La LegalTech, acronym derived from the English expression Legal Technology, refers in a broad sense to the application of digital technologies to legal services. Appeared in the United States and the United Kingdom at the end of the 2000s, this term refers to technologies that provide individuals and legal professionals with tools to help them with management tasks such as invoicing, filing documents or accounting. Today, LegalTech also includes the AI ofmachine learning and contract management solutions such as CLM, all of which support the legal as a driver of value for the company.
What are the current LegalTech technologies?
Some of the many examples of legal technologies that help lawyers and legal professionals provide legal services include: contract management, automation, electronic signature, e-invoicing or even artificial intelligence within CLM.
Indeed, a large part of the work of an internal legal team consists of drafting, modifying, and researching information to lead to the completion of complex contracts. All of these tasks naturally require a lot of time and attention. Technology therefore makes it possible tolighten these processes And ofincrease workload and productivity legal teams.
Thus, LegalTech helps lawyers to complete their tasks more quickly and with fewer errors. Technology allows legal teams toassume their role as a revenue generator by automating and streamlining legal tasks to focus on more strategic initiatives.
A short history of LegalTech: from the 1970s to today
Of the computer-aided legal technology (CALR) — which was in fact the Google of case law in the 70s — to the end-to-end contract lifecycle management (CLM), legal technology has evolved over time to help legal teams take on the burden of text-based work with increasing efficiency.
The 1970s and 1980s saw the start of the adoption of technology by lawyers: more and more companies created tools dedicated to research, word processing, and case management.
Before the American company Lexis Do not launch CALR (Computer Assisted Legal Research), lawyers carried out their research by examining case law and consulting legal librarians. It was a tedious process that resulted in hours and hours of never-ending work. But in 1973, LexisNexis (known at the time as Lexis) created theThe red terminal “UBIQ”, allowing lawyers to conduct research independently.
Personal computers and word processing software also took off in the 1970s and 1980s. Lawyers then adopted these tools to create, edit, and store important legal documents in half as much time as usual.
Despite the increasing adoption of LegalTech in the 1970s and 1980s, many legal processes remained more or less unchanged. These tools were primarily designed to help legal teams work more effectively within existing systems, by gradually digitizing manual work.
The turn of the 1990s and 2000s
In the 1990s and 2000s, the legal industry began to push the boundaries of existing systems. La Internet bubble has grown (and broken up), and more and more tech companies have emerged.
Previously, computers were connected to smaller, more private networks, and lawyers could only send e-mails within these networks. The explosion of the Internet in the 1990s therefore inspired lawyers. new ways to use the web and communicate beyond small networks.
Likewise, the Cloud took off in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when several business leaders imagined a future in which businesses would store essential files and host applications there.
This turning point opened the way for other types of innovative legal technology. For example, laws like DESIGN (Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act) and QUETA (Uniform Electronic Transactions Act) In the United States have legalized electronic signatures and allowed lawyers to securely digitize one of their most manual processes.
These transformations laid the groundwork for a new expansion of cloud-based software and what we now call digital transformation of the legal sector.
The digital transformation of the legal sector: from the years 2010 to today
Over the past decade, more and more LegalTech companies have appeared on the market and created tools that allow legal teams to optimize their processes. Based on the cloud and the growth of the Internet, they are at the heart of recent technological innovations in the legal sector.
Legal technology tools such as CLM, legal task management and electronic signature have transformed over time into robust solutions that manage end-to-end processes.
This upheaval accompanied the evolution of legal responsibilities. In addition to being a risk evaluator, The legal department is now considered a strategic business partner that contributes to the result. As a result, internal teams are using technology to gain analytical insights and process improvements. Likewise, smart contracts, blockchain, and AI are relatively new, but are experiencing increasing adoption.
Together, these tools help the legal sector be an innovative business driver rather than a bottleneck.
