There’s little question a real legal tech movement is underway world-wide — and one that’s accelerating at much faster clip than ever before.
It’s different than from just a year or two ago. Being in Amsterdam a couple weeks ago for the Lexpo legal tech and innovation conference and a Dutch Legal Tech Meetup the feeling was palpable.
A combination of things appears to be accelerating the movement.
- Pressure from consumers of legal services (corporations or consumers) who are not going to accept work from unaccountable law firms who are not driven by data and predictions.
- Legal tech companies with much lower costs of tech development seizing an opportunity.
- Use of data is being demanded by smart consumers of legal services – don’t tell me what you think, but what you should know based on the data in your hands.
- Younger professionals (tech, law, business, finance) who abhor inefficiencies and see how humans + machines are better than humans alone.
- No longer accepting from law firms an attitude (intended or not) that this is the way we do things because we’re a special group exempt from the sound business practices of 2017.
- The demand for access to legal services/access to justice no longer accepting lawyers, state bar associations and the American Bar Association saying they care and that they are acting when in fact the number of people without access to legal services continues to rise, and are likely protecting their own, the lawyers.
Professor Daniel Katz did a great job at the Dutch Legal Tech Meetup driving a debate about this movment with law students, practicing lawyers, in-house professionals and legal tech entrepreneurs. I told him afterwards it would be great to if we could scale him to drive such debates world-wide.
Seeing his drive and the others driving this legal tech movement, who knows what’s coming.