Law Firms

Corporate Legal

Process Improvement

Contracts

Business of Law

Documents

Alternative Legal Services Providers (ALSP's), often also referred to as law companies, provide a number of services that traditionally were performed by law firms or in-house counsel. In most cases this involves services that don't constitute legal advice and due to their nature cannot carry typical law firm rates. Early on most of the work that was performed by ALSP's was discovery work. As ALSP's matured, some started to take on certain work law firms wouldn't be involved in such as negotiating NDA's. ALSP's can do work at lower costs because of use of technology, better process and project management and labor arbitrage. Many delivery centers are based in low cost locations. Some law firms operate their own ALSP's as captives to the law firm. Companies in the space include Factor, Unitedlex, Cognia, Epiq, Axiom, Elevate. In January 2022, the Arizona Supreme Court granted Elevate an Alternative Business Structure (ABS) License, making it the first ALSP in the U.S. allowed to provide legal services.

Alternative Legal Services

Repapering is a service that has increased in intensity. As result of regulatory reform (for example the introduction of GDPR or the phase-out of LIBOR) companies see themselves confronted with the need to change thousands (and sometimes hundreds of thousands) of documents to reflect the regulatory change. The process is complex, and requires streamlining and automation to scale for the volume of contract remediation generally required. Step 1 is typically legal advice by a law firm: what is the impact of the new regulation or the change of regulation.? Step 2 is development of a playbook. Step 3 is contract review, from categorizing contracts in bulk to identifying and extracting relevant clauses. Step 4 is process automation, generating a review workflow that imports the extracted data and leverages the platybook to guide reviewers through a decision tree upon which a decision is made as to whether, for each contract, an amendment note is needed. Step 5 is the generation of draft amendment documents, often leveraging templates and document automation as an output of the review workflow. Step 6 is sending documents to counterpart for signature but often involves negotiation following the playbook with law firms as escalation. Step 6 is execution and step 7 is storage of the executed documentation. Some law firms have established their own workflows (combining contract tools such as Kira or Eigen with workflow tools such as Bryter or Neota Logic), but in order to perform this work at a cost the client is willing to bear they still typically require support from lower cost timekeepers from ALSPs. ALSPs such as the Big 4, Factor, Cognia, and Elevate have also established end-to-end automated workflows, which can be leveraged alongside their flex legal teams.&nbsp;

Repapering

Alternative legal services providers often provide lawyers and other legal professionals on a temporary, contract basis to law firms or corporate legal departments that need additional support on major matters or projects.&nbsp;

Flexible Resourcing

Outsourced contracting or contracting as a managed service has taken off in the quadrant of high volume, low complexity contracts. Negotiating thousands of NDAs or other high volume contracts is better done in lower cost jurisdictions than in high cost financial centers. Service providers in the space include Elevate, UnitedLex, Cognia, Quislex and many others.

Contracting

When eDiscovery became ubiquitous and law firms were regularly confronted with large numbers of files that required review using a combination of technology and an army of people, the industry of eDiscovery services started evolving. Instead of a law firm hiring contract attorneys as reviewers, they started engaging third party service providers to do the work. The early ALSPs focused on this type of work and the volume has only increased with increased number of files in discovery. Providers in the category include Epiq, Integreon.

eDiscovery Services

This is a catch-all category for a number of companies that provide non-legal services to law firms and in-house departments. For example companies like Frontline and Keno Kozie provide IT support to law firms. Companies like LAC Group and LegalEase Solutions LLC for library management and legal research. Frontline also provides billing services to law firms.

Managed Services

With the emergence of advanced large language models and generative AI, a new category of solutions have emerged that are aimed at improving processes through automation. Legal AI Assistants typically address multiple use cases or perform a variety of "skills", similar to a human legal assistant. AI legal assistants sometimes focus on a particular area of practice or set of uses cases, such as ContractPodAI's Leah which adds value across the contract life cycle. Others, such as Casetext's CoCounsel offer generic legal skills that can be leveraged by multiple practice areas. These solutions provide the capabilities of generative AI in a form that has been especially verticalized for legal.

AI Legal Assistant

Process improvement starts with the process (a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end) - not with technology. Once a process has been evaluated and optimized, however, significant additional efficiency gains can be made by introducing automation. Solutions that allow for process automation have proliferated, and now include expert systems tools such as Neota Logic and Bryter, full digital operations automation systems like Autologyx, Mendix and Tonkean that allow for the end-to-end automation of operational workflows and integration of data sources, chatbots like Joseph, and robotic process automation using Blue Prism or K2 by Nintex.

Contract review software rapidly categorizes executed contracts, and is able to identify and extract clauses and discrete data points from contracts. These applications use machine learning and natural language processing technology to extract pre-defined data points. For example, a user may want summaries of thousands of commercial leases: the software reads the leases and prepares a summary of e.g., the names of tenant and landlord, the property address, the rent, the expiry date, the termination clause etc. If a datapoint is not predefined in the system, users are typically able to train the technology to recognize it, creating their own "models" for extraction. Companies in this category include Kira Systems, Zuva, eBrevia, RAVN Extract, Syntheia, ThoughtRiver, Luminance and others.

Contract Review

This category covers all tools and solutions dealing with contracting, from end-to-end contract lifecycle management (CLM) to contract review, and contract management. All interactions of a company are underpinned by contracts making this one of the most important categories of legal tech. Alongside ERP systems for finance, CRM for marketing / business development teams, Procure to Pay for procurement, and HR management for HR, CLM is the fifth system of records touching all parts of a business.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has always been important, but more recently law firms and in-house counsel pay a lot more attention to this. In-house counsel set minimum standards for diversity on the teams that work for them. Law firms have become much active in hiring and promoting diverse candidates. In particular, the introduction of the Mansfield Rule has supported better practices on DEI. Under the Mansfield Rule (result of a 2016 Women in Law hackathon) and supported by Diversity Labs firms that subscribe to it, require that law firms consider at least 30% women, LGBTQ+ and minority lawyers for significant leadership roles. Among the tools in this category, Leopard Solutions provides objective data on DEI. Diversity Labs is the main driver behind the Mansfield Rule.

Diversity and Inclusion

Business of Law solutions support all of the aspects of running a law firm other than the substantive practice of law. This is therefore a broad category, covering processes from client intake and management to timekeeping and billing, matter management, budgeting and pricing of matter work, email management, records management, information governeance and so on. Many of these processes are administrative and repetitive, lending themselves well to automation. The range of solutions in this category means a large number of vendors are represented, with certain behemoths such as Intapp and Aderant straddling many capabilities. In small and mid-sized law firms, practice management systems act as platform solutions that enable all aspects of the business of law. Clio is the leading practice management system for mid-sized law, incorporating many integrated products that extend its native capabilities.

This category covers everything to do with a law firm's or in-house department's biggest asset, its people. This has always been an important topic but given the recently increasing war on talent and the large number of people who leave the law, this category has become more important. In addition to traditional recruiting, retention, professional development and performance management, the other topic that has become very important is diversity, equity and inclusion.

People

Document automation software helps a lawyer draft documents faster and more consistently. There are two types: 1. Q&amp;A based where a user answers a series of questions (e.g., when drafting an employment agreement: name of employee, salary, non-compete yes or no and if yes for how long, place of work etc.) and the system inserts the answers into a template creating a complete document ready for signature. The industry standards for this are Contract Express and Hotdocs. Successful new entrants in the space include Avokka and Clarilis. 2. Clause-based document assembly: by selecting clauses, the user builds a document to their needs. Clausebase and Draftwise are examples.

Document Automation

Documents are central to a lawyer's work. There are many types of document-related applications that support lawyers, including document automation, drafting tools that ensure consistency of citation, expression, or tables of contents, comparison software to compare versions of documents, and many others. This category includes a number of long established companies like Hotdocs but also companies (like Litera) that are consolidating the market in certain segments. Legaltech Hub has included eSignatures in this category as well as Document Management.

Document management software helps users store and organize their organisation's documents. Important features include versioning, file sharing and access control. Typically document management solutions have been on-premise only but increasingly providers are moving their solutions to the cloud. In organizations that implement this software the document management system is the central repository of all client-matter related documents. Companies in this space include iManage, NetDocuments and Opentext. Many organizations also use Microsoft SharePoint.

Document Management

Software tools are the critical underpinning of the eDiscovery process, and this cateogry is flooded with competitors worldwide. eDiscovery vendors provide solutions that are able to ingest and store discovery data, enabling reviewers to easily search for and view indidivual documents, and establish and apply relevancy, witness and issue tags. Many eDiscovery solutions have integrated analytics capabilities allowing for technology assisted review (TAR) using sentiment analysis, or visual data analytics properties that make it easier for reviewers to view clustered documents and issues and manipulate the data set during discovery. Giants in this space include Relativity, DISCO, Exterro, Blackpoint and many more. With the acquisition of Brainspace as well as NexLP, Reveal has become a good choice for data-driven eDiscovery.

eDiscovery Software

As a result of the entrenched nature of eDiscovery, litigation is an area of law in which a large number of technology vendors operate. The field of eDiscovery continues to evolve, with ever more sophisticated tools providing forensics solutions and data analytics capabilities. The acquisition by Reveal of Brainspace and NexLP is a good example of an evolving vendor, though Relativity, Exterro, Integreon, AccessData, Everlaw and many others have also developed data products. End-to-end case management systems have now adapted to provide capabilities that support other aspects of litigation practice, including chronology development, transcript management, exhibit management and trial preparation. Major players such as Opus 2 and Litera Litigate allow for integrations with eDiscovery vendors and the import of tagged hot documents into the case management system. During the pandemic, virtual court work has become necessary, giving rise to the development of platforms such as Armatus and DepoDirect for remote depositions and trials. In addition to these categories, many other point solutions have developed to support various aspects of litigation practice.

Litigation Management

End-to-end Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software helps companies manage their contracting from start to finish: 1) request for a contract, 2) drafting or review, 3) negotiations, 4) approvals 5) execution, 6) storage, 7) data extraction 8) management, 9) reporting, and 10) drafting amendment or renewal. For inclusion in this category LegalTechnologyHub requires a software product to cover at least 6 of these 10 steps. This category has received significant investment since 2018. Companies in this space include ICertis, Coupa, Docusign, Sirion Labs, Agiloft, Evisort, Ironclad, Cobblestone and Legisway.

End-to-end CLM

Expert system solutions provide a logic-based form of workflow automation that allow for custom applications to be built using flowchart-type ("if-then") reasoning. Often, the front end interface of these applications provides a questionnaire that allows users to self-serve the information or knowledge they need to know. Common examples of expert system applications include the automation of multi-jurisdictional regulatory review or unifying a complex onboarding system involving multiple processes into a single dashboard. Neota Logic has long been the industry leader in this area. Bryter is a low-code version that has recently become a strong competitor, with smaller tools such as Joseph starting to gain traction.

Expert Systems

Judicial or litigation analytics involve the application of data analytics to litigation data. The data commonly drawn upon in such resources include the decisions of judges in relation to court cases, motions and appeals, settlement sums, case duration, success rates of counsel, and so on. Judicial analytics tools can provide insights into whether, for example, a motion for summary dismissal might be successful in a certain jurisdiction before a particular judge, whether a case is likely settle and for what amount, and which law firm is most likely to succeed in litigating a specific type of matter. As a result, these solutions are helpful to inform case strategy, advise clients and prepare budgets, and for early case assessment. Lex Machina, Gavelytics, Ravel View in LexisNexis, Westlaw Edge and Docket Alarm are leaders in this area in the US. In Canada, Court Analytics by Loom Analytics is a strong contender.

Judicial Analytics

Data management solutions catering to the legal industry have proliferated as both law firms and in-house departments have come to realize (1) the wealth of data they have at their disposal and (2) the opportunities to be gained from properly leveraging that data. The solutions available run the gamut from analytics tools, many of which can be leveraged over both internal and external sources of data, to data visualization tools and tools that structure data and assist in the extraction of data from documents and other content types. Judicial or litigation analytics solutions such as Gavelytics, Lex Machina and Ravel by LexisNexis provide insights that support litigation strategy and early case assessment, while market intelligence tools provide analytics on external industry data. Data visualization solutions such as Brainspace by Reveal add value to eDiscovery, but generic tools like Power BI and Tableau, as well as newcomer Structura, allow for powerful visualizations and reporting across independent and discrete data sets. Increasingly, vendors such as Fastcase and Thomson Reuters have realized that law firms will pay for data APIs and sandboxes allowing them to integrate data to produce actionable insights. This is a growing space, with broad solutions allowing great flexibility, as well as niche areas such as IP analytics.

Data

Online legal research solutions have evolved in sophistication, with many now including analytics capabilities and utilizing artificial intelligence to improve results and relevancy. In addition to the longstanding major players such as LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg, the market for online research tools is now crowded with additional practice area- and market-specific solutions that provide more targeted intelligence. As these resources are necessarily limited by jurisdictional relevancy, each region requires its own solutions. Legaltech Hub currently only covers the following regions: US, UK, Canada, Australia. Over time, this content will be built out to cover additional regions.

Legal Research

A knowledge base provides a central location for teams or organizations to share knowledge content (mainly documents). Sophisticated knowledge hub solutions also deliver (1) workflows to support the curation of content, (2) tools to help organize content, such as the ability to manage and house taxonomies, customize filters, generate browse trees, develop discrete collections of related content, and trigger knowledge management workflows for administrators, and (3) search tools to optimize the findability of knowledge content. Traditional knowledge bases have frequently been built on software platforms such as SharePoint, used in combination with solutions such as Handshake. Newer market entrants include Syntheia and Intelllex.

Knowledge Base

Knowledge Management solutions provide for the collection, curation, tagging, organization and delivery of knowledge content (including precedent documents, forms, checklists, guides, and other critical legal content) across a legal organization. Classic knowledge management tools include knowledge hubs / precedent libraries and other content repositories, as well as intranet platforms, enterprise search and experience management solutions. Content repositories may include clause banks, such as Litera’s Content Companion, and directories of external data, of which the industry leader is Courtroom Insight. The market for enterprise search is narrow in legal, with Decisiv Search and iManage Insight vying for top place. Foundation’s experience management platform – another Litera product – is a clear market leader, providing the ability to store and connect information about a legal organization’s clients, matters and people, therefore enabling a firm to leverage its intellectual capital effectively and better cross-sell work. SharePoint has long been the established platform for intranet systems, with their online offering introducing greater flexibility. Handshake by Aderant and HighQ are solid competitors.

Knowledge Management

News aggregators pull relevant content from multiple locations and republish it in a single interface. Legal news aggregators solve a critical problem in law firms and legal organizations: in order to stay updated on the law and client-relevant market news, lawyers end up with multiple daily alerts and a crowded email inbox. News aggregators consolidate these alerts and allow research functions to customize and control the timing of emails sent to each lawyer. Leading legal news aggregators include Manzama and Vable.

News Aggregator

Enterprise search solutions are classic knowledge management tools, allowing for a unified search across muliple systems / repositories of both structured and unstructured data in an organization. These solutions are powerful because they allow timekeepers to easily find information about a firm's people, matters, documents and more through one interface. Choice of document management system to some extent determines which enterprise search system a firm might use. Decisiv Search had long been considered the major player in legal enterprise search, but after acquisition by Opentext its position has been increasingly threatened by the iManage product, RAVN Insight, which is underpinned by AI technology and offers predictive capabilities. These two are by no means the only options for firms, however. Sinequa is used by a number of large firms, as is BA Insight, which can enhance SharePoint's search capabilities. Finnish company Ilves offers Search, a powerful solution that also operates in English and is in use across at least two large international firms. Recently, Casetext released WeSearch, a search platform that allows for a powerful conceptual search across any discrete data set. Although this is not an enterprise search solution, it has many potential use cases for firms seeking to identify needles in a haystack in large document sets.

Search

Smart drafting, also known as intelligent document automation, has transformed the legal landscape by leveraging technology to streamline and enhance the drafting process. Smart drafting platforms employ machine learning algorithms to analyze existing legal documents, identify patterns and clauses, and generate customized drafts.&nbsp;

Smart Drafting

Timekeeping is an essential practice for any law firm, allowing attorneys to capture time and assign it to specific client matters. Traditionally, this capability has been constrained to desktop access, with manual time entry required. As the technology evolves, mobile timekeeping is becoming common and AI driven solutions have developed allowing for automated time capture and the generation of automatic narratives as lawyers work. Established players in the market such as Carpe Diem and Intapp have upgraded their existing solutions accordingly, but new players in the market including Ping and ZERO have introduced healthy competition in the space.

Timekeeping

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