According to Gartner®: “by 2027, the global legal technology market will double in size because of GenAI — and legal leaders face growing pressure to respond."[1] This projection underscores the rapid evolution of legal operations due to tools such as generative AI and agentic AI. Legal technology is no longer a far-fetched concept but a presently integrated part of the modern legal operations landscape. The key drivers behind this transformation include the increased complexities of legal work, an increased demand for efficiency as contract volume grows, and increased client expectations. But what does legal technology look like in 2025? This blog post provides a comprehensive overview of legal tech's impact on present and future legal professionals.
Generative AI, agentic AI, and other leading tools have advanced myriad core areas of legal technology. Let's consider a few key areas.
Document automation streamlines the creation of legal documents and document drafting, reducing the manual effort required and errors. Tools such as pre-approved document templates, a pre-approved clause library, and auto-redlining significantly streamline the generation of contracts and other legal documents while minimizing risks associated with human error.
Technology has revolutionized legal research, making it faster and more comprehensive. Sophisticated databases and AI-powered tools have played a pivotal role in streamlining and improving the analysis of case law and statutes.
Case management software helps organize and track all aspects of legal practice, from client communication to deadlines and billing. Users experience improved organization and efficiency.
Technology helps lawyers, law firms, and legal departments manage vast amounts of electronic data involved in litigation. Tools for data collection, processing, review, and production have positively transformed the eDiscovery process.
Artificial intelligence has broad applications in the legal field. Contract review can be streamlined with generative AI tools that analyze contract sentiment and risk. Legal analytics displayed as dashboards, ad-hoc, and custom reports provide holistic oversight of contract trends and statistics. Predictive coding analyzes a sample of documents, learns from human-assigned classifications, and then predicts the relevance of other documents.
Machine learning, a subset of AI, enables legal technology tools to learn from data and improve over time. For example, contract management software built on artificial intelligence with machine learning can recommend clauses, analyze risk based on past contracts, and more.
Natural language processing (NLP) can facilitate the analysis of text-heavy legal work, enabling tasks like document summarization and sentiment analysis. This functionality allows legal professionals to streamline tedious contract analysis tasks so they can focus on more strategic tasks.
Cloud-based legal technology provides benefits such as increased accessibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. Reputable providers of cloud-based legal technology take security considerations into account and address them with certifications and attestations, such as SOC, for example. Cloud solutions facilitate collaboration among legal professionals by centralizing communications, document processes, and approval processes on a single source of truth.
Those who leverage legal technology can experience myriad benefits, such as
Legal technology's significant impact is bound to continue and evolve in the coming years, with developments such as regulatory technology (RegTech), compliance evolution, and cybersecurity in law firms. The future of legal technology might see increased comfort with AI usage, contracts that write themselves, AI-based lawyers, and instant contract analysis. Who knows?
The transformative role of technology in legal has helped legal professionals, clients, and the overall delivery of legal services Readers are encouraged to embrace and explore the opportunities presented by legal technology. To that end, request a free demo of CobbleStone Contract Insight® CLM software today to learn about how to positively transform your contract management processes.
*Legal Disclaimer: This article is not legal advice. The content of this article is for general informational and educational purposes only. The information on this website may not present the most up-to-date legal information. Readers should contact their attorneys for legal advice regarding any particular legal matter.
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