How digital transformation is impacting law firms in 2020

As we head into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, industries are becoming more and more impacted by digital transformation – law is one of them.

New technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and big data are changing the way businesses work and streamlining operations.

Over the past few years, AI has been proving extremely useful in the legal industry by making legal research more efficient.

According to Analytics Insight, “AI assists litigators perform due diligence to uncover background information. Deploying AI, litigators can perform the tedious tasks of legal research and contract reviews. AI-powered machine learning algorithms can read through a multitude of documents and extract vital information quickly without errors.”

The use of robotic process automation (RPA) also helps streamline law operations by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks such as drafting contracts and preparing documents.

Chatbots – which are bots based on artificial intelligence – are also helping law firms with their customer service operations. Through these chatbots, they can offer customer service 24 hours a day, seven days a week on legal matters.

According to The Law Society in the UK, the legal sector are also using chatbots in ways such as access to justice, where “some chatbots have been designed to help individuals with a legal problem who are unable to ask a lawyer (or whose issue would not be worth even the most modest legal fee).”

An example of this is the DoNotPay app in the UK which helps people appeal parking tickets.

Other ways include deploying client-facing chatbots to streamline the processing of new queries which can reduce secretarial time and “ensure that legitimate queries are directed to the most relevant departments.”

When it comes to big data, the legal industry is able to benefit from predictive analytics. Legal analytics help lawyers make decisions based on data to build legal strategies, such as “knowing the probability of a specific motion outcome, how seemingly unrelated cases connect or how much a settlement award could be,” according to LexisNexis.

Cybersecurity is another important aspect of technology that law firms must take note of, as client information security and confidentiality must be adhered to in the legal industry to maintain attorney-client privilege.

Therefore, upskilling and reskilling lawyers and legal professionals in these new technologies are essential for law firms and businesses to thrive in an era of digital transformation, especially post-COVID-19 as remote working becomes the new norm.

With the rise of online learning in the past few months, law firms can quickly get up to speed with the latest technologies and upskill their workforce.

Legal professionals can sign up for online courses in Ethics and Law in Data and Analytics as well as Artificial Intelligence and the Law. 

There are also a number of Cybersecurity Law and Policy online courses for legal professionals to upskill in this area, one of the fastest-growing areas in law.

Digital transformation is here to stay in 2020 and is revolutionising the law industry. Upskill now to ensure you don’t get left behind, especially at the rapid rate that technology is advancing.