This is episode #2 of our monthly series and I’m going to bring you information about job news, moves, analysis, growth areas, how to get a job in legal tech and what job mandates to look out for. These videos will help professionals in the legal sector understand the legal tech market a bit better. Last month we talked a lot about the size of the legal market seeing billions and billions and billions of dollars of growth and more and more platforms are becoming available but what is very very sure is that chatGPT and various other generative AI platforms are expanding at a rate of knots and many people are starting to build their own platforms to do some of the tasks that were previously done by some of their colleagues. I’m implore you as I did last month to have a look at sweetlegaltech.com, or find them on LinkedIn. They talk a lot about the jobs coming out across Europe mainly but it’s good to see what’s happening in other parts of the world which will no doubt come here and affect us here in Africa, the roles will be similar. It’s quite interesting to see what skill sets they’re looking for, those that are crossing over from traditional law to legal tech. They are seeing a massive uptake in legal tech product management roles, project design, design thinkers, tech solutions engineers, data analysts and the list goes on and on, but those are the core areas.
I’m seeing a bit of an increase in some law firms putting those legal tech roles as part of the knowledge management division which I don’t necessarily think is good idea, it really depends on what the objectives of each role are, but I think if you’re going to improve the process of business then they should be sitting within the business next to the partners, next the associates that are delivering the work. I’ll give you a bad example but it’s relevant, when law firms hire business development people, they put them within the marketing team but for me business development is about understanding the finances the company, the relationships with the client, how much is that client spending on legal services. It is much more of an asset management type role if you like, and a client relationship role and I don’t think it is within marketing.
Very interesting bit of news came out today from law.com where they mentioned some of our friends here in South Africa, Bowmans, Webber Wentzel, Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr all talk to law.com about technology. Bowman said that they were seeing a 50% reduction in time used by lawyers in document review. Webber Wentzel estimated saving between 20 and 50% of the time on their litigation and M&A due diligence. So these leading firms are already employing a lot of legal tech and cutting down their costs….
Watch Rob Green from Umbiie.com below for the full 11 minute video…
