The Legal Tech movement in Central America | How it accelerated with the crisis of 2008 and 2020
It all started in 2008, the financial crisis laid the groundwork for a new way of providing services, the client wants more for less; and this is how companies, not law firms, such as Axiom, Riverview Law, Lawyers on Demand, Legal Zoom, Rocket Lawyer, among others.
In 2008, in Latin America there was still no perceived need to change the way legal services were provided or to establish legal services companies. The structure of law firms that were more than 100 years old, where the CEO or the owners hired a trusted lawyer, seemed to continue to be adequate.
In 2020, the story is different. With a new global crisis due to COVID-19, companies are once again rethinking their legal costs. The hiring of legal services is closely linked to costs and numbers. Now it is the CFOs and in-house lawyers who seem to be the ones who decide on the hiring of legal services. Making legal services efficient becomes a necessity.
En la actualidad, los términos Legal Tech y Law Tech están a la orden del día. Pero ¿existe realmente una diferencia entre ambos? La respuesta es afirmativa, aunque parecieran ser terminologías similares es importante diferenciarlas. En un webinar de Antonio Serrano, responsable del Certificado en Legal Tech en la Era Digital de MIT Professional Education en colaboración con Esade, comprendí que la principal diferencia radica en que en el Legal Tech no se hace tanto uso de la Inteligencia Artificial, mientras que en el Law Tech sí existe una implementación más activa de la Inteligencia Artificial. Asimismo, en dicho webinar se expuso que existen principalmente tres tipos de tecnologías tanto en el Legal Tech como en Law Tech, siendo estas las siguientes:
1. Enabling technologies: cloud services or cybersecurity
2. Support tools: office management programs, files, or automation programs, or electronic signature programs.
3. Solutions that assist or replace legal advice.
In Latin America we already find these types of technology. Let me present some of them:
In terms of enabling technologies, it is very common for legal departments (both in-house and law firms) to no longer have physical servers, but increasingly opt for cloud services such as One Drive, Dropbox, among others. Likewise, in terms of cybersecurity services, we already find companies such as Fintegrity (Panama) that provide cybersecurity audit services, and especially risk management and control services.
As for support tools, just to name a few, we can find: electronic signature tools such as Signaturit, Docusign and/or Adobe Sign; office management tools such as the solutions provided by Lemontech (Chile, Peru and Mexico); document automation tools such as the products provided by Legal Machine (Guatemala and Panama).
As for solutions that help or replace advice, just to name a few we can find Kleros (Argentina) for arbitrations, in which Blockchain technology is implemented, or online legal services such as Esvidal (Peru); or online services also especially in labor matters such as GEBD Legal Tech Firm (Mexico).
In Latin America, there is no doubt that the Legal Tech revolution has arrived. My perception is that, in the Everett Rogers Diffusion of Innovation curve, we are in the phase of innovators and early followers, so training in Legal Tech is a great opportunity. “We are not in an era of change, but rather a change of era”