Practice Management

A global law firm is deploying robotic process automation software in its high-volume legal practices, in some cases reducing the time taken to complete tasks from 35 minutes to just four minutes. But it told Legal Futures that its aim was to improve efficiency, not replace people.

The director of a lead generation company that was fined £200,000 for sending out thousands of spam text messages over personal injury, PPI and other claims, has now been disqualified as a director for six years for showing “disregard for the law”.

A group of volunteer lawyers and software developers worked over last weekend to create a new app to help travellers impacted by the Trump administration’s ‘immigration ban’, in what has been described as a “fantastic example of rapid prototyping and iterative design”.

Baker McKenzie, the world’s second biggest law firm, has announced plans to introduce due diligence software based on machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, as part of an innovation drive that looks to import ‘design thinking’ into how it delivers legal services.

A start-up using artificial intelligence (AI) to filter news and information, offering services that include being able to track how firms are perceived in the media and also give them intelligence tailored to their clients’ businesses, has acquired several major practices as clients.

The online court should be trialled alongside physical courts for five to 10 years because so many people will be excluded – some one in five according to government figures – from accessing digital-only services, according to a leading researcher.

Artificial intelligence could have a knock-on impact on legal services for poorer people, such as weakening pro bono assistance by cutting the number of commercial lawyers, according to a report by leading researcher into online law, Professor Roger Smith.

Lawyers who attract a sufficient number of positive client reviews are able to charge higher fees, the head of an online lawyer-matching service has claimed. He also said that having a single “odd-ball review” among a dozen good reviews could increase a lawyer’s standing.

The Court of Appeal has emphatically cleared a solicitor of fraud, expressing “some disquiet” at the trial judge’s findings to the contrary in an oil rig drilling case involving a $129m standby letter of credit. “Different legal minds may obviously take different views” on the legal question at the heart of the case, it said.

A typical law firm in the future will accommodate a new generation of disruptive technologies, such as virtual assistants, machine learning and automation, but legal services must not lose their human touch, a major Law Society report on technological innovation has urged.