The future of AI (and Product) within Legal and the decision of Build vs Buy has been a prominent conversation with respect to generating an AI roadmap. There seems to be polarity around the best way of progressing Product.
A journey to internal Product capability?
Many Senior leaders are forward-thinking in their approach to Product and Legal firms and have identified opportunities to build Products internally that are bespoke and specific to the Legal community. We’ve seen rise to some exciting work over the last 12 months with fleetGPT at Dentons, a tool focused on content generation, research, and identification of relevant documentation, recently launched.
To support the growth of Product solutions internally, Andrew Edginton at Gowling WLG, mentioned out of the box AI tools are limited by vendors. Is there a future where Product warrants a function run by a Chief Product Officer?
In comparison to a survey in 2018, there has been a 20% decrease in the use of external organisations for Legal innovation with the rise of internal development set to continue. From the conversation with the Senior leaders around the table, it is clear there is an exciting buzz about the opportunity, and it will be an exciting topic to follow.
Law firms as a Service not a Technology firm
However, it was mentioned by Nigel Lang of Fieldfisher and reiterated across the group on several occasions that Law firms are service companies not Technology companies. As of May 2023, only 27% of innovation is conducted in-house by firms, with the majority still engaging with external technology solution providers.
We are seeing across the industry a lot of buzz around technology providers, with Litera, Microsoft, and Harvey all being mentioned during our discussion, as providers of more bespoke Legal products for firms. Does the introduction of more bespoke solutions to Practices of Law prevent the necessity of internal capability development?