The British Legal Technology Forum ’17 brings together people from the legal and commercial technology sectors to discuss the systems, strategies, processes and platforms which will be relevant to law firms and legal businesses in the near future.

Its agenda is divided into five stages which between them cover a very wide range of topics which lawyers, both in-house and in law firms, should be thinking about now. Event sponsors include Epiq/DTI, Brainspace and Neota Logic, as well as a wide range of others whose products and services go beyond eDiscovery.

I am taking part in a panel called Technology for disputes and beyond: where are we now and where are we going? I am the moderator, and the panel members are Ben Gardner, data and information architect at Linklaters and Paula Fearon, senior associate at McCann FitzGerald.

Around the world the last few months have seen court acceptance of technology-led eDiscovery searches, and a shift from whether we should use technology-assisted review to how it is to be used. As TAR gains acceptance, newer technologies, including artificial intelligence, are already in use in the more forward-thinking firms, and eDiscovery tools and skills are being turned to other legal purposes. Epiq/DTI is a good example of a technology company which has broadened outwards from its eDiscovery base to take in projects beyond disputes. I mention them because they are a sponsor of this event, but the same is true of most of the main eDiscovery players.

As Professor Richard Susskind (who leads the Main Stage at the Forum) long ago predicted, technology will create new opportunities and new types of job. Brainspace has the tagline “Augmenting intelligence to accelerate human potential” and Neota Logic talks of “intelligence automation”. The prizes go to the lawyers who can convert these aspirations into tangible benefits for clients and themselves.

There is a delegate registration page here.

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