Tectonic shifts are occurring in legal practice. Being a lawyer, today is much about being a businessperson, a project manager, a salesperson—and yes, a technologist—as it is about writing proposals and negotiating contracts. This change leaves no one untouched. We all see it and we all understand what it means to us. But change is hard, especially for lawyers. And especially when it comes to technology.
In working with adaptive people, we’ve found that one pain point is simply the conundrum of technology. For many of us, legal technology seems both scary and annoying. It’s a million programs and a million ways things can go wrong. But legal technology has the potential to empower every lawyer. It can take the monotonous and burdensome parts of law school at face value. This can open up new opportunities for your clients and colleagues. It can change the way you approach your daily work.
A lot of frustration comes from approaching technology the wrong way, pushing buttons, and getting angry when things don’t work the way you think they should. But once you learn to incorporate the basic framework and tools for how the technology works into your workflow, everything becomes easier.
So, what are the legal technologies that you need to harness in this century? Fret not, for we have a list for you. Here it is.
- Legal research
- Cybersecurity
- e-discovery
- Document management
- Legal analytics
- Management platforms
- Knowledge management
- Compliance tech
- Contract analysis
- Legal time-tracking
- Artificial intelligence
- Machine learning
- Blockchain
Let’s explore some of them and understand how they can help you.
Legal research
Legal research – that is, identifying, locating, and citing information and applicable law to support a legal decision – strengthens your arguments and gives substance to your legal work, leading to better results for your clients. Although the techniques and tools used may vary, the goal of legal research is simple: you want to find relevant information and resources that apply to the facts of your case to support a legal decision. With this in mind, the legal research process can be divided into three main elements as listed.
- Understanding the key details and issues of your legal problem.
- Finding the law and information to support your legal argument.
- Verify that what you find is still relevant.
e-discovery
Even if you’re not a lawyer, e-discovery tools can retrieve and sift through vast amounts of information. Some e-discovery platforms offer visual insights and analytics to help you spot trends, find important information, and look at data in different ways. And if you’re a lawyer, e-discovery platforms can organize your documents, create privilege logs, organize exhibit lists, and much more.
Compliance tech
To deliver excellent service, corporate legal departments and compliance managers must quickly assess and mitigate risk, manage strategy, and make informed decisions. Legal and compliance solutions increase operations, improve information management, and enable teams to focus on high-value activities needed to meet legal requirements and regulatory obligations.
Legal time-tracking
Follow-up time is critical even for those not taking classes. That’s because every lawyer’s commodity is time. The more productive and efficient you are, the more you can do. But keeping time is also annoying. The tools allow you to automatically track your time by looking at what you’re doing on your devices. They can even help automate a slow process.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence has received constant hype and has for years, but people disagree about what it means. The most useful definition is probably something like technology that is so advanced that it can mimic some of the higher-order things that humans would normally have to understand or deal with. But understand that companies use this term all the time, and it’s often not helpful in determining whether a product can help you.
