LegalTech Summit 2018, a space to talk about the Chilean and Latin American legal market

Alster Legal was present at the Legaltech Summit Santiago 2018This is an activity that we welcome to create and build a space for conversation on the challenges, trends and opportunities of the legal market. We then leave you with our main conclusions:

With regard to trends in the legal industry:

The current picture in the local and regional legal sector has the challenge of reinventing itself considering the high volume of legal studies, lawyers, law students and foreign firms.

At the same time, customers are more demanding and are in themselves "the competition," because they are well informed and open to the possibility of changing lawyers if they are offered a better service. In addition, the importance of the role of legal management or in-house lawyers, who also experience changes and demands from their organizations, leads to changes in their purchasing behaviour.

Customers demand more for less, this is quality at a lower cost, so it is seen that taking over this requirement is only possible through operational efficiency and technology.

Today, more than ever before, legal service providers are called upon to look at the legal market in a strategic way, make decisions on innovative and cost-effective business models and put both the consumer and his collaborators at the centre.

For Management:

"Data is the new oil." Organizations and firms need to invest in technology to generate data that support decision-making.

It is known that what cannot be measured cannot be improved, so the legal market is called to implement processes that allow for generating indicators or KPis. Specifically for firms it is recommended to use "leverage" ratios = number of partners / number of non-partners, which generate information to improve resource use and thus increase the last line.

Artificial intelligence:

It is essential to demystify the concept and scope of Artificial Intelligence = to be artificially intelligent = to train the machine to have human behavior.

The lawyer of the future is the one who constantly seeks to increase his productivity and has developed his digital intellectual coefficient, both skills will allow him to understand and make requests to the machines and to process hundreds or thousands of documents in less time. Those who do not join this wave will be in total disadvantage on the market.

The machines must necessarily be programmed. Before ethical or moral decision-making they respond to human programming, so the replacement of people still looks far away. Progress is slow (but exponential) and requires millions of dollars.

Another advantage of the IA is its "learning capacity," it is not tired, it is tolerant, patient and it is not frustrated to requests, on this side it passes the threat to the replacement of people, especially by looking at the behavior of the "millenial" labour force.

With regard to legal services:

A discussion panel was held between legal management and legal studies, which sought to gather the views of both parties regarding the adoption of the technology.

In our view, even though both sides agree that technology incorporation is essential, there is no alignment with expectations or paths to build a vanguard legal market. Even the parties maintain their positions and even though there is dialogue there is a lack of agreements or real empathy regarding each other's objectives, beyond the cost-effectiveness and sustainability of legal studies.

Retention of talents:

Finally, as for the retention of talent and the myths and truths about the Millenials, much has been said about them and their way of being and working. However, it was concluded that the problem would not be the Millenials, but rather to align expectations between them and legal studies.

From Alster Legal, we believe that in the legal market it is necessary to move towards concrete initiatives and generate more constructive spaces such as the LegalTech Summit 2018, considering technology not as an end, but as a means to achieve the objectives of the actors in the legal ecosystem of Latin America and to respond to future demands and trends.

Jimena Altuzarra and Montserrat Mazó | Alster Legal