Upcoming trends reshaping legal practices
The year 2020 was tumultuous, to say the least. It seemed most fronts were under attack: Covid-19 severely disrupted various industries and supply chains, especially those that are dependent on offline interactions and transactions.
The legal industry was no exception to this rule.
Throughout this past year, with the sole objective of adaption in mind, there was a significant acceleration in the process of digitalization of the sector.
Following is the list of six upcoming trends that we see reshaping the legal practice of tomorrow:
Remote Online Notarization
Remote Online Notarization or RON, as its name suggests, is the process by which notarizations are carried out remotely using digital tools.
Clearly, there are many variations in how this task is completed. Nonetheless, it predominantly has three main components:
A) Identity Verification
B) Online Interaction with a Licensed Notary
C) Live Notarial authentication
In light of the pandemic, countries across the world have changed their laws to allow for RON in various aspects of everyday life.
Examples of notable RON Platforms are Legitify (EU), Notarize (US), SignIX (US), and NotaryCam (US).
E-Signature Adoption
E- Signatures were already an emerging space during the pandemic.
Once lockdown was upon us, and the world went remote, we saw a swift adoption of E-signatures as a standard method of executing documents across various sectors and transactions.
This even included those concerning governments and financial institutions. A few well-known E-Signature companies are Docusign (US), HelloSign (US), and Signaturit (EU).
No Code Automation
With regard to 2020, it was also the year where process automation came of age.
Law firms and legal teams across the world have shown widespread adoption of various technologies that have streamlined and automated their internal processes.
These processes include client interactions, invoicing, and delegations of duties. Important start-ups in this space include Josef (Australia), and Legal Connection (UK).
Contract Automation and Management
Given the short amount of time that has passed, the evolution of Contract Lifecycle Management has been truly outstanding.
From starting as just process flow automation, it has been able to develop into contract negotiations and AI-based clause analysis.
Some notable start-ups in this space include Ironclad (US), Clause.io (US), and LinkSquares (US).
Consumer Redressal
It is no secret that the world is becoming more and more reliant on digital services.
Correspondingly, legal relationships with these online companies have become vital to ensure consumer protection and quality assurance.
The recent trend to carry out contract teardowns shows the growing demand for innovative solutions to handle customer complaints and online queries. DoNotPay (UK) is one of the pioneers in this space.
E-Discovery
E-Discovery of documents was one of the few areas which had seen early adoption prior to the Covid-19 era.
There is no doubt that it has been a major gamechanger in the Litigation space.
DISCO (US) and Relativity (US) are market leaders on many fronts in this space.
We are delighted to announce that Legitify is Europe’s first Remote Online Notarization Solution.
If you want to know more about us, please don't hesitate to reach out at info@legitify.eu.
