What Does the Growth of Legal Tech Mean for Businesses?
What is legal tech?
Legal tech (or legal technology) is the use of technology and software to provide legal services. Using digital products can help companies to streamline legal processes and improve the efficiency and accessibility of legal functions.
Why is legal tech important?
Legal tech is big business. Figures from Statista state that the market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of over 4% up to 2027, by which year revenues are predicted to reach USD$35.6 billion worldwide.
Put simply: in a world where legal risks and regulatory demands are constantly evolving, legal tech is becoming an essential component of modern business strategy.
What are the benefits of legal tech for businesses?
A wide range of tech solutions are available on the market, but benefits can include:
- Faster legal processes: automation and advanced software can speed up processes like contract drafting, helping companies resolve legal issues more quickly.
- Empowerment: by automating tasks, businesses can handle more work in-house.
- Better regulatory compliance: legal tech helps companies stay updated with constantly changing regulations, ensuring that they remain compliant with local, national, and international laws.
- Prevention of legal issues: tools for legal compliance management can help prevent legal issues from arising, saving companies from costly litigation or regulatory penalties.
- Centralised legal info: legal tech allows companies to store and access legal documents and data in a centralised, digital format. This reduces the risk of losing critical documents and enhances collaboration across teams.
- Transparency and communication: legal tech tools can improve communication by providing transparent billing and easy access to legal documents and case statuses.
- Improved service delivery: by streamlining legal processes and reducing turnaround times, companies can provide better service to clients and stay competitive.
Benefits such as these can explain why 43% of in-house lawyers expressed an appetite to use legal tech to streamline their use of external counsel, according to LexisNexis.
Why should law firms embrace legal tech as part of their value add to clients?
Using technology is key to delivering a market-leading client experience.
However, despite a growing number of law firms starting to use legal tech themselves, most do not offer it to their clients, with only 24% of law firms use client-facing online portals and 11% planning to use them in the future, according to LexisNexis figures.
Firms that place innovation at the heart of their ethos, such as Acuity Law, can offer greater efficiencies to businesses, transforming the legal compliance journey.
For example, Acuity Law has developed My Digital Lawyer – a legal tech platform offering a range of tools and services to streamline legal compliance and keep businesses up to date with legal requirements. From know-how guides to an automated legal document builder, legal insights to tailored training programmes, My Digital Lawyer is a one-stop shop for do-it-yourself legal compliance, guiding and supporting start-ups, founders, SMEs and larger companies.
Is an in-house legal team essential to use legal tech?
No. Some platforms are designed to empower business to handle some of the routine aspects of legal compliance themselves. For example, My Digital Lawyer features a Knowledge Bank of legal guidance plus Document Assist, a legal document builder. Its aim is to provide a treasure trove of resources to support even those with no legal knowledge at all.
Accuracy and reassurance
Some businesses are reluctant to embrace legal tech for fear that reliance on technology can result in legal issues. As with any tech tool, it is essential to risk assess and scrutinise the tool itself and its creators. At My Digital Lawyer, the tools and services available are created by the award-winning lawyers at Acuity Law, bringing peace of mind to subscribers, who can rely on its quality and accuracy. As the digital arm of a law firm, My Digital Lawyer also includes a number of legal consultation credits included in the subscription, so businesses can be reassured that when they need a face-to-face conversation, they can have one.
What’s next for legal tech?
As technology expands, so will the variety of legal tech tools and platforms available to businesses, offering further connection and transparency between lawyers and the businesses they serve.
The legal industry is on the brink of significant disruption. Platforms like My Digital Lawyer are part of the future, using technology to shape the future of legal practice – delivering the benefits of streamlined legal compliance to businesses.
Find out more about My Digital Lawyer.