When you look at leading legal technology companies and forward-thinking legal departments, you will notice a trend. Founders of legal technology companies and chief legal officers in legal departments, by and large, are not software developers and computer engineers (although some are!). Rather, they are lawyers in a unique position to develop and promote legal tech. As general counsels with a novel perspective on improving efficiencies in legal and other departments, they even function as the best digital champions.
Legal tech has a wide range of benefits with nearly every aspect of the legal practice. Leading-edge technology supports everything from contract management automation to e-discovery and the tracking of billable hours and case data. Legal tech is no longer a luxury either. It is a must-have, enhancing accuracy, saving time, and ultimately helping you improve the bottom line of the business.
Be Wary of Legal’s Lack of Automation
Legal professionals continue to look at ways to improve the overall efficiency of their departments while cutting costs for the business. In-house teams and legal executives have learned how imperative this is during the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Far too often, lawyers are bogged down with rather mundane tasks. Their time is often eaten up by matters that could otherwise be automated. This is valuable time that could be spent completing higher-value, strategic work. Lack of automation in law departments will become even more of an issue moving forward if lawyers do not take the time to remedy this situation right now. It will hamper their everyday practices, preventing them from reaching their full potential as highly educated legal authorities.
Contracts are the backbone of every transaction — and the ‘lifeblood’ of every organization. Given how all-important agreements are, lawyers know full well that contract management is a process that can — and should — be automated. Think platforms that use a powerful blend of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP). These systems, especially, can free up a considerable amount of time, which can then be reinvested in other legal matters.
Remember, You Don’t Need to Be a Computer Scientist!
Nevertheless, many believe that if you want to develop or champion legal tech, you need to be an expert in computer science. Basically, someone who has spent most of their professional life learning to code, for example. But that could not be further from the truth. The very basis of a piece of legal tech is a fundamental need. The specific offering to the public needs to simplify lives, whether personal or professional. In the legal tech realm, lawyers are in a perfect position to make a lawyer’s function more efficient and effective — perhaps more than a computer scientist who has never practiced law.
Naturally, there are several ways in which an attorney can take legal tech and turn it into something tangible and beneficial. One way is by teaming up with those who have the requisite technology skills needed to create, adopt, and implement a product or service. Another way is by going out and doing it independently or taking advantage of third-party products that allow individuals to build their very own.
Join Other Digital Champions
There has been a significant increase in legal tech this past decade. In fact, nearly 10 percent of lawyers currently use some form of AI-based legal tech, according to the American Bar Association Legal Technology Resource Center’s “Tech Report 2019.” On top of that, roughly half of respondents revealed that they even applied legal analytics within the past year. It should not come as a surprise, then, that more and more attorneys, in the U.S. and beyond, are realizing fully the impact of legal tech today. They are using AI to automate legal processes, and cut operational time and costs, as stated above.
Ultimately, lawyers can benefit from legal technology in a variety of ways. As they understand what goes into the profession exactly, they are the ones who can lead the development, adoption, and implementation of the next great legal product or service. They truly know what will make lawyers’ lives easier, after all. They know what their own day-to-day issues are — and what needs to be done to resolve them.
Jerry Levine is the Chief Evangelist and General Counsel at ContractPodAi. He uses his experience to support ContractPodAi’s continued product and delivery innovation in legal technology and digital transformation.
