Gina Hardin, SaaS Sales Director, eBrevia by DFIN
While technology has been transforming industries, one industry that’s traditionally been more tech resistant than tech-savvy is the legal sector. But this reluctance began to ebb in 2022, as law firms started seeing the value in innovation.
Signs of an imminent shift were apparent back in 2021. That’s when the 2021 Future Ready Lawyer 2021 study reported that 84% of legal departments plan to increase their technology spending, with 80% of lawyers reporting that their need for technology solutions has increased as a result of the pandemic.
Over the course of 2022, we witnessed this shift towards technology adoption firsthand at some of the legal industry’s top conferences, including LegalWeek2022, CLOC and ILTACON 2022. At these events, we had many one-on-one discussions with lawyers, who told us they needed to onboard new legal tech solutions, specifically cloud-based, easy-to-use, integrated offerings that can support remote teams, reduce routine tasks and remove the burden of having to switch back and forth between disparate platforms.
Many of these firms are turning to companies like DFIN and our artificial intelligence (AI) review platform, eBrevia. eBrevia not only integrates with many of the apps used by organizations, such as Salesforce, Sharepoint and Box, but with other vital law firm-specific solutions, such as iManage and our virtual data room (VDR) offering, Venue. With an Open API, eBrevia can also be integrated with a wide array of other systems.
Through these integrations, eBrevia is helping further increase technology adoption while providing law firms with a fast path to AI, which can review thousands of contracts to identify language patterns and key concepts. Best of all, AI can do this up to 90% faster, 60% more accurately and at a much lower cost than a manual review.
AI capabilities might include anything from examining M&A contract provisions, to automating contract reviews to ensure they comply with shifting federal and state laws and regulations, to embarking on a CLM readiness project.
Automating routine tasks and leveraging technology in work processes was one of the top challenges law departments called out in the 2021 Future Ready Lawyer survey. Over the last 12 months, companies began addressing these areas with new, easy-to-use, cutting-edge cloud-based offerings that are transforming their businesses and, in doing so, enabling them to meet strategic objectives more efficiently.
As the work is not done, we expect this commitment will remain strong throughout 2023. During this period, we look forward to helping guide these firms along their technology journey to ensure their investments deliver the organizational transformation that’s so vital to future success.
