Technology

In the second instalment of our ‘Ask the Expert’ series, sponsored by Insight Legal, Kerrie Machin, of cybersecurity experts Mitigo Group, looks at how hybrid working can lead to additional cybersecurity risks for growing law firms.

A former Team GB badminton player who abandoned his dreams of Olympic gold to become a solicitor and now a legal tech entrepreneur has launched a digital contracting product.

Non-lawyers will disrupt the legal technology market such as to create a “tipping point”, probably in the next five years, the outgoing head of Lawtech UK has predicted.

Two lawtech start-ups have secured significant investment – one a software platform aimed at corporate in-house legal teams and the other a one-stop shop for the legal needs of SMEs.

An app for SMEs and individuals which uses artificial intelligence to help diagnose and solve legal problems has almost completed its largest investment round so far.

PocketLaw, a start-up aiming to provide a one-stop shop for the legal needs of SMEs, has secured further funding of £1.2m, while an online divorce service has named a top judge as an advisor.

An online dispute resolution platform would help solve the problem of late payment debt by providing SMEs with a quick and cheap alternative to traditional lawyer-based solutions.

Clients should be put at the heart of legal technology by law firms, including being asked for consent before artificial intelligence is deployed, solicitors have been told.

The past year has seen a “step change” in the adoption of legal technology and innovation, in part as a result of Covid-19, a major piece of new research has found. However, significant barriers remain.

Access to judicial data should be made easier to increase public trust, while fears it will be used to create accurate predictions of what judges will do are overblown, a seminar heard last week.

The average annual growth rate for investment in UK lawtech companies over the past three years has hit 101%, a much bigger number than that seen in sectors such as finance or health.

A house in Kent is the first being sold using a blockchain network that connects conveyancers with estate agents and mortgage lenders.

The extent to which legal work can be reduced purely to administration and process has been overstated and in fact “lawyers are needed for all legal jobs”, Professor Richard Susskind has acknowledged.

Lawyers have been reluctant to engage with technology partly because law firm partners haven’t given junior staff enough time to learn how it can help them, according to a government-backed report.

The Master of the Rolls has hailed the launch of a universal structured data format for the creation of digital contracts as a “great step forward”.