The USD50 Billion Robot Lawyer Market
- By CDOTrends editors
- May 02, 2024
The rapid adoption of generative AI is set to supercharge the global legal technology markets, which are set to reach USD50 billion in value by 2027, according to a new forecast from analyst firm Gartner.
The increase will be driven by significant growth in spend management, e-billing, contract lifecycle management, legal matter management and legal document management as legal departments increasingly seek technology-led efficiencies.
Incorporating GenAI into these applications will only accelerate purchasing and adoption, according to Gartner.
“GenAI has huge potential for bringing more automation to the legal space,” said Chris Audet, chief of research at the Gartner for Legal, Risk and Compliance Leaders practice.
“Rapid GenAI developments, and the widespread availability of consumer tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, will quickly increase the number of established legal technology use cases, in turn creating growing market conditions for an increasing number of legal-focused tools.”
GenAI has the potential to force legal departments' pay structures to adapt. For example, keeping track of “billable hours” may be hard when legal documents are partly AI-generated.
Moreover, the portfolio of legal services needed to get work done, the ratio of in-house and outside counsel expenses, the ratio of generalists and specialist lawyers, and talent needs in-house may all require significant changes to ensure GenAI platforms are successfully implemented.
“New technologies can fundamentally change the way legal organizations do business, and GenAI has enormous potential to do this,” said Audet.
“While at first technology can promise more than it delivers, that can have as much to do with adapting to new ways of working as it is to do with flaws in the technology.”
Legal leaders must consider adopting new and evolving legal technologies to meet business demands and avoid future budgetary pressures.
“As various business functions pursue automation, legal leaders may find themselves facing some tough questions from senior leadership if they haven’t evaluated its potential in the legal department,” Audet said.
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