Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2019. Read them in this 11th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Peter Wallqvist, Vice President of Strategy at iManage
Short-termist Approach to AI Tech Buying Will Give Way to Strategic and Rational Adoption in 2019
In the legal sector, 2018 saw artificial
intelligence (AI) climb to the top of many law firms' agenda, driven by the
lure of the business benefits this new technology potentially offers alongside organisations'
perceived need to ‘innovate'. In 2019, the following trends will shape the adoption
of this technology:
Sharp contraction in point solution buying
The legal sector has been euphoric in its
interest in this new technology with many law firms purchasing the technology
as another out-of-the-box ‘business tool'. In 2019, there will be a sharp drop in point
solution-led tactical buying as law firms better grasp the technology to take a
more considered, meaningful and realistic approach to the technology's
adoption. The penny will drop that the perception that AI technology is a ‘plug
and play' is not only misguided, but also futile to achieving innovation-led
goals if adopted with this mindset.
Shift towards strategic adoption of AI
Thus far, the adoption for AI has primarily
been driven by tactical, internal gains such as efficiency and cost savings. In
2019, firms will realise the strategic potential of the technology for genuine
business advantage such as creating new services and developing new ways of
working that are relevant for the consumers of their legal services. To an
extent, this outward and proactive approach to the adoption of AI will be urged
by customers, akin to the adoption of eDiscovery technology in law firms.
AI an ‘invisible' enterprise technology
The realisation that the value of AI lies
in embedding the technology in the firm's ‘business as usual' processes and
activities will take hold. This will
require creating a business environment that is conducive to AI, fundamental to
which will be digitalisation of information. IT directors will begin to revisit
their long-term strategic roadmap to embedded AI into the broader enterprise,
including the technology stack and existing legal processes, especially as commoditisation
of legal services is rapidly moving up the value chain, examples of which are insurance
claims handling and conveyancing.
Knowledge management without breaching ‘Chinese walls' and
regulation
Compliance with regulations, especially
GDPR, is viewed by many law firms today as an obstacle to collaboration and
sharing of matter-related information, which often contains confidential
personal data. At the same time, typically, there are ‘Chinese walls' within
the organisation that lawyers need to observe to protect confidential matters and
limit conflict of interest with other clients. Law firms will realise that AI offers
potential for true knowledge management and internal collaboration across teams
and geographies, while protecting lawyers from inadvertently breaching the
boundaries set by regulation and the Chinese walls.
##
About the Author
Peter Wallqvist is
Vice President of Strategy at iManage. He
started his career in the information retrieval industry as a research engineer
at BT Research at the turn of the millennium. From there he went on to being
part of delivering some of the largest and high profile search and unstructured
data processing systems in the world. In 2010, he co-founded AI pioneer RAVN
Systems, which was acquired by iManage in 2017.