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You’ve heard the old adage: “The only constant is change.”
It’s a double-edged sword when it comes to legal tech.
On the one hand, new innovations and improvements hold the thrilling promise of helping teams get more competitive, more productive, more profitable, and more secure.
On the other hand, what’s cutting-edge one year may leave you barely cutting it a few years down the road.
That’s why it’s so important to stay on top of emerging trends in legal technology — not because you need to sign up for every new, shiny thing, but because you want to harness the advantages technology creates and prepare your organization for the future.
Last year, we brought you 10 legal tech trends driving success in the legal industry. We’re following up on that with our latest report, 23 Legal Technology Insights for 2023, which includes thoughtful analysis of major trends, comments from industry experts, and tips to help you make the most of the tech in your organization. Here’s a snapshot of some of the key technology trends for 2023.
Want to skip straight to the good stuff? For deeper coverage of all 23 insights, download the full report now. (And don’t miss our bonus coverage of ChatGPT.)
With adaptable, scalable, configurable automation, low-/no-code platforms increase efficiency without the need for IT support, enabling teams to automate low-value, repeatable work quickly and easily.
Not only does this help remove the innovation burden from IT, it also empowers lawyers and staff to replicate and automate their organization’s documents, templates, workflows, and processes so they can focus on client service and other strategic objectives. Lawyers can create and manage their own solutions in less time and at a lower cost.
“Modern legal organizations constantly face increasing output demands and must find ways to deliver superior services with fewer resources. Process automation technologies can be powerful forces in achieving scale.”
— Mike Haven, Head of Legal Operations at Intel and President of CLOC
Businesses are now zeroing in on the solutions that truly make a difference and uniting their teams around consolidated platforms. In addition to creating a seamless user experience, relying on a central platform ensures teams can find and do what they need in the moment of need.
“As more capabilities are centralized to a single solution, adoption will increase and further enable the rich collaboration legal teams need for a successful modern practice.”
— Kandi McElroy, Executive Administrator at Bradley & Riley, PC
While many organizations will continue to use a hybrid-cloud system, those that want to position themselves ideally for the future are seeking cloud-native solutions. That’s because cloud-native solutions take optimal advantage of the cloud’s elasticity and scalability and reduce dependency on infrastructure while providing “work from anywhere” capabilities.
“Customers are moving from on-prem to the cloud because it enables lawyers, assistants, or anyone else to work and not have to worry about where they are. They don't have to drive into the office on Saturday to complete a request. Organizations can truly future-proof their operations with the flexible solutions top talent and younger generations expect and the security you require.”
— Craig Bayer, Document Management Consultant at Optiable
M365 and Microsoft Teams are the core places that people get work done when they are online. Having a consistent experience within each of these platforms helps users avoid the disruption of reorienting to a new way of working every time they transition to a new task. This is why seamless integrations are so powerful and should be considered critical components of any successful desktop configuration.
“What we’re seeing is that law firms, in-house teams, and others deciding to go to the cloud are looking for tight integrations between multiple core systems to help elevate the value and adoption of foundational technologies.”
— Jason Mills, Director at Verlata
Cybercrime remains a serious threat to law firms and businesses, with the average data breach costing $4.35 million. But the good news is that recovery can be much quicker and less costly than it has been in the past — with the right preparation. What does that preparation entail? Effective incident response plans, and better tools to prevent breaches from happening in the first place.
“Everything that happens in our system is logged so that if there is an attack, we know exactly where the people have been and what they left, and then we can take counter measures.”
— John Hunter, Chief Information Officer at Council of Europe
Technology offers great promise to law firms, legal teams, and the public sector. Higher productivity and profitability, better collaboration, increased security, more satisfied team members… and so much more. We look forward to seeing these promises become a reality as more teams harness these trends and take advantage of all legal tech has to offer.
There’s a lot more to come in 2023 than what we’ve shared here. Get the full story — plus all the insights, stats, analysis, and tips — in 23 Legal Technology Insights for 2023.
