Legal Tech Trends Newsletter: #27
Legal Tech Trends Newsletter: #27
GenAI adoption rates, client's AI expectations, invoices, structure diagramining raises, and much more!
Happy Friday, and welcome to the 27th edition of Legal Tech Trends!👋
This edition is slightly longer than normal, but I think it’s well worth the read! It’s nice communicating with you by email, but in person is always more fun. I’ll be attending two events over the next two weeks:
🎲 I’m in Vegas for CLOC - Next week
At conferences I optimise my schedule for meeting intersting folks, so if you’re heading too, let me know!
🚲 Legal Hops Amsterdam - 15th May
Last year I teamed up with the awesome Nicky Leijten and Sarah Wilson-Ward to launch Legal Hops, a growing community of legal innovators in Amsterdam. Chris Williams has joined our wonderful crew and our next event takes place on the 15th May. If you’ll be in Amsterdam, get your free ticket here to join the event!
GenAI Survey - Adoption remains low
If you simply read the headlines, you may believe that GenAI is pervasive in legal, but that’s really not the case. Far from it. It’s easy to get swept up in the excitement of the technology’s potential, but it’s good to remember that we’re still incredibly early. Adoption remains low, but it is increasing.
Surveys on GenAI adoption often highlight stats about how many responders ‘plan’ or ‘expect’ to use GenAI to use. This is mildly interesting but not very trustworthy. I find more insight in reviewing actual adoption rates and usage patterns.
This latest survey from Law360 gives some interesting data points, showing Microsoft leading the pack with GPT-4 Bing search & Copilot. LINK
Survey details: 384 lawyers, approx 60% of participants at partner level, more than 95% located in the US.
AI
✅ BT Group Confirms New Legal Panel
I don’t usually include panel announcements, but one paragraph caught my attention: LINK
“For the 2024 panel, usage and incorporation of AI in their operations was also a key selection metric, as BT Group seeks to capitalise on advances driven by the adoption of AI. BT Group has also confirmed that it will include an automatic place on the next panel (2027-2030) for the firm that evidences the most efficiencies through the use of AI and other technologies over the next three years, alongside the continued place for best inclusion, equity and diversity performance.
Client expectations like this are a key driver of AI adoption for law firms.
🚀 Harvey AI To Move Out Of Early Access Phase, Release More Affordable Versions Of Its Custom AI Models
Bob Ambrogi’s discussion with the Harvey team gives a nice overview of the startups priorities. Whilst some of Harvey’s biggest custom development projects, such as those with PWC, may cost $5million+, the startup plans to offer a more affordable version of their product later this year. LINK
🌟 vLex launch GenAI document analyser and vLex Labs
vLex has expanded its Vincent AI product with Document Analyze, a feature that analyzes litigation and transactional documents and surfaces legal and factual information. Dan Hoadley has also joined from MDR to head up their new vLex Labs, an initiative to assist customers in creating proprietary AI-powered workflows. LINK
💡Brightflag uses GenAI to create invoice summaries
Invoice review tools look to be gaining increased attention recently, with Lexfusion adding LegalBillReview to its cohort of legal tech vendors. Brightflag is a well-known provider in this category, and they’ve just announced a GenAI feature to summarise invoices and enable users to approve invoices directly from their emails. LINK
Raises & Round-up
💵 Lawhive raises $12M to expand its platform for small firms
The UK company targets its platform at small law firms or solo lawyers (There are 10,000 small law firms in the UK). Lawyers can use the product to onboard and manage their clients or be matched with consumers and small businesses through a marketplace feature. LINK
It’s interesting to read how they’re equipping self-employed lawyers with AI tools:
“There’s this huge exodus of like mid-career lawyers from the main-street/high street model, and a lot of them are going freelance self employed, and that’s where we’ve sort of seen a lot of traction through our platform of self-employed lawyers who use our AI lawyer.”
✨ Litera announces go-to-market partnership with Microsoft and Copilot integration under development
This article's most interesting call-out is the reminder that Copilot may be best suited to non-billable work, like summarising transcripts or catching up on emails. As Microsoft’s tools are not specialised for legal workflows, additional technology is needed. LINK
Many vendors, like Litera, plan to build Copilot integrations, so I’m curious to see how it plays out. In the meantime, it's best to set your expectations for Copilot’s current performance accordingly.
Sidenote: Most vendors announcing Copilot integrations are refering to Copilot in MS Teams rather than MS Word. Given that lawyers spend far more time in Word it’s safe to assume that a Word integration will likely be more impactful!
🧩 Jigsaw raises $15m in Exor-led round
Jigsaw helps clients draw, visualise and manage corporate structures more efficiently than traditional software like PowerPoint. Existing customers include the Big Four and major global law firms, including Ashurst and Goodwin Procter. It plans to expand its product line to create an end-to-end platform for managing corporate structures and governance. LINK
🤑 Juristic raise $1m
It’s a popular time for visual structuring tools, as Jigsaw wasn’t the only tool in this product category to raise! Juristic, a Scandinavian legal tech startup, has secured a $1m investment round. They count Bird & Bird, Bech-Bruun and PwC as customers. LINK
📝 LegalOn launch MS Word add-in to extend their web app features
LegalOn focuses on pre-signature contract review and negotiation, with several features that combine AI with an extensive collection of playbooks and guidance created by their lawyers. This announcement brings their contract review and AI functionality to where many lawyers live, in Microsoft Word!
This product category is heating up, with many vendors rapidly releasing features to apply the latest breed of AI to contract review use cases. I spoke with CEO Daniel Lewis and the team earlier in the week, and he outlined that one of LegalOn’s key differentiators is the legal knowledge assets their legal experts have already developed to support AI review. LINK & DEMO
First-pass contract review is one of my current favourite use cases for GenAI in legal. I trial a huge range of products every month, and several have already proved effective in reducing my time reviewing contracts like NDAs!
Great recent reads from folks you should follow
Contract tech is the theme…
📝 Clausebase: The Complete Guide to Contract Drafting Technology
This guide explores the different steps in the contract drafting process and explains how different types of technology and products can assist lawyers. It’s a great read, regardless of whether you’re new to drafting tech or a veteran.
They provide their honest view of competitor strengths and weaknesses, which some may perceive as slightly controversial. There are many interesting points, and although I don’t agree with all assessments, I admire their effort in publicising their detailed view of the market. I highly encourage other vendors to do the same, and I’ll happily share! LINK
It’s also nice to see them highlight DocAutoDatabase, the database I built with Catherine Bamford of BamLegal, as the most comprehensive document automation vendor database on the market. Enjoy browsing through 250+ vendors!
Sidenote: If you’d like an unbiased view of the market and to avoid months of market research you should check out our vendor selection accelerator. We give buyers looking to assess and procure document automation products personalised recommendations in two weeks. LINK
🛠️ DraftPilot Newsletter - Building in Public
Daniel Van Binsbergen recently sold Lexoo, and has now started building Draftpilot, a startup focused on AI contract review. I’m a major fan of those who share their work and learnings in public, and his latest newsletter provides a glimpse into the challenges of building the product. I signed up, and if you enjoy the nuances of product building, you probably should, too.
Sidenote: Vendors, if your product hasn’t overcome the challenge Daniel outlines, and doesn’t enable users to easily verify GenAI output and quickly navigate to source material you’ve got a major problem.
📝 Doc automation: Is smarter always better?
Document drafting has been touted as another great use case for GenAI and a potential replacement for document automation tools. Given GenAI's current limitations, I firmly believe it’s not, and I regularly tell clients this. Many others have spoken and written about this topic too. As the CTO of FromCounsel, Rob Hinds is well-positioned to give an informed view, and his latest newsletter on the topic is well worth reading. LINK
Adjacent Interests
📃 Stanford’s AI Index Report LINK
💡 Harvard Business Review - How People Are Really Using GenAI 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!
About me.
I’m the founder of Titans, a legal tech and innovation consultancy for leading law firms and new law companies.Legal Tech Trends is my fun outlet to share my hype-free positive take on legal tech market developments, informed by my own industry experiences and insights.
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