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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

The Court of Appeal has slammed the brakes on claimants trying to swap defendants after limitation has expired. In Adcamp LLP v Office Properties and BDB Pitmans v Lee [2026] EWCA Civ 50, it overturned High Court rulings that had allowed substitutions under s 35(6)(b) of the Limitation Act 1980, reports Sarah Crowther of DAC Beachcroft in this week's NLJ

A seemingly dry procedural update may prove potent. In his latest 'Civil way' column for NLJ this week, Stephen Gold explains that new CPR 31.12A—part of the 193rd update—fills a ‘lacuna’ exposed in McLaren Indy v Alpa Racing
The long-running Mazur saga edged towards its finale as the Court of Appeal heard arguments on whether non-solicitors can ‘conduct litigation’. Writing in NLJ this week, Professor Dominic Regan of City Law School reports from a packed courtroom where 16 wigs watched Nick Bacon KC argue that Mr Justice Sheldon had failed to distinguish between ‘tasks and responsibilities’
Cheating in driving tests is surging—and courts are responding firmly. Writing in NLJ this week, Neil Parpworth of De Montfort Law School charts a rise in impersonation and tech-assisted fraud, with 2,844 attempts recorded in a year
As AI-generated ‘deepfake’ images proliferate, the law may already have the tools to respond. In NLJ this week, Jon Belcher of Excello Law argues that such images amount to personal data processing under UK GDPR
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