What Legal Technology Is
A taxonomy of legal technology
Legal technology can be either an aid for lawyers and other legal staff, or it can empower parties to a legal dispute to solve their own legal problems. The same types of tools can often serve both purposes.
If we tried to list all of the popular legal technology apps that exist today, we might end up with a classification like this:
- Static information presented online (such as websites, videos, and other educational content)
- Interactive, non-tailored education (games, VR court maps, online classes/training systems, etc.)
- Interactive, tailored information (expert systems)
- Searchable resource databases, including:
- Marketplace tools
- Lawyer/legal-resource/client matching tools
- Referral and triage tools (provide structured navigation to resource databases)
- Intake tools (collect information from the user and provide to case management system)
- Form and template filling (letters, pleadings, briefs, and more): also "document assembly"
- Form filling that delivers to a database rather than a printed document
- Automated systems that leverage machine learning, optical character recognition, etc. to deliver advice or generate documents without requiring much user input
- Automated systems that leverage machine learning to provide risk analysis, flag terms, etc.
- Clause libraries (similar to templates, but focused more on mix and matching without a rigid structure and order of terms)
- Tools to help litigants navigate the dispute preparation process:
- Electronic discovery tools (search, classify, tag large volumes of data)
- Tickler/reminder tools
- Mapping tools
- Tools that help collect and organize information to use in litigation
- Tools that help you organize and present a narrative (story-telling tools)
- Data analysis, reporting and graphing tools with a legal focus
- Legal writing helper tools (plain language, table of authority generation, citation checkers, etc.)
- Legal research helper tools (case databases)
- Case management systems / electronic record systems
- Billing, invoice generation, and time-tracking tools
- Electronic case filing
- Online dispute resolution
- Dedicated contract writing and analysis tools
- Self-proving contracts
- Miscellaneous case management tools
- Digital signature tools
- Document collection tools
- Pure collaboration tools
- Pure communication tools
Substantive vs. Non-Substantive applications
We can also distinguish between substantive apps that replace a traditional legal advice role, from non-substantive apps that simply make the job of a litigant or lawyer simpler.
Substantive apps:
- Gather facts from the user
- Provide information that is tailored to the user's situation
- May provide final documents that are similarly tailored to the user's situation
In short, they act a lot like a lawyer who meets with a client. And users often treat these apps like lawyers.
Substantive apps include:
- Expert systems
- Form and template filling applications
Although in some ways the line that divides a substantive app from a legal information website is thin, we must hold substantive apps to a higher standard than tools that simply help a litigant. The risk is higher. Not all lawyers are good, but an interactive app will provide the same tailored information in the same situation again, again, and again. That makes it critical to get that information correct.