Skip to main content

AI and Automation Experts Transform Law Departments

Across the globe, the traditional legal profession is still very labor-intensive. Higher salaries and the limited use of automation has driven up the cost of performing even the most mundane routine tasks. That's going to change. The disruption has already begun.

The intense pressure from senior executives on their legacy corporate legal department has pushed lawyers to consider robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and natural language processing benefits, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner.

In fact, they now predict that law robots (or lawbots) will handle a quarter of the typical enterprise internal legal support requests by 2023. The virtual legal assistant (VLA) will be commonplace.

Legal Process Automation Market Development 

"While VLAs, legal chatbots, and lawbots may seem like hype, their use in legal departments can yield significant benefits," said Zack Hutto, director at Gartner. "This will significantly disrupt the legal technology marketplace."

VLAs can help legal departments improve efficiency by streamlining matter intake, triaging legal requests, determining the necessity of legal review and automating the routine legal workflow. According to a Gartner survey of legal professionals increasing productivity in these ways is the top driver of automation.

VLAs can also ease employee concerns about anonymity in situations where they perceive a risk in simply asking for information, such as whistleblower reporting and harassment claims.

Legal departments will benefit through increased efficiency gains, improved employee satisfaction, and more opportunities to retask legal experts to much higher value activities. These sought-after benefits will open up the market to new entrants who can provide self-service applications with AI and conversational interfaces.

According to the Gartner assessment, legal bots are already demonstrating value and versatility in citizen and consumer law. For example, they have been developed to provide legal guidance for victims of crime and people seeking a divorce in the U.K. market.

Moreover, platforms such as Amazon Lex, IBM Watson and Slack enable legal-focused vendors and services providers to rapidly address the needs of various legal functions and domains without having to develop a core technology or infrastructure backbone.

Gartner predicts a quarter of internal legal requests will be handled by VLAs in just a few years. Its experts caution, however, that legal departments risk an overreliance on VLA. They should be adopted as part of a broad legal services strategy because a piecemeal approach with poorly designed VLAs may be confusing or intrusive rather than helpful.

Gartner predicts that 33 percent of corporate legal departments will have a dedicated legal technology expert to support the increasing automation of core in-house workflows, by 2023. That's because while standardized, repeatable legal workflows have great potential for automation, existing in-house counsel may not have the technology leadership needed to support these initiatives.

For example, just 5 percent of legal departments indicate that all commercial contract management is treated as new and managed manually. In the next 3 years, 40 percent of corporate legal departments intend to increase spending on legal IT systems or software by 10 percent or more.

"Despite the clear opportunities to automate, and the intent to do so, most legal departments simply don’t have the staff for legal analytics," said Mr. Hutto. "Just one in five reports having a technology or innovation counsel or access to a data analyst."

Outlook for Legal Automation Applications Growth

Gartner analysts believe that as core in-house legal work becomes increasingly reliant on technology, legal departments will shift their talent acquisition and retention strategies to address the need for dedicated legal technology experts.

Forward-thinking legal leaders need to make moves to hire these skills today. They are already at a premium across multiple business functions, so it’s unlikely to be quick or easy.

In the near future, these skills are likely to become scarcer as automation becomes more mainstream in several areas. Therefore, the savvy chief counsel or lead attorney is already recruiting the talent and expertise required to develop a sustainable competitive advantage.

Popular posts from this blog

Global EV Charging Revenue to Exceed $300B

During 2022, fuel prices increased very quickly, partly due to a number of macroeconomic reasons. In fact, the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic are still impacting fuel prices, with many oil refineries having reduced capacity due to a prior fall in demand. Those significant events and other trends have created a demand for a growing variety of Electric Vehicles (EVs). While EVs have existed for decades, they really became a viable option for more consumers during the past five years. However, although EVs are suitable for some buyer needs, their usability is constrained by the current availability of battery charging infrastructure. EV Charging Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, revenue from electric vehicle charging will exceed $300 billion globally by 2027 -- that's up from $66 billion in 2023. Regardless, the Juniper analysis found that fragmentation in battery charging networks is restricting further EV adoption in some

Human Resource Transformation Enabled by IT

Many senior executives are taking a proactive approach to digital business transformation in order to achieve their strategic goals. Delivering revenue growth and profitability is now imperative for every function, including Human Resources (HR). The top 3 priority HR technologies this year are skills management, learning experience platforms, and internal talent marketplaces, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. "With a tumultuous global economy, HR technology leaders face a balancing act in 2023," said Sam Grinter, director at Gartner . "Leaders must anticipate greater levels of accountability and demand for measurable outcomes to justify new technology investments." HR Transformation Market Development Forty-four percent of HR leaders report driving better business outcomes is their number one strategic priority for HR technology transformation over the next three years. Growth in headcount and skills (26 percent) and cost optimization (17 p

How Savvy Pioneers Lead the Future of Work

Hybrid and fully remote work are inevitable in the Global Networked Economy where high-performance talent demands flexibility from employers. To enable these progressive work models, organizations are investing in a wide range of technologies to support more agile types of employment.  According to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), leading organizations will spend nearly $1 billion on the Future of Work (FoW) in 2023 -- that's an increase of 18.8 percent over 2022. Future of Work Market Development "Work models continue to evolve, but 37 percent of decision-makers in a recent global survey note that Remote and Hybrid work models will be an embedded part of accepted work practices, supported by a continued shift to the cloud, increasingly instrumented and interconnected physical workplaces, and intelligent digital workspaces," said Holly Muscolino, group vice president at IDC . According to the IDC assessment, organizations must mak