Sunday LawTech Review — 7th January 2018

Happy New Year and welcome back! Not a great deal has happened in the lawtech sector in this first week back, so take at look at our article LawTech In 2018: What to Expect from technology and the changing legal sector in 2018.

University Law School partners with AI solutions provider

According to Legaltech News, Peking University Law School has announced that it will partner with cloud-based analytics tool Gridsum to launch a research center to examine possibilities for AI in China’s legal system.

LawTech vendors need to up their game

A great writeup from Caroline Hill — editor of Legal IT Insider, looking at some of the LegalTech highlights of 2017 and what the future holds for IT in law firms. Caroline shares some advice for LawTech companies wanting to succeed in 2018:

“legal tech vendors take note: you are going to have to up your game. At ILTA Insight 2017, legal technology vendors were repeatedly criticised for not knowing their clients well enough or how their technology fits in with law firms’ long-term ambitions.”

The Legal IT Department of the Future

Another great article from Legal IT Insider — this time a guest post from Derek Southall (head of innovation and digital at GowlingWLG). Derek looks at how the role of IT professionals within law firms is changing and what this means for the future of IT within law firms. Derek notes:

“Is the death of the Legal IT department or CIO on the horizon? Definitely not as far as I am concerned but it is vital to adapt and lead this change in focus. The future will be more about strategic advice, decentralised management, managing third party experts and partnering.“

Originally published at Technomancers — Legal Technology Blog.