Legal Tech is a growing industry that uses technology to optimize or provide legal services. There are many purposes that new software can fulfill, such as reduce the cost of services, optimization of time tracking, document storage, making manual legal work easier, and eliminate security risks.
It is not surprising that Law Tech is booming. According to Thomson Reuters’ research of 2017, the number of new legal technology patents grew by 484% in just five years. And there is a huge trend in increasing investment in this sphere, as reported by Forbes.
So what legal technology companies can bring to the table?
Legaltech Purposes and Usage
Legal Tech companies develop software that may revolutionize the market or just make professionals’ life easier. Such innovations often deal with the newest technologies, like AI, cloud hosting, big data, or blockchain. Here are key purposes legal startups can fulfill:
- Management software for legal practice. This includes all types of document storage systems, time trackers, and office tasks tools. It can be integrated directly with the billing and accounting system.
- Document review automation. Such software solutions are designed to make manual document review much faster and easier for lawyers.
- Online lawyer search. Those are platforms or apps that help customers to find legal professionals fast.
- Those are various applications or platforms for easy communication with clients.
- Data security. All solutions that solve digital security issues and prevent identity theft or sensitive information leakage.
Legal technology startups can now help with almost any aspect of the workflow. Here are five promising legal tech startups to look out for.
Five Aspiring Legal Tech Startups
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Luminance
This legal tech startup uses AI and machine learning algorithms to make document analysis extremely fast and productive. Luminance is a British startup that provides an effective platform that works for any language and jurisdiction. It is designed the way that the more professionals use it, the better it gets. The main benefit of this technology is that it saves lawyers an enormous amount of time. It conducts document search and analysis and spots any abnormalities in the texts. Instead of hours upon hours of reading hundreds of pages, a lawyer can now use this software.
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Ravel Law
Ravel Law is another legal tech startup that takes the best from AI technology. It was purchased by LexisNexis in 2015 and has gathered $9.2 million in investment by 2017. Why is this software so promising for legal professionals? It offers research, analytics, and data tools to investigate open source court documents to predict the possible outcome of a particular case. It uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms together with the open current and historical legal documents (PACER). This software can find all relevant documents according to the judge, similar cases, or attorney. It can also make predictions on the possible judge’s decision based on their decision made in similar cases previously. This is an astonishing type of research and data analysis that helps to build the case.
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Farewell
This startup revolutionizes the way people deal with death and wills. It is created for clients rather than for lawyers, but it is also worth noticing. It makes the process of writing or changing the will extremely easy and more accessible. A person can do it all from home just with the use of their laptop. Clients can also get probate on this website and arrange a cremation. It is also much more affordable than the traditional ways of dealing with this issue – the fees are almost half the price. And any legislative updates are applied automatically to the will. The easy and more affordable access to such legal services can force lawyers to adjust to a new environment and make their services more beneficial.
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Enoron
It is a small yet aspiring legal tech startup that wants to make lawyers’ lives easier. Their main goal is to create perfect management software that combines tasks, activities, time tracking, and client management all in one. It is designed to create a collaborative environment that optimizes all processes and increases productivity and transparency. This solution also provides automation of regular tasks as keeping track, managing documents, and keeping up with deadlines. It is designed specifically for lawyers and features great functionality like linking client data to scheduled tasks. And it can even update the client of the progress as soon as a lawyer finishes the task.
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Lexxo
Lexxo is a legal tech startup that shifts that traditional pattern of the legal market. It is an online platform for lawyers to provide services of commercial legal advice for businesses and individuals. Nowadays more than a thousand professionals are working through Lexxo in about 65 countries all over the world. They work usually on a fixed-fee basis and cost less than traditional in-house legal professionals. This platform is used by big corporations and businesses as it is cost-effective and fast.
In Summary
Legal tech startups are on the rise in the last decade. Their main purpose is to optimize the legal market with the use of new technologies. Their software helps to execute manual tasks faster and more efficiently. They also help to provide new ways of accessing and provision of legal services.
