Why Lawyers Should Care About Legaltech

Recently I asked someone I hold in high regard whether he thought that a platform providing practical, educational resources about legal technology would be useful for lawyers.

He said no.

His view, which I’m sure is shared by many, is that lawyers have enough to do and should be allowed to keep working while specialized professionals concern themselves with legal technology. I let this sit for some time, steeling myself against a knee-jerk reaction and really considering his answer. Now that I’ve taken the time to ruminate, though, I can say for certain that I respectfully disagree. Here’s why.

The notion that lawyers can or should bill their time without ever needing to consider legaltech and what it can do or where it sits in legal practice presupposes that technology and legal practice are two entirely separate things. Once upon a time, that may have been true. It is still true for certain types of technology. Lawyers use Word and they save documents into a document management system, but they don’t need to know the ins and outs of that system or understand what other options are available. But many categories of legal technology are deeply connected to the actual practice of law in a way that foundational technology is not.

It's notable that Thomson Reuters’ Practical Law Company, a legal research platform, now includes an eDiscovery module. When I was coming up as a lawyer, I did discovery manually – but not for long. Tools to support eDiscovery were burgeoning, and the first court decisions had been handed down penalizing firms that did not use such technology for needlessly escalating client costs. Since then, eDiscovery has become ubiquitous, which means that an integral part of legal practice is now almost always conducted through the use of technology. To say that one uses technology to do discovery in the same way that one uses technology to save a document is not quite right. With eDiscovery tools, a part of legal practice has become inextricably linked to technology so that it’s difficult to speak of one without the other. There’s a difference between using technology to do something, and practicing law through technology.

In any litigation case that proceeds to discovery, a lawyer will be involved in the process of reviewing and tagging documents using software created specifically for that purpose. Depending on the firm’s resources, a litigation support team might be available to assist lawyers during eDiscovery but the lawyers will still need to be in the system reviewing documents. In firms without litigation support, lawyers might also be involved in selecting the eDiscovery platform that should be used for a given case, liaising with clients to determine whether there is a preference for technology or whether a third party provider should be engaged. They supervise not just the discovery work itself but also the means by which it gets done. While lawyers don’t need to be technologists in order to perform this supervision, the integral nature of eDiscovery software in the discovery process means that they do need to be aware of it and understand the difference between tools that can identify, process, move and store data, and those that use sophisticated machine learning to support the review of documents for a case. Lawyers will care whether a solution includes the ability to auto-redact documents or not, and whether data visualizations highlighting key aspects of a case can be exported.

Practical Law now includes modules on eDiscovery because that “e” prefix denotes the fact this is an area of practice that lives within technology. No longer can the two be considered distinct.

Some might say that eDiscovery is unique in this regard. But as legal technology evolves, more categories are and will continue to emerge that similarly tie parts of legal practice to technology. Due diligence is one of those areas. Contract review tools have proliferated that use machine learning to identify provisions, highlight potential red flags and provide an interface supporting due diligence review and automating the generation of a client-ready report. Similar to litigation support centers, some firms have created captive ALSPs that leverage these tools on behalf of deal lawyers, but lawyers are still required to perform or approve the review of the documents within the software. In many firms, it is the deal lawyers themselves that operate the technology for due diligence.

Legal point solutions continue to be developed that address specific aspects of core legal practice, and change the way lawyers undertake those workflows. Automating the circle-up process or the prospectus verification process during an IPO, for example. Using AI and computer vision to perform powerful prior art searches for patent litigation. Generating data-laden corporate diagrams or organizational structure diagrams in purpose-built technology. Even the messy and onerous processes surrounding fund formation can now be addressed by a combination of specialized technology products.

Lawyers should know that these solutions exist. In law firms where there are no professionals who can tell them about these developments – which are not just technology developments but developments in the way that law is being practiced – they should have access to a resource that can bring them up to speed. If you are a lawyer reading this: you should know that there are areas of your practice that are being automated. If you are able to avail yourself of those automations you will have more to offer your clients - not less.

Even where a firm does have a team of professionals responsible for identifying these new solutions and introducing them, lawyers should be able to educate themselves and understand, for example, what their competitors are using and what is new to market that might positively impact their ability to deliver the highest quality work and the best possible client service. In fact, comment 8 to ABA Model Rule 1.1 (the tech competency rule) requires that lawyers should be aware of these types of solutions where they are relevant to their practice. Being unaware arguably puts them in breach of their professional obligations.

More important even than regulatory obligations, there is the matter of clients. With digital transformation a hot topic in corporate legal, it behooves lawyers working in firms to be informed or at least aware of the technology in use by their clients – because similar to eDiscovery or due diligence technology, some of it is essential to their clients’ practice and central to their professional lives. There’s no need for any lawyer to become an expert in contract lifecycle management software, but if they understand the value of such tools to their clients it’s likely to help with relationship-building and credibility. Client organizations are increasingly using document automation and in-house lawyers are aware that AI technology and data analytics are trends in the legal industry. If you would prefer that your lawyers be able to respond with some insight when clients ask about whether and how the firm is using AI, or what parts of practice are being automated, then having them conversant in key areas of legaltech development is essential.

Educating your firm’s lawyers on the evolution of legal technology is also a critical building block in any adoption strategy. If your lawyers aren’t aware of the new ways that technology is super-charging legal practice, they will be less interested in new solutions and less likely to use them, which ultimately does them a disservice.

None of this means that lawyers need to be technologists, or that they should spend hours of every day devouring news about legaltech. But any lawyer hoping to be successful into the future should digest some regular news about technology and the way that it is impacting legal practice in their area of specialization. Legal practice will increasingly be conducted through technology, in ways that tie the two together inextricably. It’s likely to be as important to lawyers’ lives as the development of market trends in their clients’ industries, and has the potential to give them a real competitive edge. Denying them this or considering it to be unimportant to their professional development is to prevent your lawyers from succeeding at the level they should.