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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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NEWS
Refusing ADR is risky—but not always fatal. Writing in NLJ this week, Masood Ahmed and Sanjay Dave Singh of the University of Leicester analyse Assensus Ltd v Wirsol Energy Ltd: despite repeated invitations to mediate, the defendant stood firm, made a £100,000 Part 36 offer and was ultimately ‘wholly vindicated’ at trial
The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 transformed criminal justice. Writing in NLJ this week, Ed Cape of UWE and Matthew Hardcastle and Sandra Paul of Kingsley Napley trace its ‘seismic impact’
Operational resilience is no longer optional. Writing in NLJ this week, Emma Radmore and Michael Lewis of Womble Bond Dickinson explain how UK regulators expect firms to identify ‘important business services’ that could cause ‘intolerable levels of harm’ if disrupted
Criminal juries may be convicting—or acquitting—on a misunderstanding. Writing in NLJ this week Paul McKeown, Adrian Keane and Sally Stares of The City Law School and LSE report troubling survey findings on the meaning of ‘sure’
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has narrowly preserved a key weapon in its anti-corruption arsenal. In this week's NLJ, Jonathan Fisher KC of Red Lion Chambers examines Guralp Systems Ltd v SFO, in which the High Court ruled that a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) remained in force despite the company’s failure to disgorge £2m by the stated deadline
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