It has never been more important for legal teams to embrace technology. Ernst & Young found that while 70% of organizations have a formal contracting technology strategy, 99% don’t have the data or the technology needed to improve their contracting processes. Further, only 31% of contracts follow a corporate legal playbook and 71% are not monitored for deviations from standard terms. 

These realities reflect a significant gap between strategy and effective execution—and it’s costing businesses considerably. For 57% of executives surveyed, contracting process inefficiencies resulted in delayed revenue recognition, and 50% said it resulted in lost business opportunities.

Though we’re nearly halfway through the year already, there is still plenty of time to bring your in-house corporate legal department up to speed with the best legal tech trends 2022 has to offer.

Top Legal Tech Trends 2022

The top legal tech trends of 2022 listed below consider a wide range of business priorities, from privacy and security to automation and artificial intelligence (AI). Smart application of technology offers the potential for legal departments to experience marked gains in both productivity and profitability this year.

   1. Digital Transformation

Physically redlining a contract draft with a pen has largely become a practice of the past. At the very least, legal departments recognize the need to move away from old manual processes and towards digital transformation. This includes consolidating playbook standards and negotiation clauses into AI Digital Playbooks. Similarly, more and more contracts are being uploaded into centralized databases. While much of this transformation has already taken place, there are still companies in the process of upgrading their infrastructures, and many teams are still determining the best way to transition manual workflows to digital processes.

      2. Artificial Intelligence

Arguably the most exciting trend of the past five years is the rapid advancement of AI in the legal tech space. The proliferation of data paired with advances in natural language processing (NLP) have allowed AI platforms to flourish across all industries. For legal, AI-based platforms can now be used to fully review, redline, and negotiate contracts. Systems can automatically compare contract drafts and identify errors, omissions, and deviations based on a company’s negotiation playbook of essential business terms. Organizations use AI to accelerate project management, collaboration, communication, and employee training. 65% of contracting staff say they regularly work on low-complexity, simple contracts, amounting to over 40% of their time and budget being spent on this type of work. The use of AI to free up lower level tasks offers tremendous potential.  

   3. Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Data Protection

As experts in reducing liability, very few understand the importance of data security as well as attorneys—but that doesn’t always mean their work is fully protected. Not only is an increased focus on cybersecurity one of the top legal tech trends of 2022, it’s also an ongoing effort for legal departments. One solution involves the creation of smart contracts through blockchain technology, which maintains a decentralized record of transactions and data to help maintain client confidentiality. Legal teams are also becoming increasingly aware of the risks in using email inboxes to send and store documents. Accordingly, platforms are emerging to handle storage concerns. Today’s legal organizations also use a variety of technologies, including private clouds, multifactor authentication, document-level encryption, and IP address restrictions. With 26% of law firms reporting at least one data breach in 2021, ceaseless vigilance is required to protect companies from breaches of confidentiality or privacy lawsuits.  

   4. Workflow and Process Automation

By 2024, 55% of legal work will be fully automated and companies will increase technology spending three-fold. Workflow automation ranges from email reminders and calendar notifications to complete contract redlining and citation checking. Tech-forward legal departments are replacing repetitive, manual processes that eat into productivity with processes that alleviate specific bottlenecks and prioritize high-value work.

   5. Emphasis on the Remote Employee Experience

With turnover at a record level, agile legal departments are tackling labor challenges with a variety of different strategies, including upgrades in secure platforms that allow for remote work flexibility and automation to alleviate some of the more tedious tasks such as contract review. Entry and mid-level employees in particular expect technology integrated into their daily workflows to minimize risk and adapt to increasing workloads.

Stay Ahead of the Top Legal Tech Trends in 2022 With LexCheck

A trusted solution in the legal technology sector, LexCheck is the premier AI-powered contract review and negotiation platform. Its award-winning software helps corporate legal departments across the globe reduce time spent reviewing contracts, limit escalations, accelerate total time to execution, and alleviate playbook training costs. LexCheck’s AI can be tailored to fit any legal team’s specific needs with minimal training, saving time and costs in the process.