Legal Technology

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Legal Technology , also known as Legal Tech , describes IT-supported technology (especially software , online services and IT-supported services, but also hardware) that supports or automates legal work processes . The aim is to provide legal services more efficiently. Benefiting from growing IT potential and digital natives on the job market , the importance of legal technology for legal advice has been increasing steadily for several years.

definition

The generic term Legal Technology currently describes a wide range of different IT products: They are united by their common reference to legal services; How and to what extent they support or even replace lawyers , however, makes a big difference. Oliver Goodenough, for example, differentiates between so-called 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 applications.

Legal Technology 1.0

The former refers to technology, especially software, that supports lawyers and other legal practitioners. This means, for example, relatively established IT systems for digital document management , software for office organization and specialist legal databases for legal research such as Beck-Online . This classic repertoire has recently been supplemented by various online services that enable secure web conferences with clients, for example . IT-supported training media (legal education) such as webinars and video instructions also move at this level of legal tech offers .

Legal Technology 2.0 (automated legal services)

2.0 applications replace humans, i. H. they not only support him, but also carry out individual work steps in his place. They therefore have a significantly more disruptive effect on the legal market than Legal Tech 1.0.

Fields of application of the 2.0 technologies now exist for almost all individual steps of legal activity, from the determination of the facts to the automatic creation of legal documents such as contracts and complaints to the final clarification of a legal dispute via online dispute resolution. An example of this in the business sector ( B2B ) is the checking of large quantities of documents using so-called e-discovery software. One example in the consumer sector ( B2C ) are automated legal services such as the online service Flightright, which automatically checks air travelers' claims for compensation based on the data they have entered on the website and enforces any claims that may be established with automatically generated written pleadings.

Legal Technology 3.0 ( smart contracts and artificial intelligence)

3.0 technologies are classified as having even more consequences than 2.0 applications. This includes IT solutions that make it possible not only to deal with individual work steps or simple, narrowly defined legal services autonomously, but also to fundamentally change the professional profile of human lawyers. There are currently few Legal Tech 3.0 applications on the market because their development is novel and complex.

Several companies focus their development work on the one hand on writing machine-readable language for legal documents such as contracts (e.g. smart contracts ). Other companies are planning to program an artificial intelligence substitute for lawyers. The ROSS Intelligence program , which is based on IBM Watson, is a first interim result , although its functionality is still very limited.

Differentiation from legal informatics

Legal technology overlaps thematically with legal informatics . Legal Technology is the broader term as it encompasses all information and communication technology resources in the legal system, including digital products and services such as online marketing services. Legal informatics, on the other hand, is a research area that deals primarily with the automation of legal finding (ie subsumption ), i.e. with a sub-area of ​​it.

development

Like other industries, legal practice began integrating PCs into its work processes from the 1970s onwards . At first she made primarily use of word processing programs . With the founding of the law firm software provider RA-Micro by Peter Becker in 1982 and the e-learning startup Jus2click by Jochen Brandhoff in 1999, the first law-specific software offers arose. Also in 1999 the legislature reorganized the professional law and repealed the so-called localization requirement. Until then, lawyers were only allowed to litigate in the district where they were admitted. As a result of this and the increasing spread of the Internet, lawyers were able to reach an ever larger market, which increased their willingness to invest and innovate. This accelerated the development of law-specific software and at the beginning of the millennium the first online databases for legal research and other office organization systems were created.

The number of start-ups in the industry has been growing faster since 2014. By mid-2016 it had grown to 550 companies worldwide; most of them originated in the United States. In 2015 there were only about 20 legal tech companies in Germany; There were already 33 in 2016. The Techindex Law of Stanford University provides an up-to-date overview of all relevant companies in the industry . Dominik Tobschall provides an up-to-date overview of German legal tech service providers on his blog.

The term Legal Tech as an abbreviation for the Legal Technology branch did not establish itself until the beginning of the 2010s in Germany; The first scientific publications on the subject followed in 2014. Before that, the term was mainly used in the USA and was the name given to the annual “Legal Tech New York” trade fair.

Events such as the Legal Revolution congress fair (“Legal ®Evolution” until 2019) are now permanently installed meeting points for the growing industry. In addition, the European Legal Technology Association was founded in 2016, the first industry association in Europe. Since 2017, the Law Faculty of Heidelberg University has also had a doctoral program "Digital Law". At the University of Bayreuth, law students can complete an additional degree in computer science and digitization (DigiZ). In the meantime, numerous other German universities are also holding at least individual lectures and seminars on the question of legal technology.

Online platforms for dispute resolution have so far been set up primarily in the United States and France in order to effectively settle disputes with a low value in dispute through arbitration. In the meantime, however, there are also solutions from non-governmental providers in Germany who offer the settlement of disputes in e-commerce.

Goals and potential

Insofar as legal tech products not only support lawyers in their previous work, but also partially or completely automate legal services, they are said to have the potential to influence the functioning of the legal industry as a whole. The reason for this expectation are the immense increases in efficiency that one expects from reducing the necessary human labor input in standard procedures and thus reducing costs, duration and, last but not least, the susceptibility to errors.

Legal service providers are particularly hoping that this will result in lower staffing requirements for their current range of services. For their part, clients expect that the increase in efficiency that can be achieved with Legal-Tech will be reflected in the legal fees in the future. From a macroeconomic perspective, Breidenbach, for example, predicts an “industrialization” of the legal services market, in which standard legal services will be rendered inexpensively automatically in the future, while lawyers tend to concentrate on boutique solutions for special cases.

As a long-term effect, it is hoped that this will provide broader layers of consumers and small business owners with affordable access to legal assistance. According to a study by the American Bar Association , 80% of the US population still lacks this. In Germany one assumes up to 70% of the population.

In the long term, legal technology could also help make the judiciary more efficient and decisions more objective. With the online dispute resolution, efforts to this end have already taken hold of arbitration .

literature

  • Stephan Breidenbach , Florian Glatz: Legal Manual Legal Tech . Beck, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-406-71348-4 .
  • Marcelo Corrales, Mark Fenwick, Helena Haapio: Legal tech, smart contracts and Blockchain . Springer, Singapore 2019, ISBN 978-981-13-6086-2 .
  • Nikolaus Forgó, Veronika Haberler, Markus Hartung: Legal Tech legal bases Germany & EU version from September 1st, 2018. facultas / FlexLEX, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-99071-020-3 .
  • Markus Hartung, Micha-Manuel Bues, Gernot Halib: Legal Tech. The digitization of the legal market . Beck, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-406-71349-1 .
  • Nils Hullen: Increased efficiency in legal advice through legal visualization tools. From legal informatics to legal tech . Nomos, Baden-Baden 2019, ISBN 978-3-8487-5601-8 (additional dissertation, University of Frankfurt (Oder), 2018).
  • Richard Susskind : Tomorrow's lawyers. An introduction to your future . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, ISBN 0-19-966806-X .
  • Jens Wagner: Legal Tech and Legal Robots. The change in the legal market due to new technologies and artificial intelligence . Springer, Wiesbaden 2018, ISBN 978-3-658-20057-2 .
  • Patrick Huber: Chances and challenges of digital jurisdiction. GRIN Verlag, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-346-03342-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b LTO: Legal Tech: Trends in Germany 2017 . In: Legal Tribune Online . ( lto.de [accessed on January 24, 2017]).
  2. ↑ Marcel Schneider: More computers on campus . In: The New Jurists (Legal Tribune Online Special Edition 2016) . Wolters Kluwer, Cologne 2016, p. 36, 38 .
  3. ↑ Roland Vogl: Why the future takes its time . In: The New Jurists (Legal Tribune Online Special Edition 2016) . Wolters Kluwer, Cologne 2016, p. 6th f .
  4. ↑ a b “Legal Tech” - an inventory . ( bucerius-education.de [accessed on January 24, 2017]).
  5. ↑ a b Roland Vogl: Why the future takes its time . In: The New Jurists (Legal Tribune Online Special Edition 2016) . Wolters Kluwer, 2016, p. 6, 8 .
  6. ^ A b Oliver R. Goodenough Professor of Law, the Director of the Center for Legal Innovation, Vermont Law School: Legal Technology 3.0. February 4, 2015, accessed January 24, 2017 .
  7. ↑ a b Ingo Mahl: Automation, collaboration and a little dating . In: The New Jurists (Legal Tribune Online Special Edition 2016) . Wolters Kluwer, Cologne 2016, p. 12, 14 .
  8. ↑ LTO: Legal Tech for Students: More Computers on Campus . In: Legal Tribune Online . ( lto.de [accessed on January 24, 2017]).
  9. ↑ Krist Werling, Kari Prochaska, August 27, 2013: E-Discovery: The key to cost-effective corporate due diligence reviews. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 21, 2017 ; Retrieved April 20, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.insidecounsel.com
  10. ↑ 15 legaltech startups that stir up the market. Retrieved August 31, 2017 .
  11. ↑ Substitute pilot: Legal Tech on board the substitute pilot . June 27, 2017 ( ersatz-pilot.de [accessed on August 31, 2017]).
  12. ^ A b Christian Veith, Michael Bandlow, Michael Harnisch, Hariolf Wenzler, Markus Hartung and Dirk Hartung: How Legal Technology Will Change the Business of Law . Ed .: Boston Consulting Group, Bucerius Law School. 2016, p. 5 .
  13. ↑ Markus Hartung: Legal Tech: Only replaces what you don't need lawyers for anyway . In: human vs. Machine (Legal Tribune Online Special Edition 2015) . Wolters Kluwer, Cologne 2015, p. 6th f .
  14. ↑ Smart Contracts and Distributed Ledger - A Legal Perspective. Legal Tech Blog, accessed August 31, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Dr. Jörn Heckmann: Smart Contracts: Source code as contract text . In: c't . tape 24/2016 , p. 138 .
  16. ↑ Bots, Big Data, Blockchain, and AI - Disruption or Incremental Change? ( bucerius-education.de [accessed on January 24, 2017]).
  17. ^ Wilhelm Steinmüller: IT and law. Introduction to legal informatics . In: Legal worksheets . tape 6 . Schweitzer, Berlin 1970.
  18. ↑ Management. Retrieved February 5, 2020 .
  19. ↑ Erkan Wisler: How to found a legal tech company: The transformation of the legal market. IHK Frankfurt, April 16, 2019, accessed on February 5, 2020 .
  20. ↑ Oliver Braun: Law on the Internet . In: Michael Huber et al. (Ed.): JuS 2002 . Issue 3. CH Beck, p. 310 f .
  21. ↑ What is Legal Tech? (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 25, 2017 ; Retrieved January 24, 2017 (American English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thelawinsider.com
  22. ↑ LTO editorial team: Legal Tech Companies in Germany . In: The New Jurists (Legal Tribune Online Special Edition 2016) . Wolters Kluwer, Cologne 2016, p. 16 f .
  23. ↑ LTO editorial team: Legal Tech Companies in Germany . In: human vs. Machine (Legal Tribune Online Special Edition 2015) . Wolters Kluwer, Cologne 2015, p. 8th f .
  24. ↑ Legaltechlist. Retrieved January 25, 2017 .
  25. ↑ LegalTech in Germany ~ / notepad. Retrieved October 11, 2017 (American English).
  26. ↑ Michael Grupp: Legal Tech - Impetus for Dispute Resolution and Legal Services . In: Anwaltsblatt 2014 . German Lawyers Association DAV e. V., Berlin 2014, p. 660 .
  27. ↑ FAZ No. 247 of October 24, 2017, p. 19 (Economy): Lawyers and digitization - The Legal (R) evolution focuses on opportunities .
  28. ↑ NJW-aktuell 48/2017, p. 15: The Legal Tech Expo .
  29. ↑ LTO: New industry association wants to strengthen Legal Tech . In: Legal Tribune Online . ( lto.de [accessed April 20, 2017]).
  30. ↑ University of Bayreuth: Additional course in computer science and digitization (DigiZ). Retrieved January 24, 2020 .
  31. ↑ Martin Fries: Legal Tech at my university? In: Legal Tech Blog. October 24, 2018, accessed May 19, 2019 .
  32. ^ The rise of the French Legaltech . ( bucerius-education.de [accessed on January 24, 2017]).
  33. ↑ janoFair, online arbitration, effective and free of charge. Retrieved March 2, 2017 .
  34. ^ Christian Veith, Michael Bandlow, Michael Harnisch, Hariolf Wenzler, Markus Hartung and Dirk Hartung: How Legal Technology Will Change the Business of Law . Ed .: Boston Consulting Group, Bucerius Law School. 2016, p. 3 .
  35. ^ Christian Veith, Michael Bandlow, Michael Harnisch, Hariolf Wenzler, Markus Hartung and Dirk Hartung: How Legal Technology Will Change the Business of Law . Ed .: Boston Consulting Group, Bucerius Law School. 2016, p. 8 .
  36. ↑ Pia Lorenz: "Legal advice is far too expensive" . In: The New Jurists (Legal Tribune Online Special Edition 2016) . Wolters Kluwer, Cologne 2016, p. 30 .
  37. ^ Report on the Future of Legal Services . ( bucerius-education.de [accessed on January 24, 2017]).
  38. ^ Commission on the Future of Legal Services: Report on the Future of Legal Services in the United States . Ed .: American Bar Association. 2016, p. III .
  39. ↑ Five Lessons Learned in Customer-Facing Legal Tech . ( bucerius-education.de [accessed on January 24, 2017]).