Make Technology Your Teammate: Legal Tech Skills You Need to Stay in the Game

Abstract

Do you remember studying something pointless at university? Perhaps one topic in a practice area that was extremely important. Of course, in the years since, legislation has changed and it’s no longer relevant. My first degree focused on marketing, yet social media marketing wasn’t even included in the curriculum. Less than a decade later, the Australian market for social media marketing spend was estimated at just under 16 billion dollars in 2017.

Does this mean my degree is invalid? No, but had I stuck to marketing, I’d need to have learnt new skills to adapt to the changing environment. Law is the same. Our legal industry is changing (some would say it’s about time!) and technology is a big part of that change. Where previously we focussed on carefully filing hard copies of contracts in alphabetical order; now we look to naming conventions for electronic sorting of digital files. Whilst technology changes have appeared slowly over the past two decades, new tech is clearly here to stay.

Innovative legal teams, large and small around the world, are picking up on what many other industries and contract specialists have known for a long time. That is that lawyers must run with the robots. In a world of increasing risk and diminishing budgets, in the words of futurist Erik Brynjolfsson, we need to think of computers as our teammates.

With technology a key player in your legal team, you can deliver incredible value and legal service to your business whilst enriching your legal career and ensuring its longevity.

Keywords: Legal technology, Legal Innovation, Legal Practice, Legal Design, Service Design, Legal Skills, Legal Training