legal - kn

When leading legal tech firm, Ari Kaplan Advisors, interviewed 30 General Counsels from Fortune 1000 companies about current usage and future trends for contract AI, they discovered that 37 percent of the companies were already using AI for contract review and analysis and 58 percent confirmed that they intended to use it this year. 50 percent of the respondents also said that they were prepared to increase their contract AI spend in 2019.[1] 

A new survey conducted by Globality and The Lawyer Research Service[1] discovered that legal departments of major international companies are three times more dissatisfied with large law firms than with small firms.

By 2016, the US legal services market was worth $437 billion, and more open for business than ever before. A few young, legal tech companies with diverse product offerings were lining up to conquer the industry. Cost cuts over the past decade push corporate legal departments all over the country to opt out of time intensive, labor-based solutions, making legal tech the ticket to success. But why aren’t these fresh legal tech startups faring as well as they had hoped? Baretz+Brunelle decided to find out[1]. They put together the first ever Legal Tech Go-to-Market Report and here are its results.

Evolving roles—Segmentation—Knowledge management

Nearly two trillion dollars are laundered globally every year through human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism,and other organized crimes, with the US alone losing nearly 500 billion dollars of taxes annually. To gear up for the mounting risks of money laundering, all companies need to enforce a well-coordinated AML audit program, that complies with the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, both of which ensure that appropriate procedures and internal controls are in place to account for changes in regulations and business.

Legal services are de facto understood as “work done by a lawyer for a client”. Although this was somewhat true in the past, law has undergone a bifurcation into legal practice and legal services delivery. While practicing law is undeniably still only in the hands of lawyers, the delivery of legal services to clients has brought an interdisciplinarity onto the playing field, creating roles for technology, tech experts, and business professionals.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has been intensifying efforts to crack down strongly on broker-dealers for poor e-mail oversight. In 2013, FINRA fined a financial advisory firm a whopping US$7.5 million for 35 significant failures in e-mail oversight over a five-year period and in 2017 a Broker-Dealer was fined $2 million for failing to properly supervise email messages. FINRA found that during a nine-year review period, the firm’s email review system was significantly flawed, allowing millions of emails to evade meaningful review. This created the unacceptable risk of such misconduct by firm employees going undetected.^[1]

How can legal departments navigate this challenge and use this rich data to better inform matter strategy and support decision-making? Through Business Intelligence.

A study conducted last year showed that 58 percent of people in the US perceive new technology to be a threat. 23 percent go as far as to worry about losing their jobs to new technology. In fact, US workers are twice as likely to worry about job loss from technology, than from immigration[1].