Update: February 6, 2025
In-house and law firms seem to agree on the value of adopting technology. The benefits are improved efficiency, reduced costs, and the ability to better serve clients.
Here is an overview of the various technologies that add value to legal professionals:
- AI tools: They create efficiency by reviewing and summarizing information, contract review, legal research and more.
- Cloud-based platforms: These allow for file storage for access from anywhere, making remote work or work traveling easier.
- Online payment processing: Makes it easy to manage billing clients
- Document automation: Helps with lower value, repetitive tasks, one benefit is that it eliminates human error than can occur when reviewing many documents or contracts.
- E-discovery tools: Allows legal professionals to sort through large volumes of data to find legal info and precedents.
Appara surveyed 443 legal professionals in Canada across law firms and in-house legal departments in 2024. Here are some of the findings:
66% of law firms reported “high” legal technology adoption versus only 29% of in-house lawyers said the same.
The reason for the different is likely budget. The same survey indicated that 61% of in-house legal teams face budget limitations, whereas 39% of law firms cited budget constraints as an issue, compared to 39 percent of law firms.
Some other factors impacting adoption of technology are:
· Resistance to change; reported by in-house legal teams at 41% and law firms at 26%
· Poor integration of new technology into existing infrastructure, is reported by in-house legal at 36% and by law firms at 39%
86% of in-house legal teams reported increased efficiency from tech versus only 58% reporting increased efficiency by law firms.
As technology continues to advance and AI’s integration into businesses becomes more mainstream, lawyers will need to familiarize themselves with this technology to best serve their clients, and go a step beyond familiarizing and actually adopt the technology, to experience the benefits, which will only continue to grow.
There are concerns about some of the tech, especially AI when it comes to privacy, proper implementation and staff training on safety policies when using the technologies.
ORIGINAL POST:
The legal industry has been slow to evolve and adapt to the ever-changing business landscape. With the economic concerns, and the changes in businesses resulting from the pandemic, doing more with less is the mandate. Those factors combined with business objectives and the role of the legal department changing, it is increasingly important for corporate legal departments to adopt technology.
In today’s digital world, those who fail to embrace technology risk falling behind. Here are some of the factors that make a case for the adoption of technology in legal.
Streamlining Processes
One of the primary benefits technology offers to corporate legal departments is the ability to streamline processes. With the help of tech, legal teams can automate some of their daily tasks. Contract review and due diligence can be automated, freeing up valuable time that can now be spent on more critical tasks. Automation can also help reduce errors and improve accuracy, resulting in high quality work being done in less time. Streamlining these processes results in a more efficient output from the legal department.
Legal Research
Technology offers value in helping legal teams conduct research more efficiently. Searching the vast amounts of information online can be time consuming and it can be difficult to efficiently find what you are looking for. With the help of AI-powered research tools, legal teams can more easily locate what they need, in less time and with improved accuracy. Tech can also help legal teams stay up-to-date with the latest legal developments, ensuring they are working with accurate and current information. Legal departments are struggling to get this accuracy and efficient and need to adopt technology to get there.
Collaboration and Communication
In the remote work environment, collaboration and communication can be challenging without technology. Tech can facilitate collaboration and communication within legal teams, and between legal and other departments. This makes it easier to work together on projects and share information. Video conferencing, online document collaboration platforms, document storage, secure online business architecture and other tools can help legal teams stay connected, regardless of where they are working.
Data Management and Analytics
The ability to manage and analyze data is a significant benefit. With large amounts of data being generated from various sources in legal departments, it can be challenging to manage it all. Leveraging tech allows legal teams to manage their data more effectively. This data can be used to make informed decisions based on near real-time data. Identifying trends, tracking performance metrics, and optimizing processes just got a lot easier. The outcome of this is more efficient and effective legal departments.
One of the concerns of adopting technology is the learning curve and management of the technology, as well as licenses and user management. For legal teams that want to adopt technology without the burden of being responsible for the tech, they can look at outsourcing to ALSPs who have already adopted technology.
Adopting Technology vs. Outsourcing
The benefits of technology in corporate legal departments are clear. However, if the team is hesitant to adopt technology, there are ways they can still advance their processes and save money. Working with an ALSP is a great option. ALSPs offer a wide range of services, they utilize technology and typically have affordable rates, with experienced lawyers. Technology-driven solutions employed by ALSPs allow corporate legal departments to access the benefits of technology without the need to invest in expensive software or hire additional staff.