Artificial Intelligence, Advocacy and Lawtechs – Part 3

Stanford University’s “CodeX” points to an international ecosystem consisting of 1346 lawtechs. In Brazil, AB2L, an industry association, registers 162 legal startups. Undoubtedly, a growing space that highlights the urgency of the regulatory debate and the potential for profound changes.

In Brazil, lawtechs related to Natural Language Processing predominate, with an emphasis on assisted document review and data mining services. In general, the priority interest in modernizing the management and workflows of law firms and departments is emphasized. Thus, innovation reflects new organizational arrangements that reduce time and costs related to daily activities, so that it focuses on creative solutions and customer service.

See some of the categories in which the provision of services by lawtechs takes place:

(1) Analytics and jurimetry: startups that provide services to legal departments and law firms, whose main activity is the management of volume litigation, applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) resources to find standards in this data and offer some level of predictability in in relation to provisioning with legal risks and reduction of legal liabilities;

(2) Automation and document management: involves reducing the time spent on document production by law firms and legal departments that operate, above all, in repetitive processes, allowing task management, deadline control, writing on different devices, with storage through cloud computing;

(3) Content, education and consultancy: portals that inform the main news in the legal area, such as collaborative content networks, provision of jurisprudential information from the higher courts, commented and separated by subjects, legal news and daily updates;

(4) Management of offices and legal departments: provide tools for the complete management of these spaces, from administrative and financial routines to technical activities. Remote access allows managers to receive notifications, monitor daily routines, automate documents, customize products, according to their needs and risk management;

(5) Public sector: exclusive solutions for the Public Administration, which involve processing and statistical analysis of information, to form new knowledge regarding the performance of a specific public agency;

(6) Monitoring and extraction of public data: startups qualified to gather information available on public agency websites, such as courts, which relate to the daily activities of a law firm or legal department. The main functions are associated with the information that is made available about important procedural events, such as new distributions, blocking risks and injunctions;

(7) ODR: lawtechs that promote self-composition of conflicts on the internet, applying, for this purpose, diversified techniques, such as mediation, negotiation, conciliation and arbitration. They use instant messaging, with audio, video and text resources. The main purpose is to reduce costs, time and image wear, performing the entire procedure in a virtual environment.

Equally, it is possible to find, in this context, solutions that make use of technological applications resulting from AI to transform Big Data into information that supports strategic decisions for legal managers. They use databases such as courts, official journals, among others, announcing interactive and intuitive interfaces, allowing remote access and providing alerts and reports.

Finally, common goals are observed, such as, for example, improving the value perceived by the client, supported by the reduction of costs and the increase in the speed with which demands are resolved; productivity growth and precision of the solutions that are delivered to customers through the automation of services; training of offices and legal departments for data analysis.

By: Wilson Sales Belchior