An Introduction to Mapping and Classifying LegalTech

The LegalTech Book: The Legal Technology Handbook for Investors, Entrepreneurs and FinTech Visionaries

MK: I needed to know how to properly approach this area, so decided to read a book excerpt.

What does it do?

• LegalTech introduces changes in the ways legal teams work —> affects the way legal knowledge is assessed, acquired, processed and delivered.

Legal Research

• Quite clear, various databases (paid or free).

Matter Management

• Automation of reporting, standardization of workflows, collaboration facilitation, faster search, maintenance of precedents, recording approvals, etc.

• May include process management that can exist as standalone solutions.

Subtopics

• Billing / legal spend management. Allows demonstration of the ROI to stakeholders – analyze the line items in invoices and reject the ones that don’t look good.

• Knowledge management and expertise automation. Team’s know-how, need to keep within the firm and make easily accessible. [MK: lots of tools doing this and not calling themselves LegalTech, too]

Contracts

• A huge battleground for LegalTech innovation. See below for examples.

Drafting aids

• Automate the creation of new contracts.

• Can be straightforward filling in of boilerplates or using question-response sequences to create a contract.

Contract Review + Due Diligence

• Automate the review of existing contracts and other agreements.

• Simplest way: compare against a template/boilerplate.

• More complex: tag certain sections for human review. Learn which bits are likely to deviate from the median. Use case: review of multiple contracts during due diligence.

• Can be used for risk management – review of historical contracts.

• Useful to identify cases like UK being part of EU and applying EU legislation broadly.

Management

• Contract repository, obligation mapping and tracking, task management, [MK: expiration date management and renewal], etc.

Analytics

• Extraction and monitoring of data related to the organization’s contracting obligations, trends, efficiency, etc.

Digital Signature

• No need to explain why (simple, provable, time-stamped, etc.)

• Increased use of signing on mobile devices.

Positive Consequences

• Governance – the right signatory every time.

• Contract retention.

• Speed – system chases signatories and nudges them when they’re late.

• Future-proofing – integration with matter management and contracts systems.

E-Discovery

• Managing the identification, collection and analysis of electronically stored info.

Intellectual Property Rights

• Automation of tracking of patents, trademarks and other IPRs.

Others

• Privacy and compliance management (GDPR, anyone?)

• [MK: KYC and AML assistance tools]

• Online dispute resolution tools – facilitate faster and cheaper resolution of potential and actual litigation.

• Litigation prediction – based on past track record predict an outcome of a case based on the court’s (or even individual judge’s) past track records —> choose the right strategy and tactics.

Source