We’re seeing new flavors of technology impact just about every part of our business lives. The practice of law is affected as well: new technology is profoundly changing the way law firms and legal departments operate.

On top of that, technology is driving globalization, and the resulting geographic ‘spread’ of business is increasing. This means closer monitoring of laws among many different countries at a broad level and at the same time, maintaining contractual obligations and commitments with different parties across the globe. Because technology can help there too, a large number of GCs at companies of all sizes are showing greater interest in bringing meaningful legal technology solutions to bear.

According to a recent report published in Legal Business magazine, technology will significantly reshape the workings of corporate legal departments and law firms in the coming years. In response to a survey conducted by the magazine, 54% of respondents at major companies expect artificial intelligence (AI) and cutting-edge automation to have a substantive impact on the way their teams work within 5 years.

Companies like BT and Vodafone are among the front-runners in introducing automation to enhance the operations of their legal teams and are actively encouraging others to follow their path and achieve a higher standard of proficiency.

Brightleaf is also contributing to this revolution. Our second-generation semantic intelligence engine is providing metadata abstraction and obligation tracking services at the highest levels of accuracy, assisting not only legal departments but also contract managers and procurement professionals in better managing their client and vendor commitments.