The legal world is made up of five traditional players: legislators, administrators, judges, legal professionals, and academics.
However, following the digital revolution and the advent of the internet, a new player has emerged in the legal world, facilitating the role of the five traditional players, enabling better creation and dissemination of law, establishing a concept of predictable justice, and facilitating the drafting of contracts and legal documents, as well as the training of 2.0 lawyers.
In some cases, this player is seen as a competitor to the traditional players and presents itself as a sixth player in the legal world. This is known as legaltech or legal technology.
Richard Susskind makes the difference between lawtech and legaltech. Lawtech refers to all technologies and innovations that enable consumers of law to better understand the law and serve themselves. Lawtech is intended for litigants and clients.
Legaltech, on the other hand, is a technological solution that aims to improve the legal operations of legal professionals. It eliminates low-value-added and low-paid tasks in the daily life of legal professionals so that they can focus on high-value-added tasks. It also refers to a legal start-up[1] that creates technological solutions to facilitate the work of legal professionals. Legaltech is intended for legal professionals.
This distinction between lawtech and legaltech allows us to classify tools according to their purpose and benefits.
There are also several types of legaltech and lawtech:
1. Legaltech for drafting legal documents.
These legaltech tools automate repetitive tasks performed by lawyers.
They are often technologies that assist lawyers and legal advisors in drafting contracts or notaries in drafting legal documents. They also enable contract management and execution. It is in this context that we refer to “smart contracts[2] .”
• Examples include: Henchman, GINO -legaltech
Henchman is a tool designed to improve the contract drafting process. It has several features, including saving, comparing, and editing contract clauses using artificial intelligence.
The added value of Henchman is that it saves lawyers from having to search for clauses in their contracts or in their EDM[3] , allowing them to easily access them or create their own list of clauses based on the contracts they are drafting.
Gino-Legaltech is a tool designed to improve contract management and execution.
It allows users to extract data, compare contracts with other versions, negotiate contract terms with multiple parties, sign contracts, and make them tamper-proof using blockchain technology. [4]
The added value of Gino Legaltech is that it allows lawyers who have several contracts to better manage and view each one using figures and tables.
2. Legaltech for legal research
In practice, legal professionals are faced with enormous amounts of information. Legal research tools have been created in response to this need to classify and facilitate legal research.
These tools help professionals find exactly what they are looking for while filtering out information they deem unnecessary.
• Examples include Doctrine and Prédictice.
Doctrine allows lawyers to filter their searches as much as possible and follow the chronology of decisions. It allows lawyers to create their own legal watch on a specific legal topic, particularly in the area of case law[5] .
Prédictice: is the only search engine on the market that allows results to be sorted according to their meaning;
- provides a quantified overview of litigation: the tool calculates the probability of a dispute being resolved and estimates the amount of compensation likely to be obtained. This data can be exported in the form of a customizable report;
- Access legal sources cited in a legal document in a single click, regardless of its format.
3. Legal tech for legal certainty and electronic signatures
As law is a sensitive subject both in terms of its nature and its subject matter, professionals hold sensitive information about their clients.
This information, being digitized, can be subject to cyberattacks or disclosure.
To counter these unfortunate situations, technologies are available to protect important information and data and sign important documents wherever they are in the world.
• Examples : CLOSD, VitalSign.
Closd is a legaltech company that organizes the electronic signature process like a project management tool. The involvement of multiple parties and the creation of secure DATA ROOMS[6] facilitate the transmission of information and save professionals hours of time.
Its added value: clarity, transparency, and time savings.
VitalSign.fr is a signature solution with an integrated archiving system that allows documents to be stored for thirty years. This tool can be integrated into business software as it has an application programming interface. Its unique feature: The solution is also compatible with qualified signature certificate media for lawyers, notaries, and bailiffs thanks to the VitalKeys mold developed by Deep Block.
4. Legal tech for predictable justice
Predictive justice legal techs are technologies that enable legal professionals or magistrates to predict the outcome of a legal case during a trial.
Predictive justice is widely used in the United States in criminal cases by judges to anticipate repeat offenses.
It is also used by lawyers to calculate the probability of winning a case. We could therefore talk about predictable justice rather than predictive justice.
- Thus, it involves: Legalmetrics,
Legalmetrics: provides reliable and unique statistics on litigation involving a company or legal field.
Easy to use, LegalMetrics immediately provides you with the figures you need to guide your decision- making and reinforce your strategies. Consult the decisions on which the statistics are based for complete methodological transparency.
Present LegalMetrics reports to your clients, partners, or board to support your strategy.
5. Legaltech for legal secretarial services:
Processing a client request requires the involvement of several people and the application of several procedures.
The legal service provided varies depending on the complexity of the case. What may start out as a simple contract drafting exercise can end up in court. This is especially true since information that may seem insignificant to the client can prove decisive for the legal professional.
For better management, CRM and case management tools enable you to manage the entry and exit of a case perfectly.
- These include: LOP; UBIKAP
Lop is a tool that allows you to synthesize all the information scattered among multiple stakeholders. When viewing a case, you can access calendars, tasks, legal documents, and contacts in a single window.
The tool can be integrated with other office tools such as Word and Outlook. Finally, with an analytics option, the tool provides decision support for law firm management.
UBIKAP is a tool that helps with planning, for example, general meetings, keeping records of securities transactions, and electronic signature books. This platform allows you to centralize and sign all documents. It then organizes them into a hierarchy. It works like a legal assistant.
In addition to the legaltech companies mentioned above, there are others that are being created based on the practices of legal professionals. Legaltech companies, as new players in the legal field, are contributing to changes in the legal world.
There are also French lawtech companies that enable individuals to carry out legal transactions without going through legal professionals and to understand legal and administrative procedures.
Examples of lawtech companies include:
Legalstart, which enables entrepreneurs to manage all their legal needs themselves: setting up a business, registering a trademark, drafting an employment contract, or even recovering an unpaid invoice.
It is intended for individuals.
It has a legaltech section: Legalstart pro, which carries out formalities for legal professionals.
Testamento helps individuals draft their wills, draw up an inventory of their assets, and store these documents in safes. They offer assistance with estate planning.
We are seeing smarter and more independent clients who question the answers they receive from their legal professionals.
Due to the lack of contact, information technology has seen incredible growth. Legaltech has therefore helped to support the legal profession.
Finally, given the plethora of tools and start-ups appearing in the legal landscape, all seeking to sell a tool that will “change your life,”
the question remains: What are the essential criteria to consider when integrating legaltech into a law firm?
To integrate legaltech into a law firm, six criteria are essential:
1. Value creation
A legaltech tool must improve your productivity in order to best satisfy your clients.
Productivity can be improved in various ways.
It can involve automating time-consuming tasks, assisting in the search for legal sources, or managing non-legal but business-related tasks.
The tool must improve the productivity of the entire organization or department by facilitating the processing of certain legal operations.
The function of the tool and its value to the organization must be clear and obvious.
2. Integration
Your organization has its own digital ecosystem and range of tools, such as Microsoft Office.
The legaltech tool you choose must be able to interact with other tools. It is not recommended that it be isolated from other tools and require special handling to use. This would create an additional cognitive burden on users, who would ultimately stop using it.
3. Flexibility
The tool must be intuitive to use and easy for any user to understand. It is common to see most organizations opt for a tool that has multiple features. These types of tools ultimately prove to be overly complex due to their multiple features and different settings. This delays users’ adoption of the tool.
4. Data security
The integrated tool must comply with your organization’s code of ethics and protect personal or sensitive data. This criterion is very important due to the sensitive nature of the confidential information handled in legal operations.
5. Information sharing
The client is one of the reasons why one tool is used over another. As a legal professional, the tool you choose must allow you to easily share information with your client in order to simplify your reports and improve your relationship.
Also,
A legal transaction may require the involvement of several different legal professionals: a notary, a judicial officer.
Depending on the transaction, your tool should facilitate the transfer of information to other parties. Otherwise, it will be difficult to use on a daily basis.
In conclusion
These criteria are generic and suitable for all types of organizations. Other criteria may be added depending on the size of your firm or department. And depending on your practice if you are an internationally oriented firm or a firm specializing in local law. Regardless of the nature of your organization and the evaluation of the criteria.
The ultimate proof of a tool’s success within your organization is to test it on a handful of volunteers who will evaluate its added value, flexibility, data security, and information sharing.
Hyacinthe-Arnaud Tiacoh
Legal-ops consultant : www.linkedin.com/in/hyacinthe-arnaud-tiacoh-284776181
Ivorian legaltech association : https://www.linkedin.com/company/ivorianlegaltechassociation
Digital & AI Project Manager at LPA – Law Firm : https://www.lpalaw.com/
Juris-intelligence : https://juris-intelligence.org/
[1] A start-up is defined as an organization seeking an industrializable business model that provides a new solution to a problem encountered by a user. The concept of risk is present in all start-ups. Indeed, they operate in an uncertain environment, that of a new market that they must explore.
[2] A smart contract is a contract with predefined terms and conditions that is executed automatically once the conditions are met. It allows data to be stored and transmitted in a highly secure manner.
[3] EDM, or electronic document management, is SaaS or on-premise software that handles the entire lifecycle of digital documents, from creation to deletion, including modification, publication, and distribution. In other words, EDM is a set of features that manage document flows within a company.
[4] Blockchain is a transparent, secure technology for storing and transmitting information that operates without a central control body. It is a secure, distributed database that contains the history of all exchanges between its users since its creation. It is shared by its various users, without an intermediary, which allows everyone to verify the validity of the chain.
[5] All the rulings and judgments handed down by the courts and tribunals to resolve a given legal situation.
[6] A virtual data room allows users to share documents securely and serves as a reference platform for organizing transactional due diligence: disposals, fundraising, mergers and acquisitions, out-licensing, etc. This secure software allows users to easily upload thousands of files, control access, and collaborate securely, while tracking user activity with detailed statistics and user-friendly tools such as a question and answer module, document annotations, and instant alerts.
