Technology: A Laptop and a Smartphone Are Not Enough
Shifting our mindset will require new systems to support and enhance our thinking towards increased capability and efficiency. Unless we embrace new, powerful and fit-for-purpose information systems, we will not achieve this aim.
The global demand for complex and cross-border legal advice seems healthier than ever, but while the market may be growing, the allocation of market share is very much up for grabs. Indeed, the corporate legal advice landscape is being reshaped and is entering a new era, where client pressure for constant price reduction and digitization of legal data is the new norm. Multinational corporations will expect more and better services for less money as they see new opportunities emerging. Legal process outsourcing providers and legal-tech vendors will only add to the pressure. Investing in legal technology solutions and redefining our business models, are therefore fundamental if we want to sustain success and respond to clients' expectations.Servicing clients more cheaply ultimately means fewer billable hours and thus a need to work more efficiently. The Boston Consulting Group and the Bucerius Law School[59] report that 30-50 % of the tasks currently performed by junior associates, even on bespoke cases, could be automated through tech-based tools. Furthermore, the volume of data used in legal advice has increased exponentially. This offers us a unique opportunity to leverage our talent and capabilities by adopting new technologies to automate standard legal tasks, such as discoveries, contract and legal reviews. Legal technologies are now advancing towards providing sophisticated and integrated features, which support the more specialized tasks to be conducted by a lawyer while saving time and money on the standard legal tasks.
Mobile- and web-based legal technology solutions, such as e-discovery, legal review tools, practice management apps and big data analytics, along with clouds and databases, support and promote the digitization of legal data.
Moreover, progress in cybersecurity will certainly strengthen this trend. Collaboration platforms have also been created to respond to specific needs of the legal profession. Support-process solutions optimize case-management and back-office work, and substantive law solutions can support or even replace lawyers in executing core legal tasks in transactions and litigation cases. Big data analytics unlock great new opportunities by supporting legal professionals in capturing valuable insights from large data sets and ultimately enable them to make more accurate, better and faster decisions. For example, business partner compliance checks today can be run automatically by integrating structured and unstructured data from internal and external sources, analyzing them with sentiment algorithms and evaluating the results according to KPIs like identity, quality, solvency and integrity.[60] This and other examples show that big data analytics might reveal correlations we would never have thought of. Eventually, the future of legal technology will likely see the emergence of supportive applications powered by artificial intelligence.Therefore, in addition to offering on-site training to help lawyers leverage legal technology and executive education programs focused on technology literacy, a change in the business model is needed. This is exactly what Dentons decided to do with NextLaw Labs—a global innovation platform focused on developing, deploying, and investing in new technologies to transform the practice of law—in which Dentons is the lead investor and supporter. Providing financing to ground breaking legal technology projects is one objective, providing user input in the development and product design phase the other. NextLaw Labs also works with IBM to provide access to IBM Cloud and the IBM Global Entrepreneur Program for Cloud Startups. One of NextLaw Labs' portfolio companies[61] is developing ROSS, an IBM Watson-powered legal advisor app that will streamline legal research.
Watson's cognitive computing and natural language processing capabilities will enable ROSS to listen to lawyers' research questions in natural language, read through the law, gather evidence, draw inferences and return evidence-based answers. NextLaw Labs also works together with Apperio,[62] which is a powerful, smart-analytics dashboard to provide clients with real-time transparency on legal fees that is accurate and meaningful. Thereby Apperio provides support to all project partners, lawyers and clients' teams, in their project management with real-time and consistent data. This solution will remove information asymmetry from legal services.NextLaw Labs serves as the global testing ground for new products, services and other ideas to be vetted, piloted and scaled. This is an innovative platform where technology providers, venture capitalists and other stakeholders come together to work on changing the legal market for the benefit of clients. The example of NextLaw Labs demonstrates how we can develop an effective and powerful toolkit for the sake of our clients and the future of our profession. Developing and adopting these tools also requires a shift in mindset from a traditional lawyer towards a partner in business.
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