Legal Tech in 2016

By: Kevin West

It is hard to understate the incredible rate of technological change. In 1991, there was only one website in the whole world, and now 25 years later there are – hold on to your hats – 55,600,000 cat videos on YouTube.

Not only has technology exploded, but our adoption rate of new technology is incredible. I have in the palm of my hand an iPhone that gives me instant access to virtually all of the knowledge ever acquired in the course of human history. And what do I tend to use it for? “Hey Siri – who won the Blue Jays game last night?” Technology is roaring ahead, and we are soaking it up. Everything is changing. Except, of course, at law firms.

The tide may be turning now. At the Legaltech Toronto conference this week, almost all of the major Bay Street law firms were represented and described their technology solutions. My former firms Davies and Stewart McKelvey were “case studies” as both are at the forefront of innovation.

I started SkyLaw in 2010 in order to do the same kind of corporate law work that I was doing at Davies, but with the use of technology such as cloud computing (the genesis of the “Sky” in “SkyLaw”). At the time, before iCloud, I was met with curiosity from big firm partners, with responses summed up nicely by one as “I have no idea what you are talking about”.

Tech is changing everything and it is reshaping law firms. I was pleased to chair the two-day Legaltech Toronto conference and meet so many inspiring professionals on both the IT and CIO side as well as the practitioner side. Some of the latest tech in use, like ROSS, the “brand new artificially intelligent lawyer” developed by U of T students, is truly incredible. Law firms are responding to client demands to be innovative and efficient and they are embracing new tech solutions to do it.

As was once said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. At Legaltech, I felt like I was in a room full of magicians.