The client data windfall nourishing the birth of legal technologies

Abstract

This chapter launches discussion of a data management problem that has received little or no attention but lies at the core of legal technologies. The need for data privacy is well known, as is the need for data security, including cybersecurity. However, legal technology builds not on personal data, but on the exploitation of data containing solutions, like contract structures and case data containing issues important for pre-trial discovery or corporate due diligence. Real-world information can be exploited to design data-labelling used in supervised machine learning. Unsupervised machine learning applied to actual client work product and case data reveals the configurations of facts on which legal technology systems improve. Clients provide this data to their lawyers and pay for the work product that contains solutions embedded in real-world contexts. Currently, many law firms feed this data into the machine learning processes of external, legal technologies companies, nourishing a nascent industry with their clients' legal histories and work product. Lawyers are strictly regulated but legal technology companies are not. If current usages continue, at some point in the future the logic of network effects will allow legal technology companies to pull ahead of law firms in the provision of many legal services. Thought must be given to exploitation of this essential data nourishing the birth of legal technologies. A watershed moment - when the legal technologies trained on law firm data surpass such firms - is approaching, and should be addressed with open eyes.