Technology is transforming the legal profession and law schools. The relationships between law and technology are both simple and exceedingly complex. Let's take a look at how law and technology intersect and what impact will new technology have on the practice of law in the future?
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The Intersection of Law and Technology, and the Future of Legal Practice
Technological innovation is perhaps the defining characteristic of the 21st century, as an unprecedented boom in computing technology and the birth of global connectivity irrevocably changed the course of human history. But what happens when the breakneck pace of new invention meets one of the oldest practices in human history: law?
Two Sides of the Same Coin?
Law and science are both fastidious disciplines; science attempts to understand the rules that define our existence and that of the world around us, while law interprets, applies, and builds on the rules that govern our social existence. They intersect in interesting ways, too, with advancements in technology necessitating new legal frameworks, and in turn revolutionizing legal practice and process.
How Do Law and Technology Intersect?
Today no one doubts the importance of technology in the legal sector. Technology is transforming the legal profession. The benefits that innovation brings to professionals in the industry, to the system, and to all the key players are evident. Best of all, this is just the beginning. There is still a lot to transform.
Lawyers can use technology in the legal industry to carry out faster information collection and processing, reduce errors and other hidden problems, offer greater transparency, and make efficient use of resources.
It is important to understand the key role of technology in the legal industry. By uniting law and technology, you can achieve optimized communication, greater accessibility to information and better analysis capacity.
Technological advances in the legal sector, on the one hand, facilitate the practice of law for legal professionals, and, on the other hand, allow their clients to know how much fees they have to pay and track the day-to-day progress of the lawyer on their case and access information about their cases and justice.
When talking about the main drivers of disruption in the legal sector, it is clear that, although there are several factors behind the unprecedented change that has taken place in the industry, the one that has made the greatest advances in the recent past is legal technology.
Legal technology is the name given to all advances and software products that substantially change the way legal services are used or worked within the sector.
Technology and Legal Implication
New technology often breaks new ground, whether finding new applications for existing ideas or finding new methodologies entirely. With these innovations come new legal ground, and what could colloquially be described as a headache for lawmakers and legal practices alike.
Each new tech advancement comes with its own subset of risks, each of which need to be understood alongside the more complex details of the tech itself in order to draw meaningful legal conclusions.
One interesting case study of this lies in the relatively recent explosion in “self-driving” technology, and liability in the event of an accident involving a self-driving-enabled vehicle.
The nuance of the tech is that there are numerous designations for vehicle autonomy on a sliding scale; understanding the tech from a legal perspective involves acute understanding of this scale, and even debate on its suitability for legal cases. Creative application of legal framework also needs to be considered where law has not caught up with technology, in order to see that justice is served when it comes to a criminal or civil case.
Technological Advancement and Legal Practice
Of course, technology is not merely a headache for legal experts to manage. Legal innovation sees the integration of new technologies to streamline workflow, improve operations and potentially even improve outcomes. All of which are essential, especially when dealing in areas such as finance and the stock market, highlighting the need for an uptick in the number of fintech law firms.
The coronavirus pandemic necessitated the use of webcams in legal cases where attendants could not be physically present, opening up the courtroom to a world of possibilities instantly.
Law is an age-old practice, and slow to the uptake of new tech – but firms on the cutting edge of new tech are making the most of big ideas to forge a path to the future of law. AIs and machine learning programmes are poised to handle and file paperwork, saving key administration time – and some are becoming smart enough to find relevant documents and expedite research.
The growing interest in blockchain technology is also showing promise, with the immutability of blockchains enabling smart-contract delivery of sensitive documents to numerous parties internationally and securely.
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