Isn't There One Piece of Technology That Can Solve All of Legal's Needs?

The simple answer is no. When you dissect the different components of what the legal department provides to the business, the deliverables are disparate and varied, and so technology applied to these processes has to be as well.

For example, what happened to predictive coding? Predictive coding, the term used to describe the early technology for keyword search, filtering and sampling to automate portions of an e-discovery document review was one of the top topics at the legal technology conventions in years past, but now it barely even registers. It quickly went from being the bright and shiny toy on the shelf to relatively obsolete. Predictive coding was utilized by solution providers trying to be innovative by more quickly culling information from the seemingly endless amounts of ESI in eDiscovery, or it was rejected as not being a “perfect” solution by those that chose the pure power of people to review the relevant information.

Predictive coding also faced an uphill battle because it was being sold and marketed to service providers as a way to create efficiency, but the majority of them did not feel the need to try to save their client’s money if their clients where happy with “business as usual.”

The other problem is that predictive coding was no longer bright and shiny, but became out-of-date technology. The artificial intelligence technology that can power “decision making” in the legal sector now has moved way past early implementations and are at new levels of functionality described above. Also, the decision about using or buying this technology is being removed from the service providers and is being driven by corporate in-house counsel who are demanding increased efficiency.

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