The Five Characteristics of the Tech-Enabled Lawyer

In recent years, the legal function has moved beyond the realms of offering legal advice and support in times of need, and has instead transitioned into a high-functioning, Commercially-savvy asset to the wider organisation.

In the next phase of the evolution of the legal function, we will see lawyers who fully embrace and utilise legal technology – this is what we’re calling the Tech-Enabled Lawyer.

Here are the five characteristics of a Tech-Enabled Lawyer:

1. Agile

   Rather than trying to plan and predict everything, the Tech-Enabled Lawyer thrives off uncertainty. They’re comfortable being uncomfortable, they’re used to navigating their way into the unknown and they’re always looking to challenge the status quo. Most importantly, they appreciate that not everything can be perfect but push for brilliance anyway.

2. Collaborative

   The Tech-Enabled Lawyer is sick of siloes – they want to knock the walls down and keep them down. They’re always working with IT, or HR or finance to come up with and carry out new ideas, and they’re always giving everyone the opportunity to make a real difference across the business.

3. Innovative

   To grow as a business, team or individual, the Tech-Enabled Lawyer knows that innovation is essential to the process. They’re always looking for new ideas and approaches – and they don’t pigeonhole themselves from learning and evolving based on their subject-matter expertise or professional backgrounds.

4. Resilient

   Risk-aversion is a highly regarded trait in a lawyer, but no matter how hard you try, something will eventually go wrong. But a Tech-Enabled Lawyer doesn’t let risk stop them from pushing forward – and if it fails, they react quickly, learn from it and move on to better things – because they know the biggest risk to the business is to stay stagnant.

5. Growth-mindset

   The Tech-Enabled Lawyer doesn't log off when their team meets their targets, or when they’ve put out enough fires to keep upper-management happy. Instead, they want the legal team to be known as the change-makers that drive effectiveness by challenging existing approaches and ideas, adopting new technologies and ways of working, and bringing about transformation in exciting new ways.

Key trends impacting in-house legal teams

These five characteristics were identified and brought to life in a recent survey of 120 in-house legal teams throughout the UK.

Here are some of the key findings:

• Four-fifths plan to increase their adoption of legal technology in the next five years
  • Interestingly, the majority of in-house legal teams are eager to make the most of new legal technology in the near future with many putting emphasis on the solutions available in legal technology and the legal research market
• 84% said legal technology must have the ability to surface data insights in the next three to five years. Small and medium-sized teams were particularly interested in the ability to understand trends across contracts using data
  • Data insights will play an integral role in powering a variety of use cases across legal departments moving forward so we are seeing a level of digital transformation occur in this space
• In-house legal teams are noticeably more confident in their digital capabilities, with the number of respondents listing the deployment and integration of new technology as a barrier to adoption falling significantly
  • Technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), automation software, big-data and machine learning have caused huge swells of disruption across other industries and now we are seeing this transgress into the legal sector

Download The Tech-Enabled Lawyer: The evolution of the legal function report