A New Vision for Legal Technology

Companies will benefit from legal technology, whether they are a law firm, a corporate lawyer, or a COO at a startup.

FREMONT, CA: It appears that no one cares about legal technology, with the possible exception of legal technology vendors and investors.

Legal tech investments have reached an all-time high yearly, but the concept has received nowhere near as much public attention as fintech. One of the reasons for this is that legal technology is frequently viewed as lawyer software. Legal tech is defined as the use of technology "to provide legal services and support the legal industry.

Legal Technology for the Public

Small and medium-sized businesses and individuals without law degrees should be able to manage contracts as efficiently as possible. Contract administration should be simple, accessible, and affordable for all businesses.

The objective of the legal technology movement should not be to consolidate power and maximize profits for the traditional legal industry. End users should be able to access legal services faster, better, and easier. Legal technology developers should digitize legal services to make them more accessible and navigable. They should automate legal work to increase efficiency, produce more reliable results, and free up creative and strategic thinking time. And they should use emerging technologies to augment and enhance the capabilities of legal professionals, whether they are non-specialists or bar exam graduates. As with fintech, every company should be concerned with legal technology.

The fintech revolution began earlier, and its nature is more numerical, making it easier to convert into 0s and 1s than the letter-based and interpretive legal practice. In addition, the legal industry is dominated by a precedent-based and risk-averse culture. In contrast to accounting firms, which have promoted the fintech revolution, legal firms have been reluctant to support the legal technology movement.

In most organizations, the traditional legal department is primarily concerned with risk mitigation—avoiding lawsuits, and companies are doing well. That is usually not where they start experimenting with optimizations and new tools. Similarly, it is difficult to justify a larger budget if the objective is to remain unnoticed. As a result, innovation processes have neglected legal work and contract administration.

A New Strategy for Legal: A New Basis

Legal technology can benefit businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Legal technology will assist businesses in efficiently mitigating risks. Document storage can be more organized and compliant, contract creation can be automated, or machine learning can be used to recognize potential red flags in lengthy, complex texts. Legal technology can also assist businesses in developing a less defensive, value-generating legal strategy. Contracts define the majority of spending and revenue for most companies. In light of this, improving the processes surrounding contracts can have significant strategic benefits if companies wish to increase revenue and decrease expenses.