During the pandemic we have seen many incentives and new legal tech solutions in legal market, especially as the legal industry scrambled to accommodate remote workflows during the pandemic. What is more, in 2021, the LegalTech market generated revenues of 18.43 billion U.S. dollars worldwide, with the market forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over six percent for the period to 2025. In that year, revenues are set to reach 25.17 billion U.S. dollars. It is unavoidable that the global LegalTech market will undergo sizeable growth in the coming years (Statista).
In one of my previous articles I discussed about challenges and potential benefits of collaboration platforms in legal industry. The ultimate goal of such digital platforms is to use data analytics based on previous legal experience and break information asymmetry with purpose to facilitate the decision on selecting the right legal service faster. The legal clients also want faster legal services at a competitive price. With that being said, legal service providers only have two options. They may either work the old way and charge less, or they may increase their efficiency and perform more of a higher quality work per time unit. It is true that some legal work is more complex and could not be optimised so efficiently, however majority of repetitive legal work can be standardised almost entirely. The essence of all LegalTech tools and solutions currently being on the market (Practice Management, Document Automation, Contract Management, Contract Review, Process Improvement and Project Management, Predictive Justice, Online dispute Resolutions, Blockchain and Smart Contracts, Legal Marketplace, e-signatures, etc.) is to work smarter rather than harder.
The fact is that legal services are like any other services on the market (whether we like it or not), and this is why legal professionals are existentially depended on selling their services to the customers. Development and utilisation of different LegalTech tools and solutions, digital collaborative platforms, including the ones that are based on sharing economy principles, as explained in my previous article, have the overall positive and accelerative effect on the entire LegalTech industry. Only by carefully implementing proper LegalTech solution into legal practice can lead to more effective work, higher quality of legal services and lastly to offering more competitive legal fees. Concentrated legal competition on the legal market (and also on digital platforms) requires the necessity for usage of different LegalTech solutions. The combination of digital platforms and experts who are effectively providing legal services by usage of LegalTech, have potential to fulfil increasing needs for solving legal problems to even higher extent, and importantly to improve legal certainty and lastly overall Access to Justice (A2J).
Tell me what do you think? Do you thing Collaborative Platforms have positive impact on overall LegalTech development? Feel free to post your thoughts and comments.
This article was prepared by Marcel Hajd.
