Legal Technology within British law practices: Growth, Trends, and Competition.

As opposed to other professional services, law firms have conventionally been a slower adopter of technology, primarily due to risk-averse practitioners, the partnership model and a the billable hours model (promoting slow sifting through precedents and casework, as well as minimal time to discover the adoption of new tech and teach legal staff these new tools.)

Nowadays, however, British law firms are catching up other professional services sectors, such as the Finance & Banking sectors with mobile apps and other technology to enable ease of access for users. However, the sector is still facing unique challenges that demand rapid attention and adaptation. Client expectations are changing while the amount of lawtech is increasing, and new entrants are successfully fusing the two together to cost-efficiently provide a more enticing customer experience.

Research carried out by the?Law Society?focusing on lawtech adoption showed that though a ‘diverse but fragmented ecosystem’ of start-ups who focused primarily on legal technology, the more boutique law firms were more inclined to reject disruptive technology that can offer clients a new way of accessing law.

Today’s technological progression within law practices has been generated via the “computer revolution” whereby firms would be required to adopt digital methods to boost efficiency. This process started within law practices in the mid-70s when Lexis (now known as Lexis Nexis) produced a terminal to allow partners, lawyers, and other relevant legal staff to search case law online as opposed to the traditional laborious method of poring through, on occasion, hundreds of books.

Technology within the legal sector has made tremendous advances within the last five years (and this rate is increasing exponentially). In 2005, for the first time, many firms had intertwined infrastructure equal to their corporate clients, where technology became engrained within the culture and nature of law firms.

Trends have always shown that opposing technological advancements (within any professional service industry) will only inhibit growth and development. As law practices continue to grow and shift, firms must remain adaptable and competitive in order to become a key player within the market. Ultimately, this is in their own interest and will serve firms in a multitude of ways including, but not limited to: efficiency improvements, conserving wealth, boosting profitability and allowing firms to have an edge against their competitors.

We saw exponential growth and substantial developments?within legal technology in the legal sector, which were projected to continually expand throughout 2020 (even ahead of the global Covid19 pandemic enhanced the need to connect and engage with internal staff, external vendors, and clients virtually). A recent article discovered that legal technology as a sector is?expanding?by a minimum of 5%?year on year, with adoption increasing as law firms become more flexible, fresher and technically competent.

RPA is a key example of a highly advanced business process automation technology, based on allegorical software bots. Either this or heavily focused on advancements and the implementation of artificial intelligence. This can allow firms to design bespoke software solutions, or a ‘bot’ to mimic and incorporate the activities of a person interacting within digital systems to implement process improvement initiatives. The benefit of implementing robotic automation is evidently clear: Saving time and billable hours when progressing cases.

Newly released regulations into law practices, such as anti-money laundering/ GDPR are facilitating the requirement for automation of processes and the deployment of legal technology resolutions. Compliance is essentially now an imperative component for banking/financial organisations processes and, while in law firms it remains ancillary, there’s a number of legal practices that are investing into legal technology solutions to evade having to continue spending funds putting staff in place and bearing frequently extensive interruptions in client onboarding.

To conclude, while legal technology is undoubtedly gaining traction overall, it remains far ?less established than other disciplines ?within “digital disruption”, particularly fintech, where financing and regulatory alignment far surpass that of legal. Legal technology is at present is far less ‘disruptive’ in terms of the current technology available. British law firms are more focused on automation and process improvement initiatives rather than working on introducing ‘new types of law’. I’m incredibly excited to see what the future of law firms holds within this space as it is growing at an exponential rate.