combined with a conservative professional who looks to minimise risks doesn’t often to lead to tech innovation and it isn’t unfair to suggest the legal sector is behind the curve on modern day technology.
You don’t have to try very hard to hear stories from other professions about how, when they went to a meeting with their iPad or Laptop containing all they need, they were met by a lawyer with reams of printed documents.
A further anecdote can be heard from Richard Susskind (an important academic in this area) about how in 1996 The Law Society fundamentally rejected the idea of e-mail taking over from mail as the primary source of communication with clients. They did so on the grounds of client confidentiality – they couldn’t see how it could be possible to ensure sensitive documents could remain secure. Clearly with the bias of hindsight, we can look back to 22 years ago with amusement over this, but I also find it quite helpful to reflect on this as an example of the importance of keeping an open mind on technology within the profession.
There is no denying an overhaul is currently taking place worldwide. Richard Susskind, Bruce MacEwen, Steven Harper, Daniel Susskind, Mitch Kowalski, George Beaton and Jordan Furlong are among the notable authors and academics who predict the law sector will change more over the next two decades than the previous two centuries. Already we’ve seen shifts away from the traditional law firms with companies such as AA and BT looking to move into providing everyday legal services and Co-Op bank looking to offer legal services for customers from its bank branches. Law firms have created freelancing arms such as ‘Vario’ from Pinsent Mason or ‘Lawyers on Demand’ from Berwin Leighton Partners and MDPs (e.g. PwC) have begun to offer legal services alongside complementary ones such as accountancy or IT consultancy. The legal sector is changing rapidly and technology is going to magnify this.
Where are the needs for LawTech?
The two major areas of LawTech both revolve around the same central theme – saving money.
The first area, the commercial area, is focused on developing and selling software to law firms that will enable them to increase efficiency and productivity to react to an ever-increasing client driven pressure to perform at the lowest price possible.
Technology in this area includes systems such as technology-aided review (e.g. intelligent search analytics that allow for complex and thorough reviews of large sets of documents to select the most relevant) and smart contracts/document creators. Many companies (start-ups and established) are involved in developing competing products in this area with examples such as ThoughtRiver, RAVN and Luminance.
Law firms are also actively getting involved at early stages by investing money into inhouse technology focused research and development programs e.g. Allen & Overy’s Fuse, Denton’s NextLaw or Mishcon de Reya’s Labs. The latter works by welcoming applications from start-ups before selecting the most interesting, inviting them inhouse to work for months with the department that matches their idea most closely before finally having a presentation day to showcase the finished product. MDR then choose which start-ups to invest in.
The second major area of LawTech is focused on access to justice. Whilst I’m sure some of these companies would also look to commercially sell their products to law firms, they’re predominantly aimed at trying to ease the issues of legal aid cuts and spiralling legal costs. High expense isn’t a new thing for the law sector, Lord Bingham's favourite quote on the subject is from the 1650s; “the law is beyond remedy. It costs £10 to recover £5”. It is, however, a problem that may be addressed with better functioning technology.
Legal services such as LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer offer commercial legal products at lower prices – contract automation tools can be accessed for low prices (either one-offs or subscriptions) and easy to use search functions allow individuals and small businesses (their primary customers) to access lawyers on fixed-rate or lower fees. The market is huge in this area; around 83% of small businesses (less than 50 employees) state they’ve had a legal problem and sought solutions to it outside of the legal industry due to the high cost otherwise involved. Evidently, figures such as this show large swathes of potential work previously going missed can now start to be accessed by companies such as those mentioned above.
Other tech solutions to Access to Justice problems have been provided in the other forms:
CrowdJustice is a simple crowdfunding website to raise money for litigation that doesn’t fall under Legal Aid.
DoNotPay, a rules-based chatbot, helps people to challenge parking tickets or helps refugees with asylum applications.
Elexirr (previously known as Lawbot), a company focused around chatbots that assist in other areas (including case prediction).
How does it affect you?
I mentioned this elsewhere recently but realistically, the partners and senior lawyers at the firms are not going to be the ones embracing this technology. They’ll benefit through you, the younger lawyers of the firms. You’ll be the ones learning how to use the technology and becoming well-versed in it now and embracing the many free events ongoing around London (and other locations) to demo software will only help you in the long run.
From a student’s point of view, it’ll only be of help to know as much as possible about the firm you’re applying to. To be able to talk about Linklaters’ investment in LawTech (such as long-standing partnerships with RAVN, trials of Kira Systems, Leverton and working with Neota Logic to mention but a few areas of investment) in any depth will be of great assistance in helping your application/interview with them to stand out and it’d be another avenue through which you can express your interest.
The last major reason for you to get into LawTech as a topic and start thinking about it is you’re where its future lies. As I mentioned before, it’s the innovation that will truly change the industry, not the automation. Before the ATM was created, customers could access their money from banks during opening hours. Now it’s a 24 hour service – that’s an example of an industry changing innovation.
Currently, we’re seeing a lot of great people creating a lot of exciting and interesting technology but it is an industry very much in its infancy. Companies are focusing on one strong idea and developing it as well as they can but the vast majority of it appears to be innovative automation. The more minds that begin thinking of possible future solutions and changes, the more likely a new and exciting legal sector will develop from it.
Tomorrow I'm going to start creating a thread surrounding current resources available for you to use to start to brush up on this area (e.g. books, websites, podcasts etc) and then in the future I'm going to begin writing up a guide to some of the tech out there. Let me know if there are any particular areas you might want to read about and I can cater the posts in that direction.
Last edited:
