It is a fact that no legal professional can now escape: the legal market has entered a new era. Technological revolutions are shaking up the law and questioning the future: the specter of the Uberization of law, the fantasy of the robot lawyer, etc. New players who have arrived on the market in France since the 2010s, LegalTech thus crystallize a certain number of pipe dreams and preconceived ideas. So, are they really a threat to the legal profession? The point in this article.
The emergence of LegalTech: between disruption and upheaval of the legal market
Fundamentally disruptive, Legaltech breaks the codes and causes an upheaval in the legal market.
A difference in positioning on the legal market
The arrival of LegalTech allows above all a democratization of access to law. Indeed, LegalTech has the advantage of making the law more accessible, which let's be clear, really needs it...!
They therefore fill a gap, a void in the legal market. By offering simple and general legal information, some LegalTechs target clients ignored by lawyers because they have low potential or those who would not dare to walk through the door of a firm.
And if these “small” tips are sometimes enough in certain cases, the best example is found in the models of legal acts such as company statutes, clients sometimes come up against their limits. To go beyond the general model, the expertise of a lawyer often proves essential to deliver a precise, personalized and detailed analysis.
New markets, new challenges
Thus, LegalTechs identify new needs of customers by capturing a market segment neglected by lawyers. Grab these new markets then becomes a possibility to be exploited for lawyers who will have to rethink their service offering to adapt to this new competition.
What can lawyers do? Conquering these new markets requires setting up a different value proposition, with high added value but also more expensive and coupled with a now essential digital presence. Proposing a more transparent range of services and prices is also an asset of LegalTech that lawyers will have to seize to attract clients.
Another avenue to study is the “one-stop shop for law” bringing together legal professionals. This synergy of skills is also encouraged by the legislator who has made interprofessionality possible since the law of August 6, 2015.
The new horizons opened up by LegalTech: disruption and innovation
From this disruption comes new opportunities. LegalTech, far from constituting a looming threat, rather aims to become an essential aid in the future.
Daily assistance in managing the practice
While some LegalTechs offer services that directly compete with lawyers, this is not the case for all. Moreover, the competition from these Legaltechs should clearly be put into perspective because it mainly occurs in a rather low-cost segment of the legal market.
In reality, we must remember that the essence and initial purpose of LegalTech is to be technologies at the service of law. This is the case for the vast majority of LegalTechs which provide daily help and assistance to the legal professions thanks to new tools. They work alongside lawyers to offer them solutions innovative and above all operational solutions on a daily basis.
They offer the possibility of getting rid of thankless, time-consuming and repetitive tasks thanks to automated drafting of documents, simplification of invoicing and collaborative work, etc. Practice management solutions like Jarvis Legal for example, allow you to manage your office efficiently and innovatively on a daily basis. Other possibilities which are only just beginning now exist thanks to LegalTech: securing documents via Blockchain, development of legal databases based on artificial intelligence, etc.
The possibility of reinventing oneself: towards the augmented lawyer
Adopting these new tools often allows professionals to time saving considerable and improved productivity. The only question that remains is this: how to effectively reuse this saved time? The lawyer can then focus on its added value, the part of his work that is irreplaceable by the machine.
In other words, the lawyer of tomorrow will be focused on consulting personalized, specific and adapted to each situation. It is for this reason that the development and improvement of customer relations will be essential in the future. In reality, we can clearly see that everyone has a vocation to remain within their sphere of competence: Legaltechs provide help and support, but there is no question of them providing legal advice because that is not their core business.
As Schumpeter showed, if innovation is destructive, it is also and above all creative. The emergence of LegalTech pushes lawyers to renew and reinvent themselves to become “augmented” lawyers who will be able to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by technologies.
Today, LegalTech obviously represents a real opportunity for lawyers. With their potential for agility and creativity, they are shaking up the traditional world of law. There is only one step left for them to be fully integrated into the legal ecosystem following the model of the United States, where they have been developing at high speed since the 2000s.
