With Wonder Legal, another legal technology company launches in Germany. Commercial and private litigants can create their own lease or partnership agreement via www.wonder.legal.de without third parties being able to view the data. Has the online legal revolution been proclaimed since the France?plus But that doesn`t mean every law firm that works with computers is automatically a legal technology law firm. Rather, it is a question of legal practitioners using special information technologies in their legal activities that greatly simplify and improve their work. Together with our members, we are actively shaping the transformation of the legal market. We believe that innovation is born where different perspectives and disciplines work together. We are the exchange platform between the various players in the German legal market – whether law firms, legal departments, legal expenses insurance companies, software companies, legal technology start-ups, justice or others. The term “legal technology”, coined from English, refers to the digitization of legal work and is composed of two words: “legal services” and “technology”. To German: Legal services are linguistically linked to new digital technologies. The result is the clear term “Legal Tech”. With events such as the Legal Revolution congress fair[27],[28] at Messe Nürnberg, there are now well-established meeting places for the growing industry. In addition, the European Legal Technology Association was founded in 2016 as the first industry association in Europe.
[29] Since 2017, the Faculty of Law of the University of Heidelberg has also offered the doctoral program “Digital Law”. At the University of Bayreuth, law students can obtain an additional degree in Computer Science and Digitization (DigiZ). [30] Meanwhile, many other German universities also organise at least individual conferences and seminars on the issue of legal technology. [31] Since the winter semester 2020/21, the Faculty of Law of the University of Passau is the first law school in Germany to offer a bachelor`s degree program in Legal Tech (LL.B. Legal Tech). [32] Legal Tech will shake up the German legal industry. From work processes, personnel structures or business models to a basic understanding of the legal profession itself. But what exactly is meant by the “buzzword”? What do chatbots, smart contracts, blockchain or AI (artificial intelligence) have to do with today`s legal profession? And how does the digitalization and automation of legal advice specifically support the daily life of law firms? For 5 to 10 years, the subject of legal tech has been on everyone`s lips.
Technical progress and the desire to innovate are giving rise to more and more legal technology companies. There are currently just over 1,000 in the world. In this article, we present 7 success stories. Don`t miss the upcoming exciting events of the Legal Tech Association and network with experts from the German tech legal scene. Legal technology (more commonly the abbreviation Legal Tech) refers to the field of information technology that deals with the automation of legal activities. The aim is to increase the efficiency of legal work. Benefiting from a growing IT potential and digital natives on the labour market[1], the importance of legal technology for the legal system has been growing for several years. [2] By definition, legal technology refers to special information technologies that are used to automate legal work processes. However, many offers are also aimed at legal laymen and support them, for example, in the enforcement of their rights or the drafting of simple contracts.
In the past, processing cases was time-consuming and time-consuming. Since only a small part of the German legal landscape uses digital structures and legal technologies, this is often still the case. At myRight, we want to do things differently and we promote a more digital justice system in Germany with our business model. Legal technology overlaps thematically with legal informatics. Legal technology is the broadest term, as it covers all means of information and communication technology in the legal system, including digital products and services such as online marketing services. Legal informatics, on the other hand, is a field of research that deals mainly with the automation of legal determination (i.e. subsumption), i.e. part of it. [17] Since 2014, the number of start-ups in the industry has been growing faster. [21] As of mid-2016, it had 550 companies worldwide; most of them are from the United States.
[4] In 2015, there were only about 20 legal technology companies in Germany[22]; In 2016, there were already 33. [23] An up-to-date overview of all relevant companies in the sector is provided by Stanford University`s Techindex Act. [24] Dominik Tobschall provides an up-to-date overview of German legal technology service providers on his blog. [25] After applications that support lawyers in their work (1.) have long since found their way into German law firms, the field of legal tech, which enables the automation of workflows, is growing in particular. Areas that are standardized, such as drafting a contract or drafting a complaint, are predestined for this. Examples include Legal SmartDocuments, an interactive platform that enables independent, dialogue-based creation of contracts and other legal documents, or Lawlift, whose software enables law firms and legal departments to centrally create, use and update intelligent templates. The digitalization of the world of work has also reached the legal industry in Germany. While legal tech has already changed the legal market in the USA for several years, legal tech is still in its infancy in Germany. Legal technology will also lead to complete changes and new job profiles for German lawyers. As in all areas where digitalization is taking hold, the requirements for lawyers will also change. Customer acquisition is increasingly done on the Internet.
Automated contract assessment (eDiscovery), case management, and back-office work using software won`t replace legal thinking, but many common legal problems can be solved faster and easier with the help of legal technology.