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By Steven O’Donnell A story like the one I’m about to mention would have once been a jarring exception in the annals of corporate client-outside counsel relationships. But nowadays? It’s nearly old news: Teva Pharmaceutical’s CLO, David Stark, has decided to slash the number of outside law firms handling his business. His primary goal? Significant […]

by Simon Pecovnik, VP of Product Management, iManage If you’re like most people, at some point over the past couple days, you probably used Google to find an answer to a question – and it’s likely that you didn’t find the experience to be overwhelming or confusing. You simply plugged in your search terms and […]

by Alice Namuli Blazevic Technology is at the forefront of our growth as a continent. Africa has witnessed phenomenal growth in the ICT sector in the past decades; internet use statistics indicate that Africa’s population of Internet users grew from about four and a half million people in 2000 to about 400 million people in […]

By Tianlu Qu Lawyers are artisans. Most of the value they deliver stems from their human capital: decades of experience with a sharp and analytical mind. However, if one leverages almost entirely on human capital, one can only grow new businesses proportionately with expertise and, more likely, time. Engineers learned a long time ago that […]

Training in legal technology is gradually finding its way into law schools, even outside the English-speaking world. Still, we need to remain realistic. No matter how progressive they are, law schools offering these courses are the exception and not the rule. The truth is that the large majority of law graduates start their career without […]

“OK Nick, so I’ve set you up with 5 RDP sessions here into each of our SQL servers and here are the two Microsoft Access databases, on this USB stick, that we need you to merge into one SQL 2005 compatible version. I need this done within the 60 minutes, so I’ll use our remote […]

As the interest around smart contracts grows, the debate around it grows too. Some say that smart contracts are the technology of the future that will dramatically reduce the need for lawyers – others say that this is a fledgling technology that will take many years to become workable within a legal setting. What is […]

AI gets bad press for the jobs it might eliminate. Judicial jobs are not presently poised to disappear. But AI is definitely reshaping things. In part this is happening because non-lawyers are moving into the law business. The adversarial and coercive role of lawyers has lost its ‘fit for purpose’ gloss. This is a strong […]

One of the themes for the magazine this year is the deconstruction of legal matters. We believe that one of the skills for future lawyer will be legal project management. As managers they should have the ability to deconstruct the various components of a legal matter and be able to continually make the process as […]

It is clear that the lawyers of the future will need to get ahead of the curve when it comes to technology in whichever sector they work in. The healthcare sector in the UK has seen a boom in interest from tech companies in recent years, and telemedicine is one such area receiving a lot […]

Not a day goes by without at least one of the leading UK firms putting out a press release on how they have used legal technology for this or partnered with a legal tech start-up for that. So what is the reason for this avalanche of technology-adoption marketing material and how does the adoption of […]

The legal technology sector remains fragmented and difficult to comprehend for many people embarking on a career in law. Various start-ups compete in diverse areas, such as e-billing, e-discovery, e-signing, legal analytics, workflow management and novel trial prediction technology. Elsewhere, law firms are investing in client customised document automation and due diligence, among other things. […]

As of 2017, 88% of UK organisations had adopted cloud technology, and this has continued to rise throughout 2018. This trend has also been seen within the legal industry, both within individual firms and legal governing bodies. The Law Society of England and Wales recently moved to their data to the Microsoft Azure platform, and […]

BIG DATA The beginner’s guide by Becky Baker Any organisation that stores data recognises its responsibility to comply with regulation after the recent introduction of GDPR. Customer privacy is a key issue for businesses using big data analytics. Organisations in highly regulated sectors such as banking and insurance must reach an even higher threshold of […]

Social Media and the Legal Profession Find your influencers and social media champions In many ways social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram) have become a way of life for your employees and your employees of the future and these tools can be a great way to raise the profile of the firm, its employees […]

Social Media and the Legal Profession Social media is not new. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all teenagers. Most law firms set up their social media accounts between 7 and 9 years ago, but it is only in the last 18-12 months that the majority of firms (of all sizes) are taking their social media […]

Be under no illusion lawyers will not be replaced by robots. There has been an extraordinary amount of hype about legal technology over recent months, but the reality is it is there to assist rather than replace lawyers. When thinking of legal technology you should think of it more as a helpful assistant making your […]

Litigation is a big focus for legal technology companies and start-ups. More and more companies are now developing applications that are capable of analysing litigation matters using AI. There have been great strides in two areas in particular: document review and contract review. The review of documents at the disclosure stage of litigation can be […]

Legal technology not only makes the practice of law more efficient but also allows lawyers to work more flexibly. Many firms these days provide their lawyers with remote access so that they are able to work outside the office, as well as providing them with work laptops and phones as standard. This allows ‘agile’ working […]

One of the key competencies for lawyers is drafting. Lawyers spend a large proportion of their time drafting documents, be it letters, agreements or court forms. Broadly speaking, legal technology at most firms is applied in two areas — construction and storage of documents — to help make the overall process of creating documents more […]