„(1) technology that helps facilitate the practice of lawyers` law and (2) technology that facilitates consumers` access to legal expertise or justice.“ For the UK, where this website is based, Lawtech accounts for 61% of all Legaltech and Lawtech searches as of January 2021, compared to 39% for Legaltech. In South Africa, there continues to be an increase in client-centric solutions and #legaltech start-ups using technology through the support of lawyers to help the public navigate the legal space. The aim is to encourage innovation, and in both areas, technology is driving it. This hybrid would therefore seek to allow consumers to take advantage of this technology that LawTech such as DocuSign provides to manage administrative tasks, allowing lawyers to use their time in truly innovative ways, much like in-house lawyers. And as we mentioned earlier, legaltech can mean anything from back-office IT to front-office lawyers transforming technology, or even B2C technology for consumers. If you`re the type to turn to Twitter for your posts, social media might be the best way for you to stay on top of legaltech news. Start by following your favorite legaltech publications, companies, journalists covering legal technology, and legaltech industry professionals. This provides you with a wide range of views and information that you can consume quickly and at your own pace. Here are some Twitter accounts to consider: Technology selection, testing, development, and adoption are increasingly driven by a hodgepodge of people, including lawyers, CIOs, innovation teams, project managers, change managers, and clients. In this group, especially among non-IT professionals, Legaltech is used more frequently.
That makes sense. If you think in terms of industries, „legal“ is the norm; „legal sector“ is not. Legaltech news refers to updates, product launches, new ideas, and other notable changes in the legal technology world. This could be a company launching credit card payment software for lawyers, or how Legal Technology is helping law firms build modern legal networks. But Goodman`s point is good: one of the factors behind the different nomenclature is partly the decision-makers involved. Traditionally, IT has been the exclusive domain of IT professionals, especially in law firms and large legal teams, so people in these roles tended to use the term legal IT. In many ways, this may be a bit narrower and aligns with the traditional legaltech view: the basic IT (accounting, filing, and management systems) needed to keep the lights on and manage the back office, but not necessarily the front-office technologies lawyers use to streamline their work or enable new products and services. CME Group`s legal team worked with the Royal Mint to create a blockchain-based platform for digital gold trading. However, it cannot go unnoticed that although these two terms are moving in the right direction, they are still in their infancy.
For law firms to have enough money to adopt such technologies, for lawyers to change their traditional mindset and embrace this new approach, and for clients themselves to trust online platforms rather than human interaction, it will take time to gain a foothold in the industry. Salmerón-Manzano, E. Legaltech and Lawtech: Global Perspectives, Challenges, and Opportunities. Laws 2021, 10, 24 doi.org/10.3390/laws10020024 This would inevitably involve abandoning the traditional billable hourly model. This would allow lawyers to use LegalTech in all of its functions while implementing LawTech to put certain aspects of the law in the hands of consumers and give back the „real“ legal work to lawyers to focus on effective outcomes. What overlaps most is the fact that law firms that offer legal technology (in the sense of client-centric technology) often do the same thing. Or at least in the sense of less „traditional“ lawyers and more technical roles (for lack of a better term) aimed at meeting the specific needs of consumers, for example in the same sense that there are general practitioners and specialists (similar to traditional legal practice), but also a greater number of highly specialized technical roles oriented towards standardized processes, who are supported by technology, such as anesthesiologists. There are real and perhaps growing cases where legal technology (technology for clients) eats up the work of law firms. Proponents of this view include Richard Susskind, an author, speaker and independent advisor to major professional corporations and national governments. He is considered one of the world`s leading authorities on technology in the legal industry and has written several popular (and sometimes controversial) books, including The End of Lawyers and Tomorrow`s Lawyers.
Christian Lang, founder of the NY Legaltech Meetup and chief strategy officer at Reynen Court (among others), believes that legaltech means two things: As lawyers, your clients and communities benefit from your awareness of changes in the industry. This commitment to knowledge and growth will undoubtedly help you deliver the best customer-centric experience. And staying connected to legaltech news is just the beginning. We encourage you to have meaningful conversations with those around you about the legaltech landscape. And at the end of the day, it`s about enjoying the journey of learning and discovery. GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceutical company, has helped create a research and development unit into a brand new company that will treat diseases. What does that mean? Well, GlaxoSmithKline`s lawyers not only had to apply their legal knowledge, but also learn about healthcare and technology and apply it to their knowledge of intellectual property rights. The rise of alternative business structures (ABS) has shaped a new legal culture that has coined the term „digital disruptors.“ ABSs, with IT expertise, use DIY legal tools to provide legal advice to small businesses that would have used lawyers instead. Some popular DIY legal tools include Rocket Lawyer, as mentioned above, and chatbots like DoNotPay, a tool that can dispute parking tickets. LawTech is a way to provide law instead of supporting legal services. LawTech start-ups help clients across all industries provide legal advice to their clients.
LawTech is therefore not focused on law firms. Customers aren`t the only ones suffering in this scenario. Lawyers are highly skilled professionals and having to spend so much time on day-to-day tasks, combined with the pressure to charge a minimum number of hours per week, doesn`t do wonders for motivation. Lawyers have to account for their time every 6 minutes, which can be quite stressful, especially when asked to bill about ten hours a day (not nine to five here!) It`s no wonder lawyers have the highest burnout rate compared to any other profession in the UK. In the UK, 32% of jobseekers apply for non-legal jobs, up from 24% in 2007.