Information technology is becoming an essential element of every industry, and the legal sphere is no exception. But while some lawyers are threatened by the advances of IT and artificial intelligence, others are looking for ways to adapt to the changing conditions.
For some routine legal functions, lawyers could even be completely replaced by artificial intelligence as technology becomes more and more sophisticated: online platforms for dispute resolution, case analysis and legal education are already starting to appear.
Disruption opportunities
However, it’s unlikely the traditional legal industry will come to an end: Most lawyers say rather that the legal industry is facing short-term disruption from the advancement of technology, which is introducing some challenges, but that technology is hardly going to revolutionize the core of the industry. In fact, it is actually bringing opportunities.
“Over the last 50 years, technology has significantly changed the business of law,” says Dima Gadomsky of Axon Partners law firm. All the same, the bedrock of the law profession remains untouched. For Gadomsky, a disruptive innovation would be something on the level of Uber changing the taxi market, or Amazon changing retail trade.
So while people can now shop without going to a bricks-and-mortar shop, for legal advice “a person still comes to see a lawyer, and you don’t yet come to see a bot,” Gadomsky says. However, lawyers have always used newly emerging technologies to automate standard procedures in their work, and can use algorithms to streamline legal processes.
Legal innovations
A notable success story in the area of Ukrainian legal tech is Axdraft, a startup founded by Yuriy Zaremba. Axdraft promises to save lawyers hours of work by automating legal drafting tasks, through gathering, analyzing, classifying and synthesizing bits and pieces of legal contracts from dozens of sources.
Axdraft has already attracted a number of Ukrainian clients – big law firms and legal departments of major corporations. Zaremba is currently on an internship in Silicon Valley learning how to develop his business and increase his client portfolio.
Dmytro Foremny, the representative of HIIL in Ukraine, speaks to the Kyiv Post about the support that the HIIL gives to Ukrainian legal tech startups at the newspaper`s office on Mar. 1, 2019. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Kyiv-based Aequo law firm has also been investing into legal innovation. The firm’s partner Anna Babych says that these innovations could make the business much more efficient and effective.
The firm has created the AequoFriends platform for legal interns. The platform opens access to Aequo to interns from all over Ukraine, meaning they don’t have to come to the physical office. Instead, interns receive tasks and feedback remotely. “This fosters a proactive approach, gives (interns) an opportunity to choose their tasks, and provides students from the regions a chance to compete against their peers from the capital,” Babych explains.
Aequo also launched the Legal Tech Challenge, a competition for those who want to create innovations in the legal industry. The competition has supported legal tech startups like Court On The Palm, an analytical platform for court decisions, and Rent it Bot – a self-help application for drafting rental contracts.
Three years ago IT-entrepreneur Oleksiy Ivankin saw there was a need to create a search engine to sift through public data in Ukraine. Since then, Ivankin and his colleagues have been working hard on developing Open Data Bot, an open data platform for Ukrainian citizens and businesses.
“The major task of legal tech is to ensure flow of expertise from top lawyers to the mass market,” Ivankin says. His Open Data Bot now serves more than 300,000 users by collecting data from public registries and making it available on its centralized platform.
“We’re not taking away work from lawyers,” Ivankin says. “But we’re taking away the routine, the (technical) mistakes, and adding timeliness.”
The Ukrainian legal tech scene is already well connected with the global legal community and with various institutions abroad.
For example, Dmytro Foremny of the Hague Institute for the Innovation of Law, or HIIL, collaborates with both entrepreneurs and the Ministry of Justice.
Foremny scouts for the best legal innovation ideas and provides them with support in the form of training, grant money and acceleration events. Through such support, HIIL says it is promoting “the development of a legal tech ecosystem in Ukraine.” So far about a dozen startups have received 5,000-15,000 euros each in grants from HIIL – a total of 120,000 euros.
But the growth of legal tech will not eradicate the legal profession, as “you cannot copy and paste complex things like litigations and transactions,” Babych explains. “They will always be there for lawyers.”
However, the demand for a typical lawyer will not be growing, she says.
Meanwhile, the legal business will see new professions appear, and will open up to more non-lawyers, Gadomsky says. Be on the lookout in future for job ads for “a big data lawyer,” “an analyst lawyer,” or a “legal engineer,” he adds.
