We have heard a lot about Legaltech and its glory in recent times. The most common terms used are artificial intelligence and machine learning which are the core of the tech industry, but do we understand what work it takes to get the desired result from an AI program implemented in a Legaltech company? Have we thought AI and ML are not just some magic pills, but a system designed to ease human jobs? let's take a look at what work it takes to make Legaltech a one-step solution
Recent transactions in the legal field
Legaltech is an up-and-coming part of the legal industry, which can boost productivity and efficiency with automation. To be honest, the pandemic hit a big light on Legaltech and people had no other option than to adapt to the changing trend. Today's legal market is hard to imagine without Legaltech.
According to the 2022 LAW DEPARTMENT MANAGEMENT BENCHMARKING REPORT. It is clear that the total legal spending along with companies’ revenue is progressively increasing.
So as the revenue of legal tech is increasing rapidly. According to Gartner, legal departments will triple their legal technology spending by 2025 due to enlarged budgets.
Understanding Legaltech Strategies for AI to reach a desirable solution
- AI is not just a fancy keyword used to impress sophisticated buyers.
When we talk about AI or ML. what is the first thing comes to your mind?
At least in my mind, it comes as a technical evolution to make the future easy. Which has two effects like everything in life. In a positive future, robot servants clean and maintain our homes, or in a negative future, machines automate our jobs. Fortunately, AI cannot replace lawyers.
- How AI systems are trained in any business.
As AI is a wide concept with different aspects, we must know how AI base systems are trained. You have to know these 3 basic terms i.e.
Machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence to explain this in short please refer to the image below
Any business implementing AI programs can train their model in the following ways:
1. Creating predictions on how your model should work and evaluating their accuracy is the first step after feeding data into a computer algorithm.
2. In the second step, the trained model is tested on previously unseen data, which is called validating.
3. As a final step, the final model is tested to see if it can make accurate predictions with new data.
- Building an AI program that Creates Legaltech
Just the way we humans learn to perform certain tasks or teach our children how to read interpret communicate and make decisions of their own by learning or doing it repeatedly, the AI program learns similarly as we feed more and more data during its training step.
The following steps are generally used to train AI programs in the Legal domain:
1. Prepare relevant data from legal documents that will be used to train the AI model.
2. Separate the training data from the testing data and the validation data.
3. Feed the Training data into the AI program.
4. Validate and Test the trained AI program and document the accuracy parameters.
5. Re-train the AI model until the accuracy metrics are convincing enough to give better results.
6. Use the AI program to extract meaningful information from unseen legal documents.
The final goal is AI programs should start making decisions of their own, to get near accuracy huge amount of data is fed and if you want to add an extra feature such as SpeedLegal red flag table ™ gigantic amount of data is fed to AI program for training purpose.
- Obstacles on the way to adopting Legaltech
There is no doubt that Legaltech has the potential to help lawyers in their work but there will be some bumps alongside. It is indeed an impressive innovation but to get our desired result it is a two-way effort. As a company has to train their AI program So does the market needs to ignore some Myths.
- A prolong misunderstandings- will AI replace lawyer
AI is an aid to lawyers and not a threat to lawyers you can find this article useful to clear any doubts ‘Can Legaltech Become A Threat To Lawyers And Their Profession?
My stand on this is if lawyers or Law firms don't start investing in AI programs ASAP either they will start losing a competitive edge in the world market or will lose their time over maintaining paperwork.
- Attorneys won't be able to profit from it.
From my viewpoint, it’s a reasonable understanding as most lawyers charges their clients on time base rate and if they use AI aid, they might end up finishing the client's work within a few minutes, but when we consider the efficiency of Legaltech the profit becomes evident it betters the attorney-client relationship, healthier and profitable and once a client trust you they will think 10 time before switching to another option.
- Wider business does not need Legaltech
Legaltech is not just for attorneys or legal teams. non-legal colleagues can even conduct initial contract reviews without compromising its safety. A feature like SpeedLegal Team Accounts can be handy when different departments have to deal with common documents the ultimate control remains with the legal department. As another department is advancing with the help of AI adding tech to your legal department will do nothing but boost up the business by making data-driven decisions.
- A considerable time investment task
Yes, it is true you will have to invest your time to find a good Legaltech fit according to your best needs and expected outcome, but it is not complicated to understand with the right source. You don't have to learn coding to implement tech into your legal department. You just need to learn how to use tools. The provider will provide instructions on how to do this.
Of course, there are more misconceptions as it’s an emerging field. According to Global Legal Department Benchmarking Survey: 2021 report following are some more of the possibilities which create obstacles to adopting Legaltech.
Conclusion
There would be an increasing adoption of Legaltech in the coming years, but Legaltech needs time and resources to reach its full potential. Legaltech is not a one-stop solution to all problems in legal practice, but it can aid in solving many of them. every new thing takes time and improvements come with advancements. In the case of integrating AI into your existing system, there is no such thing as an overnight Success. There would be efforts from both ends. The question is, can it live up to the hype? From my point of view, it can, if there is right resource from one end and patience from another.