Last year I noted that these predictions appear just after the wave of Christmas adverts. In our house Sainsbury’s and Mog, certainly beat the John Lewis effort, but to each his own. My aim is to give you some pointers on what 2016 will bring in the world of legal IT.
Last year I was almost right about the way in which lawyers would have to focus more on estimates, budgets and planning, but I didn’t foresee the firestorm of change that the {i}Mitchell{/i} and {i}Denton{/i} rulings would rain upon the legal profession. There has been a sea-change in how the courts regard the timely provision of disclosure and it’s an easy prediction to say that focus will remain in 2016.
It is also ‘more of the same’ on the adoption of Artificial Intelligence within the legal community. Whilst IBM’s Watson has made tremendous inroads into the legal world by its adoption by a host of organisations from Westlaw, through to NextLaw Labs (the technology arm of Dentons) via ROSS, for me the more significant UK gains are being made by the ‘cognitive technologies’ of RAVN who are using their success at BLP as a springboard into the rest of the market. Gaining Gareth Thomas from Tikit to head their sales force is a tremendous fillip to their credibility. AI is here and will be even more embedded in law by the end of 2016.
What else for the forthcoming year?
The UK’s eDisclosure market will continue to mature, with US firms arriving over here either by acquisitions or start-ups. At least one firm will suffer a catastrophic data breach as the concerted hacking effort that is directed at these organisations finally claims a victim. We might even start to see the emergence of technically minded lawyers proud to call themselves eDisclosure experts.
And England, who ignored last year’s prediction of World Cup glory, will win a Grand Slam in the 6 Nations. Well, one can dream.
{b}Andrew Haslam from Allvision – one of the UK’s leading independent eDisclosure consultants: andrew.haslam@allvision.co.uk{/b}
