We’ve rounded up a few of the most exciting things happening in legal technology, from ethical debates over AI to new software designed to make research a breeze.
With all of the fast-paced changes happening in the global legal technology industry, it can be difficult to keep up with everything. This is a vital industry that takes on sensitive and important tasks, so we’ve gathered a few key updates from throughout the legal tech sector, from start-ups to the implementation of artificial intelligence. We already have several events planned for the upcoming year that take a look at the amazing innovation – from the return of our flagship conference, Future Lawyer Week UK, to new horizons, 2023 will be a busy year for us (and legal tech) – keep reading to find out more!
Legal Tech Start-Up Celebrates €1.2 Pre-Seed Round for Software
Goodlegal celebrates €1.2 million pre-seed round for its software, the “one-stop-shop for legal compliance”. The product is designed to support all legal issues, but the editor and text analysis and ability to check the texts compiled take the cake. The software also aims to empower new users, such as startups looking to quickly draw essential business documents.
By offering support for all legal issues, this software demonstrates Goodlegal’s approach to a market often focused on specific sub-sections of legal practice. This “bigger picture” ideal is part of the company’s goal for the software to become an industry-accepted legal operating system. They’re setting their sights on major milestones, like intelligent document processing, and with this first impressive launch, they seem to have a bright future.
Effects of AI in Legal Technology
Artificial intelligence (AI) can provide invaluable assistance to legal professionals – from analysing large volumes of data to document creation to general streamlining of entire processes. By not only increasing productivity gains when using AI, but lowering costs developed from humans going through routine, simple tasks, has caused a massive investment into the tech.
However, AI is theorised to have adverse effects on the industry. A redistribution of routine jobs from humans to machines, and an evolving workforce, entry-level jobs may decline, changing the organisational structure of law firms – recruitment may fall, but planning, succession, and evolution will take priority. A 2017 Accenture Technology Strategy survey found that nearly 50% of respondents think that AI will spark a change in their business models; 53% said AI will enable them to take on new market opportunities. Ethics also takes a major role in the conversation, with cloud-based data, autonomous systems, and distribution becoming increasingly less-secure outside of our borders. Perhaps more relevant to the everyday worker, the difference in performance between machine and human raises concern: ‘what are the core values of the legal profession? What defines a solicitor or lawyer?’
As society wraps its head around AI, its implications, and its impacts, law professionals are open to explore its benefits – and even argue for the technology to be welcomed into everyday use. Solicitors, law firms, in-house legal departments, every stakeholder in this sector has an opportunity to not only take on cost- and headache-saving AI tech, but prove there’s a future in allowing technology to learn, adapt, and work with us.
It’s Here: A Keyboard Designed for Lawyers!
Mechanical keyboards are revered by gamers, programmers, writers, and many other frequent-typists as the superior category of keyboards; they’re sturdy, accurate, tactical, and often designed for a specific purpose (such as PC gaming). But up until now, there hasn’t been one expressly for lawyers – that’s where the LegalType comes in.
With programmable firmware that opens up avenues for customisation, a mechanical design, and software that works in tandem with the keys, the LegalType is a game-changer. The keyboard was developed by Daniela Sameco, the CEO of the company that produces the keyboards, Polygotte. Sameco was a medical and legal interpreter when she thought of creating an ergonomic, high-functioning, smart legal keyboard that would save lawyers time and money – and the LegalType was born.
Besides those who already own software that helps with legal typing, or have already mastered macros, the LegalType is specifically designed to help you. This tactical, comfortable, and unique keyboard can be used to ease up the pressure of many lawyers’ workload!
Fact & Issue Finder: The Latest From LexisNexis Streamlines Legal Research
LexisNexis, the global data and analytics company, has developed Fact & Issue Finder, an AI-assisted tool that smartly organises research by practice area. Designed by and for modern attorneys, the software allows the user to conduct days of research in a matter of minutes. But what sets it apart from competitors is its user-friendly capabilities; the developers created automatically-generated search queries tailored to over 6,000 topics across six major practice areas. With topical research becoming more and more common, the taxonomy team at LexisNexis implemented these topics and queries to generate highly-precise searches. The AI facet of the software will take on narrow searches and eliminate any particular term in a given query that would have caused the results from any content category to come up empty – and continue searching without that extra term.
What does all of this mean? Fact & Issue Finder allows users to add as many facts, issues, or words to get the best and most relevant information without wasting time on searches that would, otherwise, yield no results. With the software, attorneys should be able to spend their time making decisions with relevant information, rather than finding specific searches to get to said information.
Josef, the No-Code Legal Automation Platform Raises $3.5 Million to Expand U.S. Presence
The Australian company, Josef, previously raised $2.5 million in 2021 to fund the platform. The software is a no-code tool that enables legal professionals to automate common tasks. Today, it has raised AU$5.2 million, or approximately $3.5 million USD; they plan to use this to expand their U.S. presence and reach more in-house legal teams. This will allow them to assist not just small teams, but major corporate legal teams globally, whether that means streamlining operations or addressing unmet justice – thus cementing themselves in their tole as ‘the infrastructure layer on which the future of automated legal service delivery is being built’.
Amid a tough market for funding, they’ve managed to raise around a total $6.7 million since their start in 2017. Tom Dreyfus, CEO, said ‘We raised the round that we need right now’.
Legal technology is a rapidly-growing, evolving industry, and we’re honoured to get to work with the innovators that make it all happen. We have several exciting legal tech events coming up for a busy 2023!
What’s On:
Future Lawyer Week UK is back for its sixth edition in London! On 24th – 26th April 2023, our flagship conference returns for three days of panels, networking opportunities, workshops, and a hackathon, all focused on innovation in the legal sector.
For the first time, Future Lawyer Week touches down in Africa from the 21st -23rd February 2023! We’ll be in Uganda with The Innovation Village, Kampala, for three days of everything legal tech. The agenda is packed, including a tour of The Innovation Village, an ‘Access to Justice’ Hackathon, and a full-day conference.
Legal Innovators is back in California for the second time in June. Founded by Artificial Lawyer, this two-day conference is your chance to network, learn, and share over the amazing intersection between law and technology.
Not sure if these conferences fit you? We have an event for everyone – and we’ve broken 11 of them down into a blog.
Other Cosmonauts Services
At Cosmonauts, we’re master capital raisers and event producers! We organise and tailor events for specific areas of technology – from green tech to IP to space commerce, we aim to provide events for everyone in an evolving world. We offer partnerships, sponsorship packages, and slots in our agendas for industry professionals to speak, present, or demonstrate products that deal with key issues in their sector. Take a look at our events page and see what could work for you!
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