Legal Tech Trends Newsletter: #21
Generative A.I + Law - A Year in Review, The Sense Collective, Integreon selects Leah Legal Copilot, plus much more!
Happy Friday, and welcome to the 21st edition of Legal Tech Trends!👋
A special welcome to the 107 new subscribers since the last edition. You can expect fortnightly analyses of trends and market developments shaping the legal industry.
Lately, I’ve become ever more absorbed with Generative AI. The tech is both massively hyped and under-utilised. An increasing portion of my consulting work focuses on helping clients make sense of the market and shape their roadmaps.
In my personal life, I use ChatGPT Pro 3-5 times daily, have WhatsApp groups where friends working in tech share use cases, and we have regular knowledge-sharing calls. Three recent use cases I’m enjoying:
📸 Visual supermarket assistant - I take a photo of food labels and it tells me if the products are vegan-friendly. (Especially useful given my poor attempts to interpret Dutch labels here in Holland!).
Bonus: I have also used it to locate items on cluttered supermarket shelves successfully, but this is very unreliable as it doesn’t work if the labels aren’t facing the aisle.🎙️ Audio reading buddy - After I finish a book chapter, I record a voice note summarising what I have just read. I ask it to provide additional relevant discussion points and suggest thoughtful follow-up questions.
✨ Grunt-work intern - Extract text from screenshots, expand or summarise content, and query lengthy reports.
I’d love to hear about your use cases if you use Generative AI daily! Just reply to this email to share. 📨
AI News
📅 Generative A.I + Law - A Year in Review
Dan Katz is one of the most respected people in the legal AI field. He recently spoke at the Miami Legal Tech Fund conference and kindly shared his slides online afterwards. They give a great rundown of last year's top GenAI moments and explore legal use cases and LLM considerations. Seeing a graphic from the 14th edition of this newsletter feature was a pleasant surprise!✨ LINK
The slides are great, and I particularly liked this visual exploring the stages of maturity for better LLM performance. It’s a nice reminder of the options and typical stages of progression to enhance performance.
On a related note, I enjoyed this video from OpenAI exploring techniques for ‘Maximising LLM performance’. LINK
🚀 Factor launch ‘The Sense Collective’ GenAI Community
Factor, a leading ALSP, is launching a year-long innovation and co-learning subscription, which curates a community of peers to share intelligence, use cases and applied solutions for GenAI in legal. The initiative looks to cover GenAI from several angles, including AI co-development, workshops, and a community program. LINK
✨ Integreon selects Leah Legal Copilot from ContractPodAi
Law firms have been assessing how ALSPs may disrupt the legal market for several years. This year, the potential of GenAI to disrupt the market has also become a pressing strategic priority. This announcement highlights an exciting combo to consider: ALSPs + GenAI! Coupled with the Factor launch referenced above, it shows an interesting direction of travel for the legal industry. LINK
🔎 Wolters Kluwer integrates GenAI into its legal research products
They have released a feature to summarise court rulings. The feature is still beta and will initially serve legal professionals using the Wolters Kluwer Online research platform in Germany before being rolled out to other products. LINK
🚀 Henchman announced Deloitte as a client, and partner with Law Insider
The ‘Smart Drafing’ legal tech category, typically consisting of word plug-ins to assist with clause-level drafting/review/negotiation, has gained steam over the past few years. The recent announcement highlights the growing popularity. LINK
One common feature of these products is the ability to search and retrieve relevant clauses. This can be done by connecting to a DMS (like iManage), a curated clause bank, or external data sources. Henchman has now partnered with Law Insider to give access to Law Insider’s contract database from within their Word plugin. LINK
Raises & Round-up
💥 Potentially hundreds of UK law firms affected by cyberattack on IT provider CTS
UK IT provider CTS is investigating a cyberattack that has disrupted its services, potentially leaving hundreds of British law firms unable to access their case management systems LINK
💸 LegalFly, an AI Copilot for Legal Teams, secures over €2m in seed funding
The Belgian startup, founded in 2023, has an AI assistant for document review, drafting, and discovery. LINK
Sidenote: In the recent British Legal Technology Awards Legal, ‘AI Supplier of the Year,’ LegalFly came 2nd, with Henchman coming 1st. Both companies are located in Ghent, Belgium. And yes I checked, Google maps says their offices are a 12-minute cycle apart. Quite the hotbed of LegalTech!
💵 Nexl raise $6.6m, nine months on from their $4m raise
The Client relationship management (CRM) vendor will use the funds to expand its presence in the United States. LINK
Book & Podcast Recommendation
📚 Leading Professionals: Power, Politics, and Prima Donnas
This book delves into the world of professional service firms, offering a view of their complex internal dynamics. The author explores the challenges of leadership within highly skilled environments where power and politics play a significant role. With most of my career spent in major Consulting and Law Firms, I found the insights in this book fascinating. LINK
Kudos to Alex Hamilton for the recommendation. 👏
🎙️ Leading Professionals - Leadership duets
This podcast show from the author, Laura Empson, is also excellent. I binged a few episodes on the train and particularly enjoyed this episode exploring the dual leadership role of Managing Partner and Chair of the Irish law firm McCann Fitzgerald. LINK
Kudos to Elena Folkes for recommending the show. 👏
Adjacent Interests
💬 Meta release speech-to-speech translation models that preserve expressions such as tone of voice, pauses, and emphasis. We’re getting closer to real-time translation! (They claim there is a two-second latency.) LINK & DEMO
💡 A16Z - Big ideas in tech 2024. LINK
My favourites include:
Voice-First Apps Will Become Integral to Our Lives.
Code-Free AI Generators Spark New Behaviors.
AI Tools Will Teach Kids.
💥 Extracting training data from ChatGPT LINK
🚀 Google released Gemini, their most advanced LLM LINK
💸 French foundational LLM startup Mistral raised $487 million in their latest round. This follows their $113 million seed funding, the largest-ever seed round recorded in Europe. They launched last May! LINK
That’s a wrap. To satisfy your curious legal tech mind before the next edition drops, explore LegalTechTrends.com for a searchable feed of legal tech news.
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Have a great Friday!
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