Gone are the days when lawyers and law firms dealt with paper trails. From eDiscovery to legal analytics, legal technology service providers have drastically impacted the day-to-day lives of these professionals. Traditional methods used for accounting, billing, documentation, storage, legal research, and practice management are obsolete in the face of emerging demands for digitalization, security, and efficiency. Also, technology startups disrupt the practice of law by connecting people with lawyers more efficiently through online marketplaces and lawyer-matching websites.
Technologies such as AI and blockchain bring about changes in the fundamental aspects of law firms and in-house departments from their way of thinking to advising. While AI technology combined with machine and deep learning, can train computers on how to learn, reason, communicate, and make decisions like humans, the desired activity is performed by typing a query and interacting with the computer. Employing such complex workflows takes expert assistance and time, and law firms do not have the luxury of expending their resources on such tasks. This is where legal tech service providers come to the rescue. These vendors gather requirements, design a tailor-stitched strategy, and pick the right fit of solution for law firms and help them maintain and even support it post-implementation. AI technology in online legal services like litigation property/trademark software services can warn lawyers whenever there is a threat of litigation. AI is also used in litigation finance, lawyer search, notarization tools, and practice management software.
With the help of cloud computing, legal firms can store volumes of confidential information on the internet instead of relying on a computer’s hard drive. The benefits derived from cloud computing include mobility, independence, affordability, and restoration from disasters.
On the other hand, blockchain technology opens up more opportunities, where new business lines can make changes to their legal workflows and render a service differentiation. Adopting this technology helps in the prevention of data modification once recorded. Being an emerging technology, blockchain demands expertise when it has to be built from the ground up. In addition, the scale of computing needs to operate a blockchain-based infrastructure is next to impossible for law firms to get their hands on. Legal tech service providers alleviate the burden of resource costs for these firms. Also, smart contracts can address challenges like abating demands from corporate clients and the surge of nontraditional competitors. It promotes the follow-up of events relating to a case or criminal procedure.
In this edition of CIO Applications Europe, we have compiled leading legal tech service providers in the space who can assist law firms with all their needs. Our esteemed panel, comprised of CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, and the CIO Applications Europe editorial board, has analyzed various service providers and selected the best among them.
We present to you the “Top 10 Legal Technology Consulting/Services Companies 2019"
