By Steve Ackland, CEO

 

Last time we discussed the rise of disruptive technologies and how no industry is immune to its advances.

 

Do law firms define the conditions under which they operate, or do they respond to the environment in which they exist?

 

It is, and always will be, the latter, and regardless of tradition and experience, we are starting to observe law firms wanting to become more technology savvy and in so doing being able to see beyond their current horizon to what their future business model may need to become.

 

In particular, law firms involved in litigation and fraud, M&A and regulatory investigations need to look at how disruptive technologies such as AI and automation can help them get ahead in this exciting, brave new world. And getting ahead can mean increased exposure, gaining new clients, increasing client retention and creating opportunities for dramatically reducing costs and increasing revenue streams.

 

Clients of legal firms will be increasingly unwilling to pay for services that traditionally have involved manual methods when new disruptive technologies can perform the services so much quicker, cheaper and more accurately. Customers will question why they are paying thousands of dollars for a law firm to employ a "bums on seats" model, using junior lawyers to forensically search digitised documents, emails and shared directories for information relevant to a case when the right software can do the job in a fraction of the time, and better.

 

Don't get me wrong, disruptive technologies won't replace lawyers, but lawyers who use disruptive technologies may start to replace those who don't - and it will be their customers who decide.

 

Law firms therefore need a solution that provides a range of disruptive micro-services to help them to deliver outstanding case-driven functionality to their clients in support of compliant legal activities such as those promoted in the e-Discovery Reference Model EDRM.

 

Aim's dataBelt® can provide that exact microservice platform. Read more here.