LegalTech and lawyers: allies or competitors? Lessons from the digital law firm day

Contrary to what some lawyers might fear, most of the LegalTech tools created in recent years aim to serve legal professionals rather than compete with them. Yet you hear as many LegalTech entrepreneurs disappointed by the reluctance with which their target audience greets their solutions as you hear lawyers complaining that the new tools offered to them do not fit their needs.

How can LegalTech start-ups and the legal professions be brought closer together?

The need to build a bridge between the innovative fervour of start-ups and the concrete needs of the legal professions led the Brussels Bar, under the leadership of Vinciane Gillet, to create a dedicated incubator. In Switzerland, we have to rely on the support of the Swiss LegalTech Association and on the commitment of a few pioneering law firms, which accept the responsibility of co-creating with LegalTech companies and invest the time and resources needed to test new tools (our thanks to them).

This was one of the topics discussed at the ‘LegalTech’ panel of the digital law firm day organised by the Conférence latine des bâtonniers (Latin Conference of Bar Presidents), in which I had the pleasure of taking part alongside Vinciane Gillet (GILLET-LEX), Ariel Ben Hattar (Lenz & Staehelin) and Camille Auberson (Approovd).

What is the key to the success of a legal technology tool?

Asked by Juliette Ancelle (id est avocats) and Stéphanie Chuffart-Finsterwald (sigma legal) about the lessons I have learned as a LegalTech entrepreneur and founder of Neur.on, I would say that the key to the success of a legal technology tool is its ease of use. Lawyers’ packed schedules leave no room for technical training ‘in anticipation of a future need’. For example, since a law firm’s legal translation needs vary greatly from one year to the next, training assistants or trainees on a translation tool ‘out of context’ would be a waste of time. Solutions must therefore be intuitive and logical enough for lawyers to get the result they expect the first time they use them, in a few clicks, or to call on responsive customer service that fills any knowledge gaps ‘ad hoc’.

To end with a rather easy pun, here is how a solution wins its case with lawyers:

• a fit with lawyers’ working processes, with no ambition to change them;
• an intuitive interface that requires no prior training;
• customer service that adapts, including to the profession’s working hours and to emergencies.