As per the Advisory Director of Gartner, Zack Hutto, “The new challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst for law industries embracing technology. Compliance and legal teams, which initially hesitated to harness the software solutions, today are using law technology to manage increased workload and staffing budgets.” Previously, the legal field has been resistant to the thought of automation.
But the Coronavirus pandemic has brought about a change since 2020. As of now, legal leaders are actively capitalizing on legal technology solutions and automating several activities, especially ones involving corporate transactions.
As technology emerges as the most concrete solution for legal departments, one question still emerges? Which technological solutions are the most useful for law departments? What are the specific trends streamlining the legal field, and so on?
This blog will answer these questions along with how technology contributes to the law industry.
Table of Contents:
Technology Trends in the Legal Dept
How Technology is Benefitting the Legal Dept.
Conclusion (Should Law Firms Hire an IT consultancy?)
Technology Trends in the Legal Dept
The Legal Industry Will Spend More than Threefold in Technology by 2025. Gartner surveyed legal leaders that claim that this industry will spend around threefold more money on law technology by the end of 2025.
“The Coronavirus pandemic has piled excessive workloads onto the thinly stretched legal teams and as other departments are finding success after investing in software development services, the legal market is channeling towards it as well to meet output demands and support workflows.”
Most firms try to develop the best tech strategies to cope with the changing demands of corporate advancements in the tech market. The only thing to remember is not to invest in poorly aligned tech purchases that might hamper long-term business goals.
- By 2024, the legal market will automate 50% of legal tasks connected to Crucial business transactions
The need for commercial transaction work has already recovered from the loss driven due to the pandemic. M&A work will likely increase in the upcoming years as the effects of the pandemic are lowering achievement values.
Hutto claims, “87% of legal departments surveyed in 2020 expect their total number of in-house employees to decrease or remain unaffected.” “As large workloads are to be met via enhanced in-house activities, advancements via ML technologies and natural language processing is the only way to handle critical business tasks.”
Hence, automation via the use of legal technology solutions is the only solution to meeting company needs. Thus, more industries in the law sector will focus on automating tasks related to serious business transactions.
- The Legal Department will replace 20% of generalist attorneys with non-lawyer staff by 2024
Legal departments find problems due to flat budgets and increasing workflow. Hence, to meet their needs efficiently, they must turn to technology to streamline the same. It means they must focus on improving digital strategies, analytics, and legal technology solutions.
Most firms are therefore considering shifting to non-attorney staff from legal lawyers. With the help of technology, law firms will rely on machine learning, AI, and other IT software solutions to streamline data and other perquisites of management. It will not only balance costs but also speed up workflow considerably.
Now it is time to witness how the legal industry is profiting thanks to law tech.
How Technology is Benefitting the Legal Dept?
Legal technology solutions are contributing to making a lawyer’s life simple. Read these lines and know some of these benefits.
- Streamlining Client and Lawyer Communications
As per the Flexibility Benchmarking Survey, 2017 law firm, 67% of legal firms allow lawyers the option to telecommute. Lawyers can work remotely and communicate with themselves and their clients in different ways with unified communication tools.
Via these tools, attorneys can be productive and communicate with their clients in real-time. Unified collaboration and communication solutions allow lawyers to interact personally via email, voicemails, web conferencing, and messages. The Internet enables clients to communicate directly with attorneys without visiting law offices.
- Simplifying Case Management
Digital corporate management platforms are getting ready to meet legal case management. This software allows attorneys to mechanize numerous processes associated with date scheduling, case management, managing documents, and organizing contacts. A centralized database keeps all necessary data in one place.
Digital case management makes it quicker for document sharing with fellow lawyers in a firm when needed. Case management frameworks are mostly web-based software that enables remote lawyers to handle them easily.
- Leveraging Analytics
Automating legal procedures with cognitive analytics saves time and money. Using natural language processing allows us to analyze textual threats and understand the context of complex words in legal documents. LawGeex, a tech startup, uses AI to analyze and automate contracts for editing and approval. The organization claims that it can use these analytics to minimize the cost of predetermined reviews by ninety percent and save eighty percent of the time used by law firms for job reviewing.
- Automating eDiscovery
Previously, while preparing cases, lawyers were required to spend numerous hours sifting through documents to discover relevant pieces of evidence. Now, most of the documents are available digitally, and shreds of evidence are available via mobile devices, email, IoT devices, and database archives. Regardless, eDiscovery tasks are mostly related to paralegals. Thus, the process might be costly for clients as it is time-consuming.
However, with the help of legal tech, consumers can access eDiscovery automation software, which uses analytics to hasten the process. Advanced analytics help search for keywords, phrases and also eliminate unnecessary documents that can delay the process.
If you check these perks, no question will be there about the benefits of technology in the legal sector.
Conclusion (Should Law Firms Hire an IT consultancy?)
Technology is one aspect that can simplify work procedures. Thus, the legal industry must hire an IT consulting firm to automate the work process and manage cost flow. On that note, if you are looking to hire software development solutions for your law firm, you can contact us. We have several software solutions that give the finest legal technology solutions. You can use it to customize your legal firm effortlessly. So, check our website and get a quote now!