Background 

The term “legal tech” describes how technology is used in the legal industry to speed up procedures, automate jobs, and increase productivity. Legal practitioners gain from it since it makes case management, contract management, and legal research easier and provides tools for managing contracts, complying with regulations, assessing risks, and managing intellectual property for enterprises. Companies benefit from cost savings and better decision-making as a result of their assistance in ensuring legal compliance, reducing risks, and streamlining legal procedures.

The legal tech industry has proved itself an irreplaceable tool in numerous business practices. It can cater to lawyers’ legal services and easy access to the clients, and it also helps in maintaining work-life balance in the life of legal practitioners. Since many legal practitioners have experienced the advantages of using technology in their profession, there has been a rise in various legal trends recently.

Latest developments

Some of the trends that will be highlighted in 2023 and also how they will affect the workflow of the legal practitioners are:

#1 Artificial intelligence and more legal-tech solutions

The computer systems that are capable of learning, solving problems, and making decisions—tasks that traditionally require human intelligence—are known as artificial intelligence or AI. Artificial intelligence (AI) has many uses in the legal sector, including contract analysis, document inspection, and predictive analytics.

The usage of AI-powered legal research platforms is a prominent AI-related legal case study in India. For instance, the Delhi High Court employed an AI platform named “Manupatra” in 2020 to help judges quickly access pertinent case law and decisions and perform legal research. The AI technology assisted in the delivery of more efficient and accurate legal research while also saving a substantial amount of time.

The most recent legal tech solutions are made to make routine activities for lawyers more efficient. There is not a single individual in the world who does not currently utilise at least one application in their regular business operations. The proper selection of new technology can also be used to fix or update many of these business procedures.

Glenn Reid, a legal marketing consultant with Reid & Partners Legal Marketing, emphasises the important contribution that AI has made to the efficiency of the legal profession. He gives an illustration of how using AI in legal work might help lawyers: “It can be used to prepare wills, contracts, and letters in a matter of seconds. In 2023, I envision AI becoming a supplemental tool in law firms, but not yet taking the role of attorneys. When employing AI to construct contracts, a qualified legal expert must be in charge.”

Corporate lawyers’ responsibilities include a sizable portion of contract preparation, which typically necessitates a lot of time and heightened concentration. Even while some human intervention is necessary, some legal software may make the process of creating contracts much more effective. Whether it’s smart contracts or contract drafting software, legal professionals like attorneys and paralegals can profit from legal tech alternatives in a variety of ways. Most competitive document automation and contract management solutions are built to detect errors in legal documents and highlight them with corrections. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions like Kira Systems, LawGeex, and ContractExpress use machine learning and natural language processing to evaluate contracts, automate document creation, and speed up the contract writing process. Legal research and analysis, document review and discovery, predictive analytics for case outcomes, regulatory compliance monitoring, intellectual property management, contract management, and even virtual legal assistants to offer individual clients advice and support on legal matters can all be done with the help of AI.

#2 Remote/ Hybrid Work and Court Proceedings

The pandemic has shown us how crucial it is to set up procedures that enable lawyers and support workers to work remotely without interfering with workflow. While other professions were able to transition to a hybrid workplace with ease, the legal industry took much longer to implement the essential technology to allow for remote work. 

In India, virtual proceedings have been used in response to the COVID-19 epidemic to maintain the continuation of court operations. The Supreme Court (SC) has made several moves to support virtual hearings, such as introducing the “Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software” for real-time translation of proceedings, holding hearings virtually via video conferencing tools, and offering e-filing capabilities.

Virtual courtroom hearings have more accessibility, financial savings, flexibility, and less travel time as benefits. Technical difficulties, a lack of interpersonal contacts, the possibility of connectivity problems, and trouble with successfully presenting the evidence or cross-examining the witnesses are drawbacks. It has its own set of benefits and drawbacks but overall, it has benefitted the industry and ease of access to justice.

#3 Free access to the Legal Data/ Information

People desire to comprehend the law more thoroughly, whether it is about a particular area of the law or a case analysis. Many people believe they can resolve their legal problems without consulting a lawyer by searching online for pertinent legal information and facts.

By offering a variety of platforms and techniques, legal technology has significantly improved access to legal information. These platforms act as thorough libraries of legal resources, allowing professionals in the legal field to quickly search, evaluate, and access data. These systems include enormous databases of legal cases, legislation, rules, and secondary legal sources, giving lawyers and other legal professionals thorough research skills. Notable platforms in this area include Westlaw and LexisNexis.

1. Fastcase: Fastcase offers a significant collection of legal documents, enables users to carry out sophisticated searches, have access to legal research libraries, and keep up with the most recent changes in the law.
2. Casemaker: Casemaker is a platform for a legal study that provides access to a variety of legal information, such as statutes, rules, and regulations as well as case law.
3. Institutes for Legal Information (LIIs): Legal information from many countries is made available to both attorneys and laypeople through LIIs like the Cornell Legal Information Institute (LII) and the World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII).

These platforms are heavily used by lawyers and other legal professionals for case analysis, legal research, and keeping up with legal changes. They can use these resources to locate pertinent statutes, rules of law, and legal interpretations, which eventually help them substantiate their claims and choices.

Similarly, individuals and entities, like companies and organisations, use these platforms to learn about laws, comprehend rules, and obtain legal resources for compliance. Without the requirement for in-depth legal knowledge, it aids them in understanding their obligations under the law, carrying out their due diligence, and seeking legal counsel. These platforms give people and organisations the ability to acquire and use legal knowledge effectively, which empowers them.

#4 Cloud Platforms

Since cloud-based software enables legal professionals to store data remotely and access it as needed, private cloud solutions have emerged as a fantastic technological choice for legal professionals. Additionally, since cloud technology is always developing, lawyers might upload client contracts holding sensitive information without being concerned that the functioning device would malfunction.

However, the dangers of data breaches still exist. Chuck Kellner, Strategic Discovery Advisor at Everlaw, predicts the impact of utilising a cloud solution versus sticking with conventional on-premises methodology despite these risks: “The contrast between those who do and do not adopt the cloud will become even more apparent with greater economic headwinds in 2023… People utilising cloud-based e-discovery tools can typically move more quickly, collaborate in real-time, and work more productively than those using on-premises e-discovery solutions… By using manual or fragmented processes, businesses that have not embraced cloud solutions run the risk of endangering their customers and their business.

#5 Social Media Presence

One of the unavoidable developments in legal technology is the use of social media and blogging in general due to their rising popularity. Social media not only fosters a close relationship with the audience but also aids lawyers in upholding their stellar reputation and professionalism.

According to ABA data on law technology statistics from 2020, 80% of law firms had a presence on at least one social media network. Despite the fact that blogs are less common among legal firms than social media, solo practitioners actively use them to promote themselves. In legal blogs and lawyer directories, for instance, many attorneys write about the subjects that interest them, share their knowledge and expertise, and increase interest in their practice.

Implications

It is not surprising that legal teams have to deal with the difficulty of protecting sensitive information as a result of the expanding use of computer software. After all, law firms have access to a lot of sensitive information about their customers that is confidential and cannot be shared. It is more of a consequence of following the trends, but CyberSecurity has emerged as an individual area of practice as well.

Employees have more flexibility and convenience when accessing and exchanging critical data when cybersecurity is integrated into a legal firm’s business practices, especially for remote work. Working from home is still a significant trend in the legal sector, which makes cybersecurity all the more relevant and important in light of the recent COVID-19 outbreak.

Conclusion

In conclusion, adopting the trends in legal technology gives law professionals the chance to sharpen their legal knowledge, increase productivity, and maintain their competitive edge in a constantly evolving legal environment. We can progress the legal profession and provide better services to our clients in the digital age by wisely utilising the power of technology. As we begin our legal professions, let’s be open-minded, proactive, and prepared to embrace the fascinating world of legal tech.

With the rise in legal technology tools and technology, the work of lawyers is going to be less cumbersome but then there would be a need of in constant touch with the updated technology to keep up with the market. Further, there would be more competition, as these rising technologies will have competitors from all across the globe.