Top Tech Trends Lawyers Should Keep an Eye On in 2012

Monica Goyal at the Law Times News published this article about the top five tech trends lawyers should keep a close eye on in 2012.  See her list below:

Goyal, Monica (2012, January). Bits and Bytes: Top 5 tech trends for lawyers in 2012. Law Times

1.    Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom are said to be entering the British market in 2012. Furthermore, a few notable legal web services have come up in the last year, all positioning themselves to take advantage of the new legal regulatory framework in  Britain, including Everyman Legal and Net Lawman.

This undoubtedly represents the start of a wave of new legal technology companies and services that may come to this side of the ocean once they’ve proven themselves in the British market. All of this because of recent changes to the Legal Services Act there. Will the United States follow suit?

2.    Cloud-based software services: Microsoft Word, a staple software for almost everyone, will now be cloud-based with Office 365. This has been a long time coming and it represents a huge shift for those still refusing to get on the cloud. If you haven’t already, you should be asking the question what you need to do to prepare yourself for cloud computing.

3.    Business Analytics: Analytics and accountability go hand in hand for most businesses. Today, there are many tools to allow businesses to measure and then adapt their behaviours in order to improve their bottom line. Take social media, for example.

Customers and clients use social media and you could possibly engage with them there, but how does a company capitalize on this and what kind of return are they realizing on this investment? In 2012, people will be talking less about getting their businesses on social media and more about how to measure the return on investment through analytics.

There are many tools already available that will measure your influence online or your click-through rates on your tweets.

4.    Mobile payments: In 2012, with the emergence of near field communication, you’ll now be able to use your smartphone to make small purchases at stores, restaurants, and even in taxis. It’s totally cool but is it too convenient?

5.    Behavioural advertising: Currently, there are countless technology startups with an advertising revenue business model. To make it work, they go beyond general demographic information and instead use a person’s private online browsing preferences to sell them something.

Comments

[Zachary Shepherd]

I believe that the technology used by lawyers will still evolve in 2012. Communications between professionals in the field, colleagues and clients will be easier and more user-friendly because of the new mobile phones and Internet phone features. Aside from that, more and more lawyers will also create professional and personal networks in different social media sites.