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As the legal profession continues to embrace technology to enhance operational efficiency and service delivery, two directors from legal services businesses share their predictions on the technologies that will present the most significant opportunities for law firms in the future.
The future of legal technology presents significant opportunities for firms that choose to adopt it. However, the wide variety of available technologies can complicate the decision-making process for law firms regarding which solutions to implement in their practice.
In a recent live stream, hosted by Lawyers Weekly in collaboration with Clio, Caralee Fontenele, the director at Scalable Law, and Ben Deverson, the director at Lawganised, provided valuable insights and recommendations regarding emerging tools that are significantly transforming and enhancing the operational efficiency of legal firms.
As AI technology continues to revolutionise the legal profession, Deverson emphasised those who fail to embrace this advancement within their practice risk being left “behind”.
He explained that the impact of AI extends far beyond legal work itself, with the ability to enhance business operations and improve content development through increased efficiency and automation.
“It not only helps with the legal product in terms of how you’re producing legal work and how you might be producing things like chronologies, how you’re producing file reviews or whatever, but even in your own business and how you’re developing content,” Deverson said.
A significant area that he urged lawyers to monitor closely is the advancement of prompt engineering technology, with innovations such as DeepSeek making substantial strides.
“One of the key things that’s happening in that ChatGPT world is the concept of prompt engineering and understanding the right prompts.
“DeepSeek came out a few weeks ago, and people are saying it’s already years ahead of ChatGPT, which is phenomenal in my view because some of the things coming out of ChatGPT are amazing to see,” Deverson said.
For lawyers seeking to enhance their content development in the near future, Deverson highlighted emerging technologies that have the potential to transform content creation and enhance client engagement.
“There are so many products that are allowing things like content development integrations [such as] Canva if you use it [you can create] avatars that are speaking [about] your product.
“The NotebookLM from Google now is producing podcasts by uploading a document into NotebookLM. It’s amazing what you can actually produce,” Deverson said.
Looking ahead, Deverson stressed that “AI is going to be the next thing over the next five years and how you can best harness it both in product and also in your business”.
Fontenele pointed out that as technology becomes increasingly integrated into the legal profession, law firms must be cautious of inflated pricing for legal tech that is merely repurposed from widely available general tools.
“When it comes to law tech, it’s like the tech is there, and then you put the word law on top, and then they charge a whole lot more for the same tech you could get just on ChatGPT, for example,” Fontenele said.
She also encourages lawyers to explore AI and other technologies beyond the legal tech bubble by thinking creatively and experimenting with new tools that are widely available and accessible to all.
“Where you need to be starting is just exploring and seeing what it can do and having that creative mind thinking, ‘oh, I wonder if ChatGPT could fix this.’
“Just get in and start exploring and just seeing what you can do and start learning about how to prompt it, and the more you use it, the more it is trained for your law firm,” Fontenele said.
To stay informed about the latest innovations, Deverson recommends that lawyers join online groups and forums where they can exchange insights, ask questions, and learn from others within the legal tech community.
“Join communities, join Facebook groups, join various communities and keep up with the latest technology.
“There [are] Facebook groups that I know that Caralee and I are involved in where people just ask simple questions like … what’s the latest technology in relation to transcription, and others will jump on there and say, are we using this product,” Deverson said.
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