Page 95 - Leaders in Legal Business - PDF - Final 2018
P. 95
judicial/litigation analytics, contract analysis, IP analytics, legislative prediction, predictive
policing, and lawsuit financing. The use of predictive analytics in law raises important questions.
First, there are questions around technical feasibility. Getting access to high-quality training data
to build predictions is challenging because most legal documents are in unstructured text form.
Secondly, there are questions around transparency and explicability. These become problematic
when data is used to not only show trends or patterns to a lawyer, but also to predict legal
outcomes or to automate certain legal decisions. Systems that leverage predictive analytics and
mechanize certain aspects of legal decision-making must be transparent and verifiable.
We are also seeing an increasing use of multi-sided lawyer platforms to foster new ways
of finding or collaborating with clients or other lawyers. Some companies provide both platforms
for lawyers as well as predictive analytics capabilities for their users (e.g., contract life cycle
management solutions that also provide contracts analytics aimed at predicting risk in
transactions; or lawyer client match-making platforms using machine learning and big data
analytics to make the perfect match).
Adopting new legal technologies in any legal operation — be it in a law firm, corporate
legal department, in government, or the judiciary — is a non-trivial undertaking that frequently
reveals the challenges a particular organization faces when undergoing change.
There is no doubt in my mind that future legal professionals will have to approach legal
solutions through the lens that an engineer might use when solving a computational problem. In
addition to providing their legal expertise, they will have to think about how technology can be
leveraged to distribute their expertise in the most efficient and cost-effective way. There will be
technologies that replace certain tasks that are currently handled by human legal professionals,
and there will be technologies that enhance human legal professionals. In any event, this is the
time to rethink how the business of law can work. And there are already many great examples
out there that show how legal services can be provided to clients in efficient and cost-effective
ways, while still being profitable for lawyers.
81
policing, and lawsuit financing. The use of predictive analytics in law raises important questions.
First, there are questions around technical feasibility. Getting access to high-quality training data
to build predictions is challenging because most legal documents are in unstructured text form.
Secondly, there are questions around transparency and explicability. These become problematic
when data is used to not only show trends or patterns to a lawyer, but also to predict legal
outcomes or to automate certain legal decisions. Systems that leverage predictive analytics and
mechanize certain aspects of legal decision-making must be transparent and verifiable.
We are also seeing an increasing use of multi-sided lawyer platforms to foster new ways
of finding or collaborating with clients or other lawyers. Some companies provide both platforms
for lawyers as well as predictive analytics capabilities for their users (e.g., contract life cycle
management solutions that also provide contracts analytics aimed at predicting risk in
transactions; or lawyer client match-making platforms using machine learning and big data
analytics to make the perfect match).
Adopting new legal technologies in any legal operation — be it in a law firm, corporate
legal department, in government, or the judiciary — is a non-trivial undertaking that frequently
reveals the challenges a particular organization faces when undergoing change.
There is no doubt in my mind that future legal professionals will have to approach legal
solutions through the lens that an engineer might use when solving a computational problem. In
addition to providing their legal expertise, they will have to think about how technology can be
leveraged to distribute their expertise in the most efficient and cost-effective way. There will be
technologies that replace certain tasks that are currently handled by human legal professionals,
and there will be technologies that enhance human legal professionals. In any event, this is the
time to rethink how the business of law can work. And there are already many great examples
out there that show how legal services can be provided to clients in efficient and cost-effective
ways, while still being profitable for lawyers.
81
