My Legaltech predictions for 2022

Technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, especially in those related to the legal sector. We have a year full of challenges and opportunities thanks to the real consolidation of artificial intelligence solutions in the market.

Technological trends in our sector will be marked by artificial intelligence, the cloud, greater use of blockchain, and in my opinion the key will be the automation of contracts, processes and the optimisation of operations. This will imply the need to work in hybrid teams that join forces to adapt the use cases from the very design of the solutions. These include the implementation of RPAS integrated into workflows, software for contract lifecycle management, ticketing platforms used to manage incidents, requests, doubts and queries and whose control and monitoring model is based on tickets or virtual assistants, both for internal and external use?

The year 2021 and its circumstances have forced the use of technology in our daily lives, so that previously unimaginable working models are now a normal part of our work. The same happens with legaltech, a term that appeared many years ago but which is now, through its application in specific use cases, giving an absolute twist to the traditional legal function, which is forcing us to establish new work and business models.

Technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, and even more so in those related to the legal sector, as there is still much to discover. We must be aware of the existence of a gap between the development of these technologies and their actual adoption by legal operators; law firms, consultancies and lawyers.

One of the trends for 2022 will be the focus of many firms on bridging the gap between technology and adoption, as it is easy to talk about AI, document automation, digital document management, Contract Lifecycle Management (which will increasingly turn the contract into an asset with better use of data included) or e-signatures, but the reality is that not everyone has implemented these technologies.

Contract and document automation

Undoubtedly, one of the most powerful trends for the sector and one that is working best is the automation of contracts and documents. Law firms and consultancies produce large quantities of contracts and documents, spending a great deal of time reviewing them, and their margin of error is still very significant. Document automation will go one step further than simply filling in a form, as it will allow complex financial calculations, determine the legal incompatibility of clauses in contracts, limit the choice of options for lawyers, design document suites and even determine the best model to be chosen by the user based on previous decision trees.

Process automation has evolved into a more complex system, the RPA or robotic process automation. Artificial intelligence makes robots available to take care of administrative tasks of all kinds, as long as they can be fully automated and there is no further creativity involved.

Artificial intelligence-based solutions will therefore be another development to watch out for, for example, in due diligence or arbitration processes, as well as in any other service that requires the analysis of large volumes of information. One of the most important challenges that the sector will face will be the development of dictionaries that process technical legal language for a powerful development of solutions based on this technology. In addition, the application of large-scale language processing models such as BERT, GPT-3 and Megatron-Turing is foreseen in our sector.

Some trend-setting solutions

Another type of solution that will become a trend are the deal sites or deal management or collaborative platforms in which, through a checklist, it is possible to have clarity on the documents to be worked on for a certain process. Likewise, it would allow assigning managers, clients, counterparties, etc., and controlling the operation in a centralised manner. For this, it will be vital that the technology allows easy integration with other platforms, such as electronic signature platforms.

Contract management platforms will not go unnoticed, where it will be possible to generate, negotiate and sign documents up to the administration of their maturity dates.

As we can see, the range of possibilities and solutions is very wide, and this means that we need to invest in the design of specific use cases. In addition, change management becomes fundamental, as it is the only way to ensure that technological adoption generates efficiency in the provision of legal services and, as a result, greater client satisfaction, whether internal or external.

We have a year full of challenges and opportunities thanks to the real consolidation in the market of artificial intelligence solutions that will allow us to create, devise and ultimately innovate, but we must be aware that we may make mistakes along the way. The key is to be flexible and iterate hand in hand with people in this process of digital transformation of the sector.

Article originally published in AJA 981 https://www.legaltoday.com/revista-aja/981/articulos/31/index.html