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Every year, the legal community huddles together and prognosticates trends and developments affecting the legal technology space. Legal tech publications and websites have been announcing their predictions on what’s to come in 2022, and a bevy of NetDocuments subject-matter experts shared their thoughts.
Here’s a snapshot of what they had to say about various topics.
“Cloud document management technologies, which traditionally have been adopted by the Am Law 200 firms, will sweep the market in small law in 2022. This movement gained momentum in 2021 but will be pervasive in 2022 in firms above 20 lawyers.”
— Alvin Tedjamulia, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder
Source: Legal IT Insider, “Well, hello 2022: Predictions for another unpredictable year”
“Platformization ensures that all solutions — such as document and email management; collaboration, task and discussion management, and set builders — share common storage with a common search engine. Such an approach helps guarantee a single version of the truth, enabling legal staff to work collaboratively, securely, and productively.”
— Josh Baxter, CEO
Source: Legal Innovation and Technology Today, “Looking ahead and beyond”
“In 2022, the battleground will shift to the maturity of the cloud platform, and squarely focused on the concept (and realization) of ‘platformization’ for all solutions hosted by document management/enterprise content management. Platformization calls for a single worldwide service under one global cloud, where all solutions and applications hosted by the platform share a common set of core technologies for storage, search, cryptography, data loss prevention, analytics, machine learning, etc. Solutions based on different core technologies and different platforms will be deemed unacceptable, while those normalized under a single platform (platformization) will be the service of choice.”
— Alvin Tedjamulia, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder
Source: Legaltech News, “Legal Tech's Predictions for Legal Technology Innovation in 2022”
“Law firms and corporate legal teams will be focused on maximizing the return of their investment in their core technology platforms and move away from managing individual point solutions. That means using more of the capabilities of the platform, building apps and integrations that extend it further, and ultimately creating a seamless experience for their users to do work.”
— Steve Presley, Product Manager for Security and Governance
Source: Legal IT Insider, “Well, hello 2022: Predictions for another unpredictable year”
“Externally, investment in legal tech from private and public institutional investors will continue as the industry races to consolidate fragmented vendors, merge, and reimagine point solutions, all part of a greater mission to modernize the law firm technology stack and improve lawyer productivity.”
— Josh Baxter, CEO
“The industry will lean on software-as-a-service (SaaS) infrastructure and legal tech vendors with reputations for delivering dependable innovation – afforded by multi-tenancy and the benefit of automatically “inheriting” new features, functionality, and security upgrades. Native experiences, part and parcel to true platformization, will continue to outpace the rest of the industry. Working inspired starts with productivity that is on par with security and governance and eliminates the ‘either or’ argument of old regarding functionality versus security.”
— Dan Hauck, Chief Product Officer
Source: ILTA’s Peer to Peer magazine, “Legal cloud innovation … not an oxymoron in 2022”
“At their essence transactional law and contract review are intensive use cases for document management—searching, metadata, templating, document organization, versioning, collaboration, set building, e-signature, etc. Look for further merging of DMS and AI for automation and enhanced workflow management in these areas”
— Reid Cram, Product Marketing Manager
Source: Legaltech News, “Legal Tech's Predictions for Contracts and CLM in 2022”
“States will seek additional ways to ensure security of cloud service providers (CSPs) by implementing complementary control frameworks that map to the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) requirements for state agencies, e.g., AZRAMP, TX-RAMP, or the use of StateRAMP.”
— Collin Ferre, Manager, Internal Audits and Compliance
Source: Legaltech News, “Legal Tech's Predictions for Cybersecurity in 2022”
“The global pandemic has given lawyers a taste of hybrid working and a better work/life balance. Now the genie is out the bottle, law firms will need to ensure that they can continue to offer the same level of flexible working. To do this, they need to invest in the right collaboration tools. Cloud technology will play a vital role in ensuring that lawyers can work productively and with ease, from any location. If they don’t equip lawyers with the right tools, they will soon watch talent walking out the door.”
— Josh Baxter, CEO
Source: Legal IT Insider, “Well, hello 2022: Predictions for another unpredictable year”
“We’ll continue to see COVID used as an excuse to get around security, process, and procedure. It’s the classic ‘I don’t care what policy/procedure/etc. is in place, I need to get work done now,’ and COVID is the blanket excuse now for poor service, shortages, etc. which extends into the IT and governance realm by giving folks another ‘out’ to dodge the process.”
— Steve Presley, Product Manager for Security and Governance
Source: Legaltech News, “Legal Tech's Predictions for Remote Work and COVID-19 in 2022”
As we all settle into 2022, it will be interesting to see which trends continue to evolve and which predictions come to fruition. No matter what happens, we know things will change. NetDocuments is committed to helping legal professionals navigate the changes of today and prepare for the changes of tomorrow.
Want to know what else we’re talking about? Check out our blog!
