Covid-19 is having a profound impact on this sector, where we are seeing an increase in legal activity as companies reduce their personnel costs to survive in times of recession or adapt to new ways of working. “Our work and employment team has seen an increase in the work of clients seeking advice on pandemic response and remote working,” said William Malley, managing partner of Perkins Coie. Wally Martinez of Hunton Andrews Kurth points out that the problems facing this practice are “how we enable employees to work differently so that they can continue to operate in a legal and compliant manner.” Legal organizations that use technology with their customer experience in mind will stand out more. For example, a Gartner study predicts that by 2023, a quarter of legal departments will use virtual legal assistants (VLAs), AI-powered chatbots that can answer frequently asked questions to legal departments. This technology not only provides faster responses to internal stakeholders, but also saves in-house lawyers time and helps them focus their attention on legal concerns that only they can resolve. The challenges associated with the coronavirus pandemic are widespread. The following resources provide information and tips to help lawyers deal with the financial burden and technical challenges that many of them are currently facing. Beyond the purely legal realm, law firms and legal departments are more likely to use technology in the same way as the broader business world, as a way to streamline processes, improve organization, and differentiate themselves from the competition. It is not possible to predict the future with 100% accuracy, but we can be confident that these trends in legal technology will play a transformative role in the legal industry in the years to come. It will be essential for law firms and legal departments to observe their evolution as they evolve and measure their impact over time.
Keep these legal technology trends in mind, as the legal industry will be a very different space in the post-COVID world. Overall, lawyers are still very concerned about the long-term health of their law firms. The percentage of practitioners who are concerned about their success currently stands at 53%, compared to a peak of 67% at the beginning of the pandemic. However, despite a visible recovery in some practice areas, the industry as a whole is still suffering and is in a decimated state. Given the ongoing challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, we recognize the need to better understand the issues facing legal professionals in order to overcome them. We hope that the information provided here will help inform industry leaders and individual practitioners in addressing current and future issues that may arise. In order to minimize contact, the health system has been and is increasingly digitized. “The acceleration of telemedicine and virtual visits has been tremendous,” said Ira Coleman, Managing Partner of McDermott, Will & Emery. “No one expected this kind of development and adoption for at least ten years, but the crisis has pushed the future back at least five years – maybe more. We`ve seen providers go from two telemedicine appointments a day to 5,000 a week. With apps like Doctor On Demand, Teladoc and Heal, patients can now frequently make video calls or chat with their doctor and access other healthcare resources 24/7.
Although these apps were on the market before the pandemic, their use has accelerated over the past year and should also be beneficial in the post-Covid world. In addition to the obvious benefits of telemedicine, we are likely to see significant legal challenges in terms of confidentiality, indemnity and professional insurance. On January 13, 2022, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) released a forecast of the challenges business leaders will face during this COVID recovery season, titled “11 Trends That Will Shape Work in 2022 and Beyond.” Building on these predictions, this two-part article explores some of their legal implications. While that survey found that the pandemic had led to a sharp drop in new legal cases at law firms, new data from . Therefore, we can expect companies to adopt technology that reduces costs and increases efficiency. For example, AI is likely to be used in intelligent document file search to prepare for litigation, identify contracts that have become riskier due to current events (e.g., the LIBOR transition), or provide relevant data to lawyers for further scrutiny. While the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. surged in March, the number of new legal cases submitted to law firms fell sharply.
Currently, the legal space uses AI in a somewhat limited capacity. Many of the AI use cases mentioned in this article – as a method of intelligently searching in document sets or managing contracts – are valuable, but they don`t represent their full potential. The legal landscape is constantly changing as new laws are passed or existing laws are interpreted or applied differently. Brooks Pierce`s attorneys have identified some of the biggest potential legal issues businesses need to be aware of in the coming months — from labor and employment to cybersecurity and federal investigations — and provided a high-level assessment of what business leaders need to know now to better prepare for the future. While many lawyers are still worried about the economic future of their law firms, a smaller percentage are worried about their livelihoods. At the beginning of the pandemic, 57% said they could worry about making a living, while only 36% said they identified with this mindset in recent weeks. Employers will continue to deal with the coronavirus pandemic in 2022. Some may try to limit the spread of infections by requiring workers to receive booster shots or postponing return-to-work plans.
These employers will face some legal problems when formulating their policies. Together, these advances mean that law firms and legal departments will be able to take on more work and get results faster.
