Legal Tech Through Consumer Market

We might safely assume that technology designed for use in the legal profession, and technology aimed at the consumer market are largely non-overlapping. Yet this is not the case. No technology sector develops or exists in a bubble. Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, The Internet of Things and many other technologies are aimed at proving to be useful to the future of legal tech through the consumer market.

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This is one of the biggest advances in consumer goods. Simply, when searching an ecommerce site, the items you viewed will appear as ads on other sites. Could this work for the legal profession in a B2B format? Absolutely.

The same technologies could be used for industry specialist software. When managing a client or a case, the software could monitor the related work and recommend services and news stories related to the case or similar cases. It could save time and effort through a course.

Big Data for Better Search Results

At present, behavioral data is not quite at the place where we need it to be. Big Data is still a growth area, but it looks at habits almost exclusively and does not take into account demographic data such as age and location. From the perspective of the legal industry, this information is much more useful. Thankfully, this tech is changing. Consumer technology is still pushing forward with data harnessing but is also pushing deep and hard towards relevance.

Big Data is no longer an emerging technology, it is mainstream. It helps governments and businesses better plan their activities and logistics, among other things.

Security Compliance

Some of the technologies already mentioned could have implications for data protection, especially those working in health. Requirements to comply with HIPAA means law firms could be treading a fine line on compliance. While there is no GDPR-like data protection like there is in the EU, the Federal government is watching developments there with interest.

If a similar system is adopted, wholesale changes to your website and services could follow with an easier opt in and opt out system for site visitors and advertising.

Research Automation

While the Law Library will never truly die, it’s potentially a slow and frustrating process. Lawyers are not necessarily great research academics although they have always needed a degree of this skill. But e-research including storing historic cases on electronic databases for access by professionals, is making this faster. What’s more, it’s created a whole new subindustry. There are now dedicated law (and other professions) research support professionals to find and implement technological solutions to age-old problems.