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17 April 2019 / Rosanna Woods
Issue: 7837 / Categories: Features , Profession , Technology , Legal services
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Virtually legal: making technology work for you

Adopting a ‘digital first strategy’ will help firms stay competitive, says Rosanna Woods

  • Legal tech and operations.
  • Inevitable challenges & driving innovation.

Momentum is building among law firms to adopt new technology based on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Last year saw a dramatic rise in the development of such technologies and 2019 is set to be the year law firms either prioritise digital strategies, or get left behind.

The benefits of digitising assets and optimising legal processes are clear to those law firms that have already begun to embrace digital transformation. These benefits include reduced paper consumption and greater efficiency generally around processes such as creating and reviewing contracts, mining documents, raising red flags and performing due diligence. In particular, the latter of these processes is profoundly improved by the application of AI within virtual data rooms (VDRs), whereby authorised personnel are given controlled, online access to confidential data and documents that are stored remotely. This enables a variety of business processes to be conducted

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Thackray Williams—Lucy Zhu

Thackray Williams—Lucy Zhu

Dual-qualified partner joins as head of commercial property department

Morgan Lewis—David A. McManus

Morgan Lewis—David A. McManus

Firm announces appointment of next chair

Burges Salmon—Rebecca Wilsker

Burges Salmon—Rebecca Wilsker

Director joins corporate team from the US

NEWS
What safeguards apply when trust corporations are appointed as deputy by the Court of Protection? 
Disputing parties are expected to take part in alternative dispute resolution (ADR), where this is suitable for their case. At what point, however, does refusing to participate cross the threshold of ‘unreasonable’ and attract adverse costs consequences?
When it comes to free legal advice, demand massively outweighs supply. 'Millions of people are excluded from access to justice as they don’t have anywhere to turn for free advice—or don’t know that they can ask for help,' Bhavini Bhatt, development director at the Access to Justice Foundation, writes in this week's NLJ
When an ex-couple is deciding who gets what in the divorce or civil partnership dissolution, when is it appropriate for a third party to intervene? David Burrows, NLJ columnist and solicitor advocate, considers this thorny issue in this week’s NLJ
NLJ's latest Charities Appeals Supplement has been published in this week’s issue
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